Total Divorce Blog

In Texas a divorced couple are headed to the state’s Supreme Court to settle a fight about what happens to three frozen embryos that the couple created before the divorce.

Years ago, Augusta and Randy Roman consulted with fertility specialists and created three embryos, in hopes that they would become parents.  After the embryos were created, Randy had a very sudden change of heart and decided he wasn’t sure about the marriage, and was less sure that they should go forward with a potential pregnancy.

The Romans divorced and a long legal battle began about what would happen to the now frozen embryos.  Randy says that he has moral objections to them being used and wants them destroyed.  Augusta, 46, wants to become pregnant using the embryos and says they may be her last chance at having a biological child.

Augusta has previously won a ruling that would allow her to use the embryos, but Randy quickly appealed and the Texas Court of Appeals blocked her from having the embryos implanted.  Augusta has appealed and now the case is headed to the Texas Supreme Court.

There may just be a trade show for everything now.

In Vienna, Austria the world’s first “divorce fair” was held and journalists, divorce lawyers, detectives and mediators showed up.  A lab was even set up to swab cheeks for paternity tests.  But where were all of the people who want to divorce?

As it was, the unhappy couples had better things to do and the event was a flop.

Only a few dozen people turned out at the divorce fair.  Some say that there were too many cameras there, and that’s what kept people away.  True, there were more journalists than unhappy couples there.

So the lawyers had few to counsel, there were no cheeks to swab and no disputes to work through.  Even the speed dating tables set up nearby were empty, as were the makeup chairs offered to women who would want to start their new lives with a new look.

Maybe divorce is just more of a private matter than the divorce fair organizers had thought.  After all, not everyone likes to air their dirty laundry out in public.

For some people, making light of a divorce can ease the pain and start the healing process.

So should the companies that print wedding announcements branch out and also offer printing of divorce announcements?  And should newspapers add a column beside their wedding announcements to announce the bitter breakups of those who wish to go public with the news?

Sending out or publishing divorce announcements could head off those uncomfortable moments when someone who hasn’t heard the news asks, “So how is Steve doing?”  You could be saved the wrinkle causing grimaces and finally just admit that your family and friends were right all along with an announcement to put it all out there.

You could also use your divorce announcement to either ask for advice on a divorce attorney or scare the pants off your ex by including the news in the announcement that you’ve already hired the most powerful and ruthless divorce attorney that has ever set foot inside a courtroom.

In more amicable circumstances, you and your ex could release a joint announcement that puts you both “back on the market.”  These could be sent to all the people that you would have liked to have dated, had you not made the mistake of marrying the wrong person.

So, for all kinds of reasons, divorce announcements could actually be a coming trend.  If faced with a divorce, would you make an announcement about it?

In Connecticut, a woman has been charged with second-degree harassment and breach of peace after she allegedly used the internet to try to  break up the marriage of an old boyfriend and cause the couple to divorce.

Pilar Stofega is accused of creating fake profiles of her ex-boyfriend’s wife on adult web sites across the internet.  She allegedly used the wife’s high school yearbook picture and her home and work telephone numbers in the profiles.

When strange men started calling the couple’s home and saying they were responding to a profile on an adult site, the couple knew something strange was going on somewhere.  The man did his own investigation and traced the profiles back to Stofega, who he had dated in 1999.

When Stofega was caught she said she set up the profiles to be vindictive, knowing that the profiles would cause problems between the husband and wife.  She was arrested and released on $2,500 bond.

A man in Spokane, Washington wanted to avoid a divorce so he decided that murdering his wife would be a better choice.  With Halloween coming up, it was just the right time to put his cunning plan into action.

Sean Jennings reportedly set up a haunted house in his garage and invited his wife to come have a look at it.  He then allegedly had her climb a ladder to test a noose where a skeleton was supposed to hang.  Mrs. Naive put her neck in the noose and then her husband pulled the ladder out from under her, according to police reports.

The woman still has bruises and rope burns on her neck from the incident.  She says that at the last moment she was able to get out of the noose by promising her husband that she would give him a divorce and that she would not tell anyone that he tried to kill her.

She kept her promise not to tell until she called police from a Wal-Mart parking lot on October 9.

When Bernice Heslop won the $28.5 million jackpot in the lottery she decided not to share the good news with her husband. After all, she and her husband, Ernest Moore, Jr., had been living apart for more than five years and she certainly didn’t want to share the money with him.

