Prenuptial agreements are not just for the rich and famous anymore. They have become almost de rigeur, particularly in second and subsequent marriages. “Once burnt, twice shy” is the guiding principle when contemplating a second union, since many hard lessons are learned after the dissolution of a marriage that was expected to last till death. Spelling out prospective needs and expectations prior to walking down the aisle forces a couple to communicate openly and honestly, especially in the area of finance. Hammering out an agreement can be a positive, trust-affirming exercise, and should not be viewed as a question of good faith.

Although violating the terms of a pre-marital agreement may cause a divorce, it can’t be used as grounds, since almost all states now have no-fault divorce laws, negating the need for reasons beyond incompatibility. Generally speaking, the court will honor the terms of the agreement and enforce those that pertain to finances and children, but will seldom delve into some of the more frivolous demands that are sometimes included. For example, it is highly unlikely that either spouse can be fined for withholding intimacy, gaining weight or failing to take out the trash – items which have actually been part of some agreements.

In addition to a couple’s financial situation, if children are involved, a prenuptial agreement will usually specify details of their care and welfare, which are almost always affirmed by the divorce judgment. Prenuptial agreements cannot supersede adjudicated financial support orders, but they can deal with such things as college education and similar issues that arise after a child reaches legal age. They can also address matters pertaining to religion, relationships with grandparents and other non-financial areas, relieving the judge of making those difficult, sometimes heartbreaking decisions.

It has been suggested that prenuptial agreements might be a factor in causing the high percentage of second-marriage divorces. The reasoning is that when a couple starts to regret the time wasted in failed marriages and begins to balk against growing old with the wrong partner, having the terms already spelled out greases the skids into easy divorce. Since twice as much baggage is involved in a second divorce, prenuptial agreements may be twice as necessary as they were the first time around and should be drawn up by two separate attorneys.

Source: www.aurora-law.com

This may be to the detriment of practical issues. The results can be tragic in even the most friendly of divorces. In several unions, earnings is different between partners. This variation presents differing concerns for each better half. The partner with the lesser revenue will need the resources to live while job searching or following an education. This spouse’s contribution to the family mustn’t be put down in a divorce settlement.

Inversely, the higher earning better half is frequently not aware there are boundaries per the court’s evaluation of overtime pay and bonuses. In each one of these circumstances, a divorce and family barrister can navigate the details of family law that are favourable to the customer. Conjugal property is commonly argumentative in a divorce. For instance, many by mistake accept that property bought after a legal separation may not be considered conjugal property in the divorce proceeding. Some items may not be judged conjugal property ,e.g. a home owned by one partner before the wedding, but lived in and upgraded with marriage funds, to the detriment of the disadvantaged partner. A seasoned divorce and family lawyer may stop such a customer from making concessions when the situation relegates itself to a grey area of the law. In a wedding dissolution, no issue is more vital than kid custody.

In this area most particularly, a competent divorce and family solicitor is vital for the contentment of both the parent and youngsters. A divorce and family barrister can suggest creative solutions and can present the client’s best position to the court. A divorce and family attorney can take on the minutia of legal process so the client’s parental interests aren’t lost in an otherwise overwhelming situation. A divorce is affecting families for a lifetime. The implications of divorce can identify your lifestyle for many years to come. The degree to which youngsters are influenced in the approaching years can be reduced with the right divorce settlement and custody agreement.

The emotional drain of a divorce and the complicatedness of the law may end up in a negative end result which will haunt you for the rest of your life. Watch out for sharing a barrister with your other half.

A counsel can only represent one party. They can only maintain confidentiality with one individual. For the stated reasons, don’t go it alone on such a very important legal proceeding. Get a competent divorce and family counsel.

Start by looking at your circumstances, if your divorce is simple then it is sometimes possible to do the divorce with very little help from a solicitor, but this is rarely the case. If you need a solicitor make sure that you find one with experience that is relevant to your particular case. For example if you have suffered domestic violence or abuse, then your solicitor should have experience in dealing with cases like yours. If children are involved you need a solicitor that has dealt with custody agreements in the past.

During the divorce process there is usually some points of conflict. If you can find a Resolution accredited solicitor, do so. There are 5,500 firms in the UK with this accreditation, so you should find one in your area. These solicitors are trained to stop disputes becoming acrimonious and to help clients to agree and solve their problems constructively. Their code of practice promotes a non-confrontational approach to family law, and in particular divorce.

Try to speak with 2 or 3 solicitors before choosing one. The majority of solicitors offer a free or fixed fee first consultation. At this consultation you can establish if the solicitor has experience which is relevant to your case. In addition, you can also see if you can work with this solicitor, it is vital that you feel you can communicate with your solicitor and that they can understand your point of view too. After speaking to 2 or 3 solicitors you will also better understand your situation and the options available to you.

