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Christmas for the divorced
As we are closing in on Christmas celebrations, there is a group of people, who might not be enjoying this season, for a good reason, wholeheartedly. This group would be the recently divorced and separated. Divorce and separation are always stressful, especially with children, and having to figure out what is essentially a family holiday will not make it easier. If you look for them, you can quickly find a story addressing the issue.
The biggest factor that makes Christmas challenging for the divorced and separated is memories. Memories of past Christmases can make the thought of not having a traditional, family-style Christmas very painful. This does not, however, mean that Christmas could not be enjoyed even if your family is going through a divorce. You can always come up with new traditions, and having a challenging holiday season this year does not mean it will always be like that.
Surprisingly, Christmas and divorce do have one thing in common. Both are something you should not try to handle alone. To make Christmas easier, you can reach out to friends and family for support or enjoyable company during the holidays. As for divorce, you can still contact your friends and family for support, but it is important to also contact an experienced divorce attorney in your area.
A hardworking wife could mean you're headed for divorce, study suggests.
In the midst of all the far-fetched theories of omens and signs that your marriage is headed for a divorce, a U.K. study found that there is a possibility that some wives are literally working their way towards a divorce. For once, you are going to read about a sign that does not include a husband working suspiciously hard at the gym or a wife&s new enthusiastic approach to tennis. This new theory comes from a study conducted in the United Kingdom that suggests women whose marriages are about fail spend more time working. Aol. did a story on this discovery.
The study, conducted by the London School of Economics and Political Science, suggests that for a 1% increase of their marriage failing, women put in 12 more minutes of work in a week. Berkay Ozcan with his co-researches based the study on statistics from before and after the 1996 legalization of divorce in Ireland. The main idea was to compare women&s participation in the workforce before and after the legalization of divorce.
Former Bulls Great Ordered to Pay Child Support
Dennis Rodman was known as a rebounding machine before he joined the Chicago Bulls in 1995. While he played for the Bulls, he won three titles alongside Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. His personal life was considerably wild; he was notorious for his "bad boy" persona and willingness to act outlandish both on and off the court. He ever showed up to a book signing in a wedding dress and claimed he was marrying himself in 1996.
In 1999, Rodman met Michelle Moyer who he had two children with in 2000 and 2001. They were married on his 42nd birthday in 2003. There union was tenuous, as Michelle filed for divorce in 2004 yet the couple spent years trying to reconcile. During that time, Rodman had multiple issues with alcohol and spousal abuse. The divorce was finalized earlier in 2012. At that time, Michelle claimed that Dennis owed back child and spousal support.
How to Make Holidays Happy When You Are a Single Parent
Getting through the holidays when you are married and have children can sometimes be difficult. But if you are divorced, the holiday visits and all the other fuss can make your holiday a real pain if you do not plan ahead. Your children are the most important thing, of course, and you should try to make it easy for them. A divorce does not have to ruin the holidays either for you or your children. Relationship expert Maria Sbrochi mentions a couple of tips that may prove useful:
1. If you and your ex will be celebrating the holiday in the same city, you can split up the day. One parent can spend time with the chlidren until afternoon and the other parent gets the kids after that.
2. Older children can celebrate one year with dad and the other with mom. You can make your own traditions or take the family on the road. Come up with a location to celebrate the holiday with your kids.
Interstate enforcement issue highlighted by Florida and Illinois case
This case began with the Illinois divorce of Donald and Lois Weiss.
At the time of the divorce, Donald was required to maintain three policies of life insurance on his life to benefit Lois. Lois sold her rights to one of the life insurance policies back to Donald in 1994, but he was still required to maintain the other two policies.
By 2007, 25 years after the divorce, Donald decided to stop paying on the two insurance policies. Lois took him back to court, and after Donald did not show up to defend himself, the Illinois Court swayed in Lois’s favor for just over $80,000 and awarded the ownership of the policies to her. The court also found Donald in contempt.
As Donald apparently had moved to Florida, Lois domesticated her judgment there. Soon after, the Florida court also entered judgment against Donald for an additional $80,000.
The Florida court also found Donald on contempt of both the Illinois and Florida orders, and ordered him to pay $2,500 per month to purge the contempt. A Writ of Garnishment was also entered against Donald’s monthly income for the full amount of the judgment.
