Family Law Blog : August 2010

I’d like to think that the announcement last week that Tiger Woods and estranged wife Elin Nordegren have divorced would bring to an end the carnival that has surrounded the pair ever since the bizarre incident that saw him crash his car outside their home in November last year. I fear it won’t though and the whole sorry episode, in my opinion, has been a disaster, not just for the couple, but also for the image...

Divorce doesn’t have to be expensive. When I first started on this “divorce doesn’t have to be…” track a few weeks ago, I mentioned the fact that the cost of ending a marriage does not need to be excessive. Some people still cite cost as a reason not to get divorced, which is just madness. If a person is desperately unhappy, in an abusive relationship or does not believe a relationship can be...

 I blogged last year about an ongoing divorce case involving two brothers who had used what they considered to be damning financial documents from their brother-in-law’s computer to help in their sister’s divorce case. They claimed the documents, held on a computer, showed the estranged husband was not giving full financial disclosure and had “hidden” assets.At that time, the case was ongoing. It has now moved on and the ruling is in....

The States has to be applauded for moves to take the blame out of divorce. It will never work though. Blame starts in a divorce long before you get to the nuts and bolts of how the divorce process works. A rule change is unlikely to change that. A law package of bills was signed last week, including one that makes New York one of the last states to allow couple sot dissolve marriages by mutual consent. The no-fault divorce...

Civil partnerships have become part of our culture now and are a long overdue recognition of loving relationships between same sex couples. It seems ridiculous that, for so long, gay couples could not show their commitment to each other in the same way that heterosexual couples could, or enjoy the same legal standing as what some might call more conventional unions.There are still a few oddities around civil partnerships though that set them apart so that many people will...