At the initial consultation ask about costs, these vary considerably from firm to firm. Choose a solicitor that you can afford, so you do not struggle to pay the legal fees.

Source: www.leepriestley.com

Both parties still engage their own lawyer, so they both still get independent legal advice that makes sure each party is fully aware of their rights. Initially, each party meets with their own lawyer privately. If it is agreed to use the collaborative law process then a 4-way meeting is set up for both partners and their lawyers to attend. Before this meeting your lawyers explain the procedure and what you can expect at the meeting, so you will be well prepared.

The first meeting is to establish that all those involved agree to and fully understand the process. Both parties will sign an agreement that states that they are seeking a resolution or agreement without having to use a judge to decide on the divorce terms. The date time and format of the next meeting is agreed, including who will bring the necessary information to the next meeting, e.g. financial details. If any specialist advice is needed e.g. financial advice, it is agreed whether any advisers need to attend the next meeting and who will arrange for that to happen.

There will be several subsequent meetings at which the terms of the divorce will be agreed. These terms include arrangements for child custody, maintenance and the splitting of assets. Your lawyers will draw up the agreement and schedule a final meeting to sign the necessary documents and proceed with the divorce.

If at the final meeting any further action is needed, what this is will be agreed along with a schedule to ensure these actions are quickly carried out. If on the other hand everyone is happy with the agreement it will be signed there and then.

Both of the lawyers involved need to be specially trained in collaborative law. In addition to knowing the law they are trained to help their clients to remain calm, listen and to prevent the process becoming combative. This approach usually leads to a quicker and much less acrimonious divorce. They do not act as mediators, only as enablers. Generally the process works well, especially in cases that involve children who respond to the fact that their parents are calmer and less combative than other parents when going through a divorce.

Source: www.leepriestley.com

Nevertheless it is when they are going unnoticed that these minor incursions can become deep rooted and form the beginnings of a growing divide that will split couples wide apart. Couples analysis is a strategy of bringing 2 parties back together again, and enabling them, thru the mediation of a pro counsellor, to chat about issues in a rather more sane way.

Fairly often, the thing that makes rifts worse, and divides even deeper, is that fact that communication between a pair breaks down ; and it’s communication that is the key. With it there’s always an opportunity of fixing bridges, but without it, things will only go from bad to much worse. This is exactly why couples support is getting more and more well-liked. It provides that valuable channel of communication that can permit an exchange of perspectives. Relationship analysis acts as a neutral sounding board.

It grants couples the chance to air the issues and fears that are making the disharmony. It has got a way of putting things into proportion and people frequently find that plenty of the things which appear so angering at the time turn out to be moderately trivial when put overtly on the table in front of a fair 3rd party. But irrespective of how trivialized points may appear to you, a pro advisor understands just how aggravating some of the outwardly small things can be actually. Couples analysis facilitates communication.

If both folks in a relationship still have feelings for each other, then the foundations are there to get the relationship back on course. Relations need like to make them work ; without it the pressures and tensions of modern existence today will exert sufficient strain to test even the patience of a saint, and it’s under this continued strain that chinks can start to appear in the most powerful of relations.

Couples analysis will help you to target the core strengths of your relationship. It’ll also help you to have meaningful dialogues without turning to a slanging match. Quite often one partner or the other one’s completely not aware that something in their behaviour is having such a radical effect on their other half. By communicating these sensations across an open forum with your neutral advisor attending, it opens the eyes on both partners. An advisor isn’t a judge. He is just there to form this channel of communication. In the final result it’s the couple themselves who actually heal the rift. It is their commitment and feeling for one another that creates the break for relationship support to be useful. Couples analysis is a really useful tool. If there’s a vestige of feeling left in both parties of the relationship, good analysis is going to enable both understanding and compassion. It is always worth recollecting how your relationship started ; the excitement, the passions, the hopes and the dreams.

It is their commitment and feeling for one another that creates the opportunity for relationship support to be useful. Couples counselling is a really efficient tool. If there’s a remnant of feeling left in both parties of the relationship, good support is going to enable both understanding and compassion. It is always worth recalling how your relationship commenced ; the excitement, the passions, the hopes and the dreams. Relationship support will help you to relive those feelings, but will also help you to worth the refined changes that happen as relations grow. Our wishes change as we grow thru life, and couples analysis will help you both to understand the changes, and to greet them, together.

Source: www.couplecounselingin.com

1. You Often Dream About a Life Without Your Spouse
Thinking about how much better life would be if you were divorced is common. It happens during times of marital strife to most. What is not normal is if you find yourself fantasizing about divorce often.
This is a sign that you are stuck in an unpleasant situation and you are unable to find a solution. It’s a for sure sign that you need to seek marital therapy before it is too late.

2. The Bad in The Marriage Outweighs The Good
If the negative outweighs the good in your marriage, your marriage is in trouble and in need of help. If there is more trouble than paradise, you need to get help in learning how to confront the issues causing the problems in the marriage.

