Friday, November 11, 2011

Arizona’s Only DIY Online Divorce Coach Has Arrived

By Scott David Stewart

Arizona's Only DIY Online Divorce Coach Has Arrived

We've been hard at work here at the Law Offices of Scott David Stewart developing Arizona's only complete DIY Online Divorce Coach service. Our unique new online DIY divorce service gives much needed assistance to those who choose to represent themselves pro se in their divorce.

The reasons why parties represent themselves in divorce vary, of course, from one person to the next. Some individuals choose to avoid sharing their personal family matters with outsiders; others choose to avoid the cost of attorney representation. If you or someone you know is contemplating divorce and does not want to hire a divorce attorney, then today's post is something you really need to read and share.

**What Is the DIY Online Divorce Coach All About?**

Our Arizona divorce attorneys have been helping clients work through family law cases for many years. We know firsthand that almost half of all divorcing parties represent themselves without an attorney. To provide do-it-yourselfers with the information and tools necessary to achieve the best possible results in their divorce, we created Arizona's only Online Divorce Coach and DIY Divorce Resource Center.

**How Does the Online Divorce Coach Work?**

The Online Divorce Coach provides unlimited email advice from an Arizona licensed divorce attorney at our firm. Each DIY-subscriber emails specific questions to the Online Divorce Coach through the helpdesk and receives timely email responses from the coaching divorce attorney with the requested advice and guidance. The Online Divorce Coach is there to assist at every step in the divorce process, even if the case goes to trial. For do-it-yourselfers, this is the best of both worlds – advice from a divorce attorney without the hourly attorney fees.

**How Much Does the Online Divorce Coach Cost?**

The subscription cost of our Arizona Online Divorce Coach is only $197 per month – that is it, there are no hidden fees or costs. Our online DIY service comes complete with our money back guarantee and you may cancel your subscription at any time, no questions asked. In this way, you remain in control of your case and your costs at all times.

Some subscribers will maintain their subscription throughout their divorce, other subscribers will gather what they need at the beginning and cancel. When you have retrieved everything you need, when you have taken full advantage of the educational and instructional materials housed in the resource center, then cancel your subscription if you choose. Should you need more help later, simply restart your subscription then.

**What Is Included in the Online Divorce Coach Subscription?**

After you register and are accepted as a subscriber, the Online Divorce Coach and everything in theArizona DIY Divorce Resource Center is available for you to complete the paperwork and educate yourself on every possible divorce issue. Everything you need to effectively represent yourself is available through our complete DIY online divorce service.

Here are some of the essential benefits included with every Online Divorce Coach subscription:

• Unlimited email advice from an Arizona licensed divorce attorney.

• All necessary Arizona standard forms.

• Detailed, easy-to-follow instructions.

• Complete checklists for every phase in the divorce process.

• Complete library of online tutorials, articles, screencasts, live and recorded webinars, how-to videos, and white papers.

• Online child support calculator and apps for your iPhone or Android device.

• Access to the Arizona Divorce Forum, a support forum offering tips and advice from our Arizona divorce attorneys.

for more information on these matters please call our office at 305-548-5020

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Thursday, November 10, 2011

Judge Orders Couple to Exchange Facebook Passwords

By Stephanie Rabiner

Judge Orders Couple to Exchange Facebook Passwords

Would you want to give your soon-to-be ex-spouse your Facebook password? Probably not. But if you ever go in front of Connecticut's Judge Kenneth Shluger, you may have to.

Judge Shluger has ordered Stephen Gallion and his wife Courtney to exchange Facebook and dating site passwords. Once received, their attorneys are free to research online behavior and use private communications in the divorce.

One little password may ultimately influence whether Stephen receives full custody of the couple's children.

Custody is ultimately why he asked for the password exchange in the first place, reportsForbes. After poking around on the couple's shared computer, Stephen Gallion suspected that there would be useful evidence on his wife's social networking profiles.

Courtney Gallion refused to grant access to her Facebook, EHarmony and Match accounts, according to the site. After researching his own client's accounts, Stephen's attorney asked the judge to order the password exchange.

Neither Stephen nor Courtney will have personal access to the other's accounts. Instead, the exchange will transpire between their attorneys. There appears to have been some concern that one spouse would post messages purporting to be the other.

Even with this protection, there's no doubt that the order impinges on Courtney's privacy. Still, privacy may legally be trumped by other considerations, such as a child's well-being.

A number of courts across the country have agreed, reports Forbes. Judges have ordered password exchanges in personal injury, custody and divorce cases. At times, they have also signed into a litigant's account themselves.

