As a seasoned Family Lawyer, I always encourage warring spouses to do everything they can to save their marriage. In most cases, divorce should be a last resort, as it is financially and emotionally devastating to everyone involved.

Be reasonable. Be courteous. Don’t be petty. Do your best to negotiate a reasonable Separation Agreement with your spouse, even if it seems like your spouse is the most unreasonable person on the planet. Want some perspective? Here are some unbelievable TRUE stories of divorce from around the world:

India: A woman divorced her husband after two months of marriage on the grounds that she “couldn’t trust him.” The reason? He failed to update his Facebook relationship status to “married.”

Italy: A woman filed for divorce three weeks after her wedding when her husband brought his mother on their honeymoon. Talk about a mama’s boy!

Italy: A 99 year-old man filed for divorce when he discovered that his 96 year-old wife had engaged in an extramarital affair 60 years earlier. They became the oldest couple ever to divorce.

Germany: A neat-freak husband finally pushed his wife to file for divorce when he tore down a wall in their home because it was “dirty.”

Israel: A man divorced his wife after she adopted 550 (Yes, that’s five hundred and fifty!) pet cats.

Cambodia: After 18 years of marriage, a husband who wanted to split the marital assets exactly 50-50 sawed his house in half. His ex-wife still lives on her side.

A couple divorced after ten years when the husband discovered that the wife had lied about her age when they married. She said she was 24 but was really 30.

A woman was granted a divorce from her husband when her pet bird started saying things like, “divorce” and “be patient.”

For more information on separation, divorce, and other family law matters, please visit MyOntarioDivorce.com.

Sincerely,

Robert Berman B.C.L, LL.B
Founder & Family Lawyer

Divorce can be expensive. In order to get your case started you’d have to pay a lawyer a retainer in the range of $1,500 to $10,000 before he or she would even begin working on your case. Furthermore, by the time your case is finally heard by a Judge, the average case can cost you between $25,000 and $50,000 (unless you use MyOntarioDivorce.com).

When you’ve run out of money and used up all of your resources for loans, what can you do?

Well, one man’s wife left him and he couldn’t afford to pay his lawyers for a divorce so he decided to sell her wedding dress on Ebay! Financially uplifting with a sprinkle of revenge.

Helping you help yourself,

A new reality show that could get the go-ahead on the FOX broadcasting network plans to hunt down what they call “deadbeat” dads and demand that child support that’s allegedly owed to their ex-spouses be paid. FOX confirmed it has requested a pilot of the program, tentatively titled “Bad Dads,” by the network that has churned out such reality “gold” as “Cops” and “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?”

How does the show plan to get alleged child support delinquents to cough up the cash, you ask? By calling them on the phone and giving them the chance to do the right thing. If this option is met with considerable denial or argument then the show finds out what kind of assets the suspected father has and makes their life miserable until the child support is paid.

Is “Bad Dads” another FOX ratings grab or a criticism and potential wake-up call to the family justice system?

Helping you help yourself,

We’ve all received an assortment of invitations in the mail at one time or another. The purpose of the parties often span from a bachelor/bachelorette to a wedding reception, but has anyone ever been invited to a divorce party?

After reading the article, do you think divorce parties are a positive way of moving on after divorce or have they added to the de-valuation of marital vows?

Helping you help yourself,

A man is talking to his lawyer about his upcoming wedding anniversary. He doesn’t know what to get his wife for a present and asks for advice. “How about a divorce?” the lawyer suggests. The guy thinks a second but then shakes his head. “No, I didn’t want to spend that much.”

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Have a lawyer joke you’d like to get off your chest? Share your laughs!

Helping you help yourself,

Being a lawyer myself, and having observed lawyers in their natural habitat, I can recognize how Mr. So and So from the Alabama Family Law blog managed to turn the courtroom into an episode of National Geographic in his article “The Lamb, the Pit Bull, and the Fox.”

The bottom line is: it doesn’t matter what kind of lawyer you have, he’ll still take a bite out of your savings.

Can you relate? Share your “tails.”

Helping you help yourself,

In early 2008, British playwright Tricia Walsh-Smith became known internationally after posting a shocking and uncomfortably personal YouTube video of herself discussing her divorce from her estranged husband Philip Smith, president of America’s oldest professional theatre company The Shubert Organization.

Airing the couple’s dirty laundry made headlines as this was considered the first known case where a spouse has used YouTube in an attempt to gain leverage over the other in a divorce case. Although those of you who are going through, or have been through, a divorce may sympathize with some of her erratic emotionas and understand the need to try anything when in such a situation, in the end the judge didn’t care about the video; nor would I recommend making your own (unless you’d enjoy an hour on the couch with Dr. Phil or have aspirations of becoming the next Spielberg). The message you can take from this, in addition to not making your own YouTube clip, is that you’re not alone.

Is the internet useful for taking revenge on your ex? Or is Walsh-Smith just “surfing” for fame?

Helping you help yourself,