Total Divorce Blog

A divorce can have a lasting impact on many people, from involved spouses and children to even the parents of the divorcees. A recent Baltimore Sun story detailed the difficulties of Marsha Temlock, who said that she felt as if her “family fell off a cliff” when her two children got divorced. Temlock said that when she couldn’t find a book for parents of divorcees on how to deal with the divorce process, she decided to write her own.

Temlock has just authored “Your Child’s Divorce: What to Expect – What You Can Do.” She explained in the story how the book walks parents through five divorce stages, which include accepting the news, rescuing your child, responding to change, stabilizing the family, and refocusing and rebuilding the family. Temlock added in that story that divorces provide parents of the divorcees with new parental and grandparental challenges and tasks. Temlock also advised in the story that parents of divorcees not enter the blame game because it’s not productive.

The story suggests that if one million people get divorced, four million parents could possibly be affected. With that in mind, Temlock described how divorces can be difficult for the parents of the divorcees. She said that some parents may feel betrayal by their children following divorce, especially if they’ve helped the couple stay together emotionally, financially or through other means. Temlock said that the process may further be complicated when grandchildren side with the ex in-law. Temlock suggested that parents keep communications open but not overwhelming with ex in-laws.

According to the story, there were 17,111 Maryland divorces in 2005 as compared to 37,572 marriages. The story added that a little more than half of those Maryland divorces consisted of marriages lasting fewer than nine years.

Divorce may be prompted by many circumstances, but the reasons stated in the two divorce cases this week are more than unusual. A Tainan court granted a 38-year-old man’s request for divorce because his wife would not consummate their relationship on their wedding night and during the ensuring year, while a Delhi divorce request by a man citing that his wife denied serving tea to his family members was not granted.

• A Tainan man was recently granted his wish: a divorce from his 29-year-old wife, whom he met through a matchmaker. The man surnamed Chen married a woman surnamed Lin a year ago, according to a story in the Taiwan Times. Lin allegedly refused to consummate the marriage on the wedding night and then returned to her mother’s house the following day saying that she was ill and would not live with her husband again.

According to the story, Lin signed a contract agreeing to consummate the marriage for procreation purposes, but demanded to sleep separately from her husband. Chen filed for divorce in July and Lin contested the request, saying that she was too ill on the wedding night to consummate the marriage. The judge said that is was strange for Lin to refuse to do so for a full year, and thus granted the divorce. Lin must now compensate her ex-husband for an apartment he purchased, a dowry he gave her family, and the embarrassment which ensued.

• The Delhi High Court denied a man’s request to divorce his wife after she did not serve his family tea, and called the request “frivolous,” according to a story in The Hindu. Narender Singh married his wife, Rekha, way back in 1980 and lived with her for eleven days before fulfilling his defense duty in Jammu and Kashmir, where he was stationed for most of the following 27 years! According to the story, Singh filed for divorce and claimed that his wife had insulted him when she refused to serve his maternal aunt and some friends tea when he was outside of Delhi.

After finally returning to Delhi, Singh’s request was denied. Specifically, the court ruled that his claims of his wife’s cruelty were based on heresay evidence from his family members when he was not even home. For such a ridiculous divorce petition, Singh was ordered to pay his wife a specific amount of money within four weeks.

Divorces may drag on for years, especially when it comes to property division and financial matters, as a recent reversal of a Missouri divorce reveals. Carl Paul Petersen and Virginia Elaine Petersen were divorced in 2001 and Mr. Peterson was told to pay his ex-wife more than $7,000 per month, according to a story in The Springfield News-Leader. This amount was reduced to $2,500 in 2005 by a trial court after Mr. Peterson allegedly suffered a severe drop in income. Just yesterday, appellate judges reversed the trial court decision due to a lack of evidence specifically showing that Peterson’s income had dropped.

Specifically, Carl Petersen was a sole shareholder of a metal finishing company. After the company suffered some setbacks, his income reportedly dropped from more than $300,000 in 2002 to slightly more than $80,000 in 2003. Peterson’s alleged 2004 income was around $40,000. With these substantial drops in income allegedly taking place, the trial court reduced the original Missouri divorce decision in 2005. Both parties appealed at the time, and now Petersen is back to having to pay the original payment after yesterday’s decision.

It’s an all-too-common scenario:  you get your divorce decree and it says that your husband is supposed to pay your outstanding credit card bill, or that your wife has to repay a personal loan the two of you took out during your marriage.  Whether you agreed to that division of responsibilities or the court decided which of you should pay which bills, it’s a court order now, and ignoring it can bring legal sanctions.

Still, many people do ignore these orders, either intentionally or because financial circumstances don’t allow them to make the payments as planned.  That’s typically when the other spouse gets a call from the credit card company or the bank demanding payment.  Of course, most people aren’t troubled by the initial call; they simply explain that they’re no longer responsible for the debt.  And then something happens that surprises most people.  The credit card company or the bank tells them they’re wrong.

The next step is a call to the divorce lawyer.  “Tell them I don’t have to pay this!”  And that can bring another ugly surprise, because in the vast majority of cases the lawyer explains that the person IS still responsible for that debt.

When a married couple applies jointly for credit, both of them take on a legal obligation.  When the parties divorce, the credit card company or the bank isn’t a party to the divorce.  The creditor isn’t in the courtroom. And the divorce court has no power to change the terms of the contract the couple entered into.

Thus, when the spouse who wasn’t ordered to pay the debt produces a copy of the divorce decree and says, “Look, I don’t have to pay this!” the creditor most often says, “That has nothing to do with us.”  They will often continue to pursue the debt.  They will often turn the claim over to collections, and it will often show up on both spouses’ credit reports as a collection item.  In some cases, they even file lawsuits.  And win.

That doesn’t mean that the division of debts in the divorce decree is meaningless, but it has to be enforced against the right person–the spouse who was supposed to be responsible for the debt.