So if there is ever a time to be careful with your online accounts, it's now. Your spouse may do as Stephen Gallion did and seek access.

for more information on these matters please call our office at 305-548-5020

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Wednesday, November 9, 2011

What Is A Divorce?

By: HENRY S. GORNBEIN

What Is A Divorce?

Over my many years of specializing in family law I have handled thousands of divorces. These have run from very simple, uncontested matters to complicated cases. Many involve custody and other disputes regarding children. I have also had divorces where people have fought over millions of dollars in assets. The question that I am posing, and would like to answer, is as follows: What is a divorce?

A divorce can be many things. It is a legal proceeding to end a marriage. Divorce laws differ from state to state regarding the requirements and reasons or grounds for a divorce. The mechanisms and procedures for obtaining a divorce differ from state to state as well. In every state there is a legal requirement that a divorce proceeding be filed to end the legal marriage between a couple.

A divorce is a weapon. It can be a legal weapon. It can also be a verbal weapon which too frequently is used by an unhappy spouse who will hurl a threat: "If you do not do this, I will divorce you." This often is a means of control. It is also dirty fighting. Sometimes this threat of a divorce is a means of keeping someone in a marriage. To me, it is a statement that the marriage is in trouble and could perhaps end in a divorce unless the parties go into counseling.

I tell my divorce clients that a divorce is extremely painful. It is going to be one of the most horrible events that occurs in a lifetime. Psychologists say that the most traumatic event a person can experience is the death of a child. Second is the death of a spouse in an intact marriage. Third is a divorce. Never minimize the psychological impact of a divorce.

There is also a psychological divorce. This occurs when one or both spouses finally let go of the relationship and move on emotionally. I believe that a psychological divorce is just as important, if not more important, than a legal divorce. Emotionally it is much more devastating than the legal divorce. Until both people in a marriage let go, they will continue to battle through the Courts. This will create havoc and damage, often for years to come. Long after the legal divorce is over, people fight over custody, child support, and any other issue in order to continue the psychological battle through the Courts.

In addition to the legal divorce, there can be a religious divorce. In Catholicism, there is an annulment that is necessary in order to remarry in the church. In Judaism, there is a GET, or religious divorce, which is necessary before an Orthodox or Conservative Jew can remarry in the Jewish Faith. There is also a Muslim divorce. Other religions also have means of recognizing the end of the marriage through religious ceremonies or requirements before there can be a remarriage in a particular faith.

Divorce is not only painful, but it can be very costly. It can be damaging. Costs and damages in a divorce depend on the complexity of the case. They depend on how angry or inappropriate each spouse is going to act. The amount and complexity of the finances and whether custody is an issue, can increase the costs and attorney fees tremendously. These are things that you should think about as you decide whether or not, and how you want to have a divorce.

As you can see, a divorce can be many things. It is much more than a legal proceeding. A divorce encompasses many areas and will impact upon your life, your spouses', as well as your children's. If you have young children, they will be impacted and often scarred for many, many years. Think about this carefully. Filing for divorce should be a last resort, not your first impulse. These are some of my thoughts on the connotation of the word divorce. What are yours?

for more information on these matters please call our office at 305-548-5020

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Crazy Divorce Stories from Around the World

By,Scott David Stewart

Chinese Divorce.

The decade long marriage between wife Luo and husband Cen came to an abrupt end when Cen learned of his wife's marital deception. When Cen proposed to Luo, she claimed she was a 24-year-old. In fact, however, Luo was already 30. When Cen learned how she had bamboozled him into marrying her, he filed for a divorce which was granted. The year? 2007.

Another Chinese Divorce.

After she returned from a month-long vacation with her parents, the family bird, a mynah, began evidencing a remarkably improved vocabulary. A very quick study, the pet mynah bird was spouting "divorce," "I love you," and "be patient." This confirmed the wife's suspicions that her husband was unfaithful to her, and so she filed for divorce. We do not know whether the mynah testified against the husband in the court proceedings. The year? 2001.

Taiwanese Divorce.

In Tainan, southern Taiwan, the court granted Chen (age 38) his petition for divorce from wife Lin (age 29). The couple had been married for a year, but Lin would not consummate the marriage. On their wedding night, the bride told her new husband "you are ridiculous," and went home to her mother. The matchmaker re-entered the picture and mediated an agreement between Lin and Chen. Although Lin agreed to consummate the marriage for the purpose of procreation, she ultimately just couldn't – for a year. The court granted Chen the divorce, along with NT$300,000 for the dowry he paid Lin's family, the apartment he bought for them to live in, and, most significantly, his loss of face. The year? 2007.