3. You Keep Things to Yourself
Do you find yourself dreading talking to your spouse about marital problems or life in general? Communication is an important way to relieve stress and build a healthier bond between couples. If you don’t feel comfortable communicating with your spouse this could be a sign that you feel a lack of trust in your spouse. A marriage can’t survive where there are issues of trust.

4. Your Defense Mechanisms May be Setting You Up For Trouble
If either of you are overly defensive, dismissive of the other’s feelings, show contempt for the other’s beliefs or engaging in stonewalling tactics you are at high risk for divorce. When conflict is avoided or negative defense mechanisms are engaged when trying to deal with conflict you are not allowing healthy conflict resolution. It can be the kiss of death for a marriage.

5. You Feel Like You are The Only One Trying to Solve Problems
Are you frustrated because every time you try to discuss marital problems your spouse pulls away from you? Maybe you have tried to the point that you no longer care and you are the one distancing themselves from the marriage. It isn’t uncommon for either spouse to withdraw if they feel the issues in the marriage are being avoided by the other spouse. Eventually one or the other spouse will shut down all together and no longer be interested in solving the marital problems.

6. You Rarely, if Ever Have Sex
Maybe one of you wants sex and the other doesn’t want sex. Maybe you have both stopped needing that intimate connection with each other. Whatever the reason, a marriage that lacks sexual intimacy and affection will either end up in divorce or end up being a marriage of convenience. One in which you stay for the sake of the children or because you are afraid of change.

Source: About.com Guide

In addition, Elin is requiring that Tiger not expose their children to any future female companions “unless he is married to said person.”

Tiger and his legal team apparently spent a lot of time writing language preventing any Elin tell-all or media interviews by Elin, but the Swedish native is “so private. The last thing she would ever do is revisit this horrible period in her life,” a longtime Florida friend said of her.

Custody remains an issue, with the two differing over how much time the Woods children will spend outside the United States. Elin is pushing for much more than what Tiger wants.
Apparently not everybody in Monaco is happy about Prince Albert finally getting hitched at age 52.

“I wish he’d picked someone else,” a longtime Monte Carlo insider told the Chicago Sun-Times’ Bill Zwecker.

The source — who knows former South African Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock — told him, “We had seen this coming. … They have been together for so long and she’s been living in the palace for nearly four years.” The source, who lives in Monaco, called the 32-year-old blond “quite the operator. … She has made marrying Albert her total focus ever since she met him” in 2000.

Prince Albert of Monaco and former South African Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock are engaged, the royal palace announced Wednesday.

Wittstock, a former South Afrian Olympic swimmer, who will become Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene, apparently is “totally obsessed” with Princess Grace, Albert’s mother and the onetime Oscar-winning actress Grace Kelly, Zwecker reports.

His older sister, Princess Caroline, is also unhappy about the engagement. She was widely known to want the Monaco throne for her own sons. Given it seemed unlikely Albert would marry and provide an heir, Caroline even helped engineer a constitutional change in 2002, allowing her sons Andrea and Pierre Casiraghi to be in line to succeed if their uncle died without a legal heir.

Albert does have two children born out of wedlock — making them ineligible to succeed to the throne.

Lindsay Lohan will have to answer more questions about a 2007 car chase that landed her in jail, including inquiries about drug use at the time, a judge has ruled.

Lohan’s answers will be used in a civil lawsuit filed against the actress by a woman who claims she suffered emotional distress after the incident, which prompted a criminal case that still haunts the “Mean Girls” star.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Richard A. Stone ordered Lohan to sit for a two-hour deposition next month. The judge approved a request by Lohan’s attorney to allow the questioning to happen after July 6, when a criminal judge will decide whether Lohan violated her probation by missing a court hearing in May.

Tracie Rice, who was a passenger in a car being chased by Lohan in July 2007, sued the actress for assault, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress a month later. The case is scheduled to go to trial in late July.

Lohan was charged with seven misdemeanors stemming from her arrest after the chase and another incident a few months earlier.

Rice’s attorney, Paul Hoffman, argued Thursday that Lohan hadn’t answered key questions about her drug use and whether she was remorseful, both of which could help his case.

“This case is about somebody who claims to be sober and had cocaine and blew a DUI for alcohol,” Hoffman said. He said the questions would be crucial to a jury deciding whether Lohan should have to pay punitive damages if she is found liable.

Lohan’s attorney, Ed McPherson, said the questions seemed aimed more at embarrassing Lohan in the press and could harm her if used at the probation hearing. He said Lohan sat for a daylong deposition during which she was subjected to numerous lines of questioning, including whether she had seen a recent “60 Minutes” episode featuring Al Pacino.

