Total Divorce Blog

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.

Two lonely but married people began an anonymous online relationship. That’s not very unusual. The unusual part of this story came when the anonymous cyber cheaters realized that they were actually married to each other! Now they plan to divorce.

Sana Klaric used the screen name “Sweetie” and began talking online with a man who went by the screen name “Prince of Joy”. They shared their marriage woes with each other and developed, it seemed, a relationship. They each thought they had found a soul mate through their online chats.

The pair decided to meet for a date. Imagine the shock when husband and wife came face to face at the “date”. Now they are divorcing, each accusing the other of being unfaithful.

Amazing how the pair, who could not be nice to each other in person, had such a wonderful time chatting online with each other.

In Iowa two men recently got married.  It was legal at the time of their ceremony, but now it’s not.

This morning, less than 24 hours after a judge’s ruling legalized same-sex marriage the couple tied the knot.  Two hours after that first gay marriage in Iowa, the same judge put his ruling to allow it on hold.

Judge Robert Hanson of Polk County, Iowa ruled on Thursday in the case of six gay couples who sued for the right to marry, that Iowa’s 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, which allowed marriage only between a man and a woman, violated the constitutional rights of due process and equal protection.

The Polk County attorney said that he would quickly appeal the ruling and asked that the judge put his ruling on hold until after the appeal.  The judge agreed.

So gay marriage in Iowa has come and gone, for now.

A reported 20 gay couples had filed for marriage licenses before Hanson’s ruling was put on hold and one couple actually got married.  They were able to get their license quickly by paying $5 more and getting a judge’s signature.  Usually it takes about 3 days to get a marriage license in Polk County.

There will be no more marriage licenses issued for same-sex couples in Polk County until the Iowa Supreme Court rules on the appeal.

At least it will be a while longer before the state will need to worry about how to handle same-sex divorces.  The gay couple who got their license and married before the hold was issued say they are very much in love.

A woman who wants a divorce says her husband is no angel, but he claims to millions in his ministry to be the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda claims to be God. He and his followers sport 666 tattoos and call him “Daddy”. He preaches that there is no such thing as Satan or sin. De Jesus Miranda claims that his church has thousands of members in 30 countries around the world.

Angry Christians call him a fake but religious leaders fear that he could be very dangerous because he actually believes his own hype and truly thinks that he is really God.

De Jesus Miranda grew up poor, has served time in prison and claims he was previously a herion addict.

Surprisingly enough, his second wife now wants a divorce, so “Jesus” will be appearing in divorce court.

Federal prosecutors are also involved in the case because of allegations that the religious leader’s followers have paid for real estate, alimony and his personal business dealings. So in the end, de Jesus Miranda may have more than one day in court before all issues are settled.