German Divorce.

At age 81, Georg Meister was careless, and his 83-year-old wife found out about it. While volunteering at some animal facility, Georg got a little carried away in a "quickie" with his lover, a woman in her mid-50s. Mrs. Meister filed for divorce. Although they met during WWII and raised three children, the man in the dog house was no one she knew: "I had a good husband and he was a good father, but that man does not exist anymore. It's a sad end for us, but I showed no mercy. I just threw him out." The year? 2005.

Saudi Arabian Divorce.

After a marriage of long duration, 30 years, a 70-year-old husband decides he wants to see his wife's now 50-year-old face, hidden all these years under her veil. He must have known that he was engaging in a very risky endeavor, as he tried to accomplish the peek while she slept. Unfortunately for him, she awoke and was outraged at the indignity. Although he apologized, she insisted on divorce. "After all these years, he tries to commit such a big mistake," was her comment to the Saudi press. In her village, the women traditionally veil their faces in public and in private before their husbands. The year? 2008.

Our Peoria, Arizona, divorce attorneys can help you avoid counter-productive actions that can make a successful resolution more difficult, time-consuming, and costly. With information, options, and strong legal advocacy, the Law Offices of Scott David Stewart can help you achieve your goals.

For additional information on these matters, please call 305 548 5020.

Monday, November 7, 2011

The Battlefield of Divorce

By, Wendy Strgar

Marriage problems are relationship problems; they are the result of how two people interact with each other. You may abandon a troubled marriage, but you will still bring the way you interact with others along with you." -Mark Gungor

It has been years since I have been close to a divorce; however, I have witnessed many others from a distance over the years, mostly through the vacant expressions of the kids–friends of my own children–as they recount their new living arrangements. I remember my early adolescence, mostly lost in the battlefield of my parents' divorce. Much of my middle school years are lost to me, a salvation of memory that works to erase the anger, cruelty and unspoken pain that became my family.

Recently, I have been reminded of many of my forgotten memories as a co-worker and friend navigates his own battlefield of divorce. There are no victors in these emotional wars, which turn our tender and warm attachments with those we loved into a brutal form of ammunition in the pain of separation. It is a form of insanity that I remember well in my parents and was my ready excuse for much of my own reckless and destructive behaviors. It is a literal losing ground of our daily reality and even our connection to our selves. Even when both partners are seemingly ready for the break up, there are few "good" divorces.

This rang true when I came across the recent New York Times expose entitled, "How Divorce Lost its Groove." Replacing the previous stigma-free too-bad-it-didn't-work-out mentality of divorce is an understanding by many people like me who went through their parents' messy divorces as a child that the dissolution of a family is a failure of sorts, that somehow, something more could have been done for the relationship. Marriage is increasingly being understood as something that, like work-life balance, needs to be continually worked at and improved upon.

According to the women in the article, many of whom have written memoirs about their experience, divorce is no longer seen as a woman's ticket to freedom and liberation. In fact, they are experiencing a kind of punitive backlash among their cohorts. Single motherhood is not glamorous, and divorcing with children often requires an increased commitment between ex-partners to figure out their issues for the sake of their kids. It isn't just the immediate family that experiences the trauma either. Close friendships and extended family are also disrupted as divorce has an apparent domino effect. A recent study out of Harvard, Brown and University of California recently found that divorce is in fact is contagious- witnessing the breakup of close friends increases the odds of your own marital split by 75%.

All of this shifting has resulted in a significant drop in the divorce rate among the college- educated population. In fact, close to half of this population now believes that divorce should be made more difficult. Within this segment, marriages are lasting longer with increasingly higher proportions of couples reaching their 10^th and 15^th anniversaries. Interestingly, the dropping rates of divorce don't hold true among the less educated population where divorce still occurs in over one third of marriages in the first ten years. This correlation between education and marital longevity is an interesting one. Does this speak to improved relationship skills, values or some combination of both?This question was the focus of the recently released film Crazy, Stupid Love. The story opens with the wife's request for a divorce and moves through the funny, sad versions of the insanity that ensues as the characters search for themselves and new ground to build a life upon. Unrealistic but hopeful, their process brings them back to the love that they thought was lost, a bit more mature and conscious that the work of staying related never ends. Learning the skills to love is a lifelong pursuit.Wendy Strgar, founder and CEO of Good Clean Love, is a loveologist who writes and lectures on Making Love Sustainable, a green philosophy of relationships which teaches the importance of valuing the renewable resources of love, intimacy and family. In her new book, Love that Works: A Guide to Enduring Intimacy, she tackles the challenging issues of sustaining relationships and healthy intimacy with an authentic and disarming style and simple yet innovative advice. It has been called "the essential guide for relationships." The book is available on ebook. Wendy has been married for 27 years to her husband, a psychiatrist, and lives with their four children ages 13- 22 in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

For additional information on these matters, please call 305 548 5020.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Did Risk of Divorce Drive Boomer Women to Increase Their Education?