Interstate Child Support Case Results in Overpayment by Father
The Chicago Tribune recently featured an article about a Chicago man who is ordered to pay child support for his twin daughters in Illinois. His children’s mother subsequently moved to a few different states, but the man continued to pay his support and it was sent to the woman in whatever state she happened to be living. When his children’s mother moved to the state of Mississippi several years ago, however, the man began to encounter difficulties. Mississippi reported that the man had fallen behind in his support in 2009, so he paid extra each week toward the deficit. However, Mississippi continued to deduct extra amounts from his paycheck, so he eventually became overpaid.
The problems did not stop there. The state of Illinois began sending the child support payments directly to the ex-girlfriend, bypassing the state of Mississippi altogether. As a result, Mississippi support records incorrectly showed that by 2012, the man owed more than $5,000 in unpaid support, and that state intercepted his federal income tax refund. In reality, the man is owed more than $1,500.00 in overpayments in child support that he has made to the state of Illinois. The man contacted the Problem Solver at the Chicago Tribune after repeatedly seeking help from the state of Illinois and Mississippi to no avail.
Electronic Communications Ease Tensions After Parents Split
Although some couples would prefer to never have contact with one another again following their separation or divorce, those who share children must continue to communicate in some manner, perhaps for many years to come. A recent New York Times article, however, points out that with the advent of technology, formerly hostile and emotional exchanges between former spouses can become relatively neutral and perhaps be avoided altogether. These electronic communications can even allow an almost unworkable joint custody situation to become doable, at least from a distance.
While cell phones allowed for a convenient source of communication, they still require ex-spouses to hear each other’s voices, which can be an automatic source of irritation for some. E-mail and text messages, though, eliminate voices altogether, and allow for a more detached, much less emotional form of communication. Other parents use a mutual Google calendar in order to map out visitation arrangements regarding their children. Whatever the type of electronic communications used, most parents agree that the lack of hostility in their interactions has enhanced their relationship and made it easier for their children.
Elgin Man Sentenced for Domestic Violence
During a verbal argument in 2011, Quinzeric D. Span resorted to violence against his girlfriend. Elgin authorities claimed that Span not only attacked his girlfriend in an Elgin residence near the 400 block of Chicago Street, but also in a car while being driven around Elgin by a third party.
This attack ended when the woman escaped the vehicle while it was stopped at a stop-light. She ran away from her attacker at the intersection of North Grove Avenue and Seneca Street. But she did not escape the beating unscathed. She suffered a broken orbital bone near her eye and a perforated eardrum.
Span was taken into custody to await trial at the Kane County jail. While he was jailed, he successfully communicated with his girlfriend over the phone. Records show that since he was in prison, Span placed over 450 phone calls to the woman, against a court order preventing him from doing so. Authorities claim that this was an attempt to stop her from testifying against him.
The Ease of Proving Infidelity Through Technology
The recent scandal involving ex-CIA official David Petraeus, Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, biographer Paula Broadwell, and the shirtless General John Allen should remind us all that unlike many things in life, technology is infallible, and leaves a trail behind that is not all that difficult to follow. Whether an affair is carried out via email, text messages, Facebook, or other technological means, these electronic communications leave a path that even the least technologically-adept people can discover. In fact, some businesses have made a profit enabling people to easily discover infidelity by creating specialized computer monitoring software and ghost spyware to recreate a spouse’s computer keystrokes, monitor website usage, and record all emails, whether sent or received. As a result, private investigators who stake out allegedly cheating husbands may have become a thing of the past, and even they admit that these types of technological advances have cut into their business margins.
Women can lose health insurance coverage through divorce
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor did a study and found that about 115,000 women lose their health insurance every year due to divorce. Unfortunately, this is not usually remedied quicklly; the overall rates of health insurance coverage for women after a divorce remains low for two or more years.
The lead author of the study is Bridget Lavelle, a University Ph.D. candidate in public policy and sociology; she claims that the loss of health insurance is a huge deal because it most often is concurrent with the loss of a husband. The study analyzes data from across the nation from 1966 through 2007 on women between the ages of 26 to 64. Lavelle conducted the study with U-M sociologist Pamela Smock, and the research was supported by the U-M National Poverty Center.
The study also found:
- About 65,000 divorced women lose all health insurance coverage in the months following divorce yearly. These women often have trouble maintaining private health insurance because they do not qualify as a dependent on their husbands’ policies or cannot pay premiums for other private insurances. These women also do not typically qualify for Medicaid or other public insurance.
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