Now, more than 12 years later, the legal fight over the lottery money continues. You see, her not quite ex-husband did find out about the money and sued to have a share of it. And the person who informed him that Bernice had won the lottery wants his fair share too.

When Bernice realized she had won the jackpot, she tucked her ticket away and called a divorce lawyer. She wanted a quick divorce.

Moore agreed to some easy terms for the divorce. There were to be no child support or alimony payments and the two would simply go their separate ways.

On February 1, 1996 the divorce was finalized and the next day Bernice went to the lottery commission to claim her prize money. She didn’t pose for any photographs or give any press interviews and was in and out within minutes.

Moore remarried and had no idea his ex-wife had become a millionaire until someone approached him and told him they had overhead some financial information that pertained to him. The person who approached him, Marvel Rodriguez, wanted 35 percent of whatever Moore recovered as a result of the information and Moore agreed, signing a notarized contract.

Armed with his new information, Moore sued his ex-wife and in 2000 they settled out of court. Moore received $300,000 plus $57,000 per year for 15 years. The confidential agreement gave Moore the money tax free, as Bernice agreed to pay all of the taxes owed on the money.

Each year when Moore has received his $57,000 payment, he has paid Rodriguez his share of the money, $19,950, but Rodriguez always felt as if he has been shorted somehow.

This year, Rodriguez finally found out how much he had been shorted when in August, a judge ordered Moore to disclose the terms of his agreement with his ex-wife. Rodriguez found that he is still owed $175,000 from the initial $300,000 that Moore received and he also wants to be paid interest on the money and 35 percent of the taxes Bernice paid on the settlement.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced that he and his wife, Cecilia, are divorcing. The couple had been married for 11 years.

Sarkozy came into office as the President of France about six months ago, and his wife Cecilia has shown little interest in the whole ‘First Lady’ gig. Sometimes she would appear in public with her husband, and then sometimes not, whatever fit into her busy schedule. She once even snubbed the American First Lady, Laura Bush, by not appearing with her husband for a lunch date with President and Mrs. Bush and instead going shopping with friends.

The pair have appeared before a judge with their lawyer and said that it is a mutual decision to end their marriage.

Caren Ann Burke, 49, of Seymour, Wisconsin has divorced Rory S Burke and cited that as the reason on her August 23 petition to change her last name to bin Laden.

Perhaps rethinking her choice of names, Burke didn’t show up at Outagamie County Circuit Court this month for the hearing and Judge Dee Dyar dismissed the case.

In Court Dyar said he had received a letter from Burke saying that she didn’t file the third legal notice, as required by law, and did not intend to show up for the hearing.

In the New York Times, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, assistant professors of business and public policy at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote that recent reports about marital breakups are “divorced from reality.”

They assert that statistics showing that couples married in the later 1970s are more likely than not to be divorced 25 years later are faulty. They claim the divorce rate has fallen continuously over the past quarter-century and is at its lowest level since 1970.

According to the assistant professors, marriage rates have fallen, but marriages are more stable than in the past. More couples, married in the 1990s, are likely to see their tenth anniversary than couples who married in the 1980s, who were more likely to be together after ten years than those who married in the 1970s.

The Census Bureau reported that more than half of marriages occurring between 1975 and 1979 had not seen their 25th anniversary. Stevenson and Wolfers point out the Bureau conducted its study in mid-2004, and at that time, it had not been 25 years since the wedding day of 1 in 10 of the couples surveyed. Those married in the last half of 1979 could not possibly have been married 25 years, yet. They say if the study had been conducted six months later, it would have found that a majority of couples married in late 1979 had made it to through their 25th year. Including all of the marriages in 1979, about 53 percent of those married between 1975 and 1979 had celebrated their silver wedding anniversary.

Divorces peaked at 22.8 per 1,000 marriages in 1979 and have fallen by 2005 to only 16.7 per 1,000.

That was quick!  On July 16th we reported that Omar Bin Laden, son of Osama Bin Laden, had married 51-year-old grandmother, Jane Felix-Brown.

Well, now the couple have announced that they have divorced.  This was the 6th divorce for Jane Felix-Browne.  It seems as though this was the first divorce for Omar, although Jane was his second wife.  He is still married to his first wife.

Jane Felix-Browne announced that she asked Bin Laden to divorce her after learning that there had been death threats against him by people who objected to him marrying a British woman.  She said that they hope to remarry in the Spring.

Feliz-Browne has had a letter delivered by her son to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.  The letter explains the circumstances of the divorce and asks for permission for the couple to remarry.