By,Azure Gilman

From the abstract:Women born in 1935 went to college significantly less than their male counterparts and married women's labor force participation (LFP) averaged 40% between the ages of thirty and forty. The cohort born twenty years later behaved very differently. The education gender gap was eliminated and married women's LFP averaged 70% over the same ages… We find that the higher probability of divorce and the changes in wage structure faced by the 1955 cohort are each able to explain, in isolation, a large proportion (about 60%) of the observed changes in female LFP.

Between 1935 and 1955, women tripled their presence at universities. Divorce rates also rose, which hurt women more than men, since it was the women who usually ended up with children, putting them under more financial and emotional stress. This heavier burden, the authors argue, also drove women to increased levels of education, to make themselves more robust candidates in the workforce

The increased probability of divorce faced by the 1955 cohort, in particular, is a key driver of the increase in women's work and it produced the desired asymmetric reaction in the education choices of men and women, helping to reduce the education gender gap significantly. Furthermore, changes in divorce probabilities alone account for around 60% of the LFP increase during the ages of 25-40 for married women.

Despite the economic and educational strides made by the 1955 generation, the irony is that most of them were not better off, and some (the least educated) were in fact worse off economically than their 1935 counterparts.

Conditional on education level, men greatly benefited from the changing economic environment, whereas both high school and college women lost from those changes. However, once we allow female preferences for work to change, college women also enjoyed small welfare gains in the 1955 world. High-school women on the other hand remained worse off. An ex ante welfare analysis (i.e., unconditional on education) revealed that both women and men fared better in 1955. Men's welfare gains, however, are substantially larger than those of women reflecting, in large part, the asymmetric gender costs of divorce

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Thursday, November 3, 2011

Cohabitation Compounds Divorce as a Threat to America’s Children

By,Collette Caprara

Given the overwhelming evidence that parental divorce takes a heavy toll on children—in areas ranging from emotional well-being and academic achievement to delinquency, substance abuse, and sexual activity—the nation had cause to breathe a collective sigh of relief when data showed that the incidence of divorce has dropped steadily since peaking in 1979. In fact, today's divorce rate is nearly as low as that of the late '60s. But this moment in the sun has been overshadowed by a dark cloud.

Research recently released by The National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values (the third edition of the Why Marriage Matters series) reveals that more than 40 percent of children in the country spend some portion of their lives in a household with a cohabiting parent before they are 12 years old. Twenty percent are born into such households. And the incidence of cohabitation is on the rise. Today, children are nearly twice as likely to experience parental cohabitation as parental divorce.

As the Marriage Matters report (an analysis of federal data and more than 250 peer-reviewed journal articles) shows, compared with peers who live in the "gold standard" family structure of the intact, married family, children in cohabiting households are more likely to suffer from a range of emotional, social, and behavioral problems and less likely to succeed academically. According to government data, they are also at least three times more likely to be abused physically, sexually, or emotionally. In fact, regarding significant measures of well-being, children in cohabiting households fare worse than counterparts in single-parent families.

Cohabiting couples are much more likely to separate than married parents. Children born to cohabiting couples are 170 percent more likely to experience a parental breakup than children born to married couples. This family instability carries dire consequences for children. Unsettling family transitions are linked to poor relationships with parents, behavioral and health problems, and school failure. There is also emerging evidence that such problems are exacerbated by the resulting (euphemistically dubbed) "complex" households in which children live with half-siblings, stepsiblings, stepparents, and people unrelated to them by birth or marriage.

Unfortunately, the decline of the divorce rate hasn't been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the number of intact, married families, but rather by a rise in the incidence of cohabiting households, where levels of commitment and stability are typically far lower.

To stop this devastating trend, policymakers should earnestly pursue policies and programs that can promote and strengthen marriage and an intact family structure—the safest, most nurturing, and most prosperous environment for the next generation.

For additional information on these matters, please call 305 548 5020.