“It’s clear they don’t need answers to these questions,” McPherson argued. He also said Lohan was busy focusing on the fulfilling the conditions of her criminal case and working.

Source: Denverpost.com

— The Associated Press also contributed to this report

Tiger Woods and his estranged wife Elin Nordegren are close to divorce. A source close to the situation revealed that the divorce is imminent, telling Radar Online “They’ve agreed on all the major points. It’s all been worked out privately.”

“Both Tiger and Elin are very close to finishing the negotiations and filing and signing the paperwork,” the source further stated. Moreover, the professional golfer is said to hand over Elin $750 million in the settlement.

The source also shared about details of the divorce negotiation, stating “When they first started negotiating the divorce, it was very acrimonious. Elin had a lawyer in California who was very, very aggressive.” However, the source revealed, “Things are now very civil between Tiger and Elin – at least in terms of getting the divorce taken care of.”

Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren’s separation is apparently amicable, despite back on March 8, the estranged couple was spotted kissing for the first time in months. An eyewitness told the site, “They were hugging and they were kissing right out in the open. Elin is certainly a lot more relaxed these days and so is he. People in the neighborhood are getting used to seeing them together again.

When officials in California’s legislative departments received a petition from police detective John Pomroy of Pomona, near Los Angeles, they must have felt they were watching the latest instalment of Basic Instinct.

Unusual plea
Mr. Pomroy approached California legislators, in particular Democratic Assemblyman Marty Block of San Diego County, with a very unusual plea. He requested Mr. Block’s help in closing a particular loophole in Californian divorce law that had bitten him hard personally — the right to prevent your ex-wife from running off with a chunk of your life savings if she hires a hit man from a motorcycle gang to have you bumped off.

Yes, you read it right.

According to reports, Mr. Pomroy went through a contentious divorce back in 2002 and his ex-wife, after turning violent due to alcohol and drug abuse, lost custody of their two sons. She apparently also lost some of her appreciation for the law — and possibly her grip on reality.

Instead of seeking legal recourse, the former Ms. Pomroy approached members of the feared Vagos motorcycle gang in San Bernardino County to kill her ex. What she clearly did not bargain for was the gang members alerting the police. Policemen reportedly disguised as biker-assassins taped a conversation with the ex-wife, leading to her arrest and subsequent conviction for soliciting murder.

Think this is twisted? There’s more.

Given the oddities of the law in California, Mr. Pomroy’s ex-wife was actually able to claim half of his wealth because she had not tried to kill him herself.

In other words, hiring an even more efficient killer enabled her to get away with serving a mere 22 months in prison, and then collecting a cool $70,000 from her ex-husband’s estate in the divorce.

Mr. Pomroy commented on his attempts to get the law changed, saying: “This Assembly bill is not going to award me anything retroactively; I’m not looking for that … I’m just trying to prevent some poor sap in the future who goes through this, to prevent him from losing his assets to somebody that’s trying to kill him.”

Assemblyman Marty expects the bill to pass unopposed in the State Senate this week.

Source: Narayan Lakshman

In India, marriages are solemnized as a well-guarded union.

But the country has now moved to at least unshackle divorce.

Officials Friday announced measures to stem delays in seeking an early end to failed alliances.

India’s federal cabinet approved “irretrievable breakdown of marriage” as a ground for couples to part ways, information and broadcasting minister Ambika Soni told reporters.

Under original Hindu marriage laws, both estranged partners have to appear at court proceedings for settlement of their lawsuit for divorce by consent.

But it’s not uncommon for a petitioner to skip tribunal dates deliberately in order to keep the case dragging in India’s notoriously sluggish legal system, authorities acknowledge.

“This has been causing considerable hardship to the party in dire need of divorce,” Soni said.

Officials believe the new legislation, now due for clearance by parliament, will eliminate harassment of either party in the case and abuse of the existing law on dissolving marriages.

There was no official data on divorces immediately available, but matchmakers say four in hundred marriages fail in India.

With the country transforming into a modern economic powerhouse, divorce is increasingly been seen as an acceptable way out of unsatisfying relationships.

“Divorce doesn’t seem to be biased any more. It’s uniform among all castes, cities and income groups,” said Vivek Pahwa, the head of SecondShaadi.com, a marriage bureau for second-timers.

Pahwa’s portal aims at India’s Internet-using divorcees, widows and widowers. More than one-fourth of his clients, he says, are women, especially in jobs.

“It’s reflection of financial independence,” he remarked. He was referring to a growing number of Indian women joining workforce who he says refuse to remain trapped in unwanted marriages.

Indian laws allow limited one-sided separation.

Cruelty and desertion can serve as a premise for seeking divorce without consent.

Separately, the country has harsh laws to protect women, such as physical torture over dowries.

But data shows a surge in crimes against women.

Police across India registered 195,856 crimes against women in 2008, up from 140,601 in 2003, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

Source: Cnn.com