Category: Divorce

Do you carry the Divorce Gene?

On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Divorce on Wednesday, October 16, 2013.

Florida is a no-fault state when it comes to divorce. This means that you do not need grounds – like “mental cruelty” or “adultery” – to file for divorce. But scientists are finding that there may be fault for broken marriages, and the fault resides in our genetic code.

One gene involved in the regulation of serotonin can predict how much our emotions affect our relationships. The study was conducted at UC Berkeley:

An enduring mystery is, what makes one spouse so attuned to the emotional climate in a marriage, and another so oblivious?” . . . “With these new genetic findings, we now understand much more about what determines just how important emotions are for different people.”

Researchers found a link between relationship fulfillment and a gene variant, or “allele,” known as 5-HTTLPR. All humans inherit a copy of this gene variant from each parent.

Study participants with two short 5-HTTLPR alleles were found to be most unhappy in their marriages when there was anger and contempt. They were most happy when there was humor and affection.

By contrast, those with one or two long alleles were far less bothered by the emotional tenor of their marriages.

“We are always trying to understand the recipe for a good relationship, and emotion keeps coming up as an important ingredient,” said Levenson, who heads up a longitudinal study that has tracked over 150 married couples for more than 20 years.

The new findings don’t mean that couples with different variations of 5-HTTLPR are incompatible, but couples with two short alleles are likelier to thrive in a good relationship and suffer in a bad one.

“Individuals with two short alleles . . . may be like hothouse flowers, blossoming in a marriage when the emotional climate is good and withering when it is bad.”

“Conversely, people with one or two long alleles are less sensitive to the emotional climate.”

Participants in the study consisted of a group of 156 middle-aged and older couples whose relationships were followed for over 20 years.

For spouses with two short 5-HTTLPR alleles (17% of the spouses studied), researchers found a strong correlation between the emotional tone of their conversations and how they felt about their marriage.

For the 83% of spouses with one or two long alleles, on the other hand, the emotional quality of their discussions bore little or no relation to their marital satisfaction over the next decade.

While we won’t argue genetic fault in divorce papers any time soon, it is interesting how the study of the human genome shows how our DNA plays a greater role in our actions than we ever thought. News about the UC Berkley study is here.

Are Rising Divorce Rates a Good Thing?

On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Divorce on Thursday, September 19, 2013.

With low tax rates, no income tax, and a pleasant climate (outside of hurricane season) Florida attracts a lot of people who settle here, and sometimes they divorce. Florida ranks roughly 8th in divorce rates in the United States.

We view divorce in Florida as a regrettable part of life. But internationally, divorce is starting to be viewed as a positive sign of social change. As Business Week reports:

A little-noticed trend is spreading in many of the world’s emerging economies: More and more people are getting divorced.

Outside of North America, Europe, and Oceania, two-thirds of the countries for which the United Nations has data saw rising divorce rates from 2007 to 2011.

According to the UN:

  • Mexico: the divorce rate has steadily climbed since the late 1970s.
  • Brazil, divorce was against the law 30 years ago, the divorce rate is now about 1.4 per thousand people.
  • China, Thailand, Iran, and South Korea, have seen more than a roughly fivefold increase in divorces over the past few decades.

What are the Reasons? As Business Week further reports:

The rise of divorce internationally is both an indicator of and force behind social changes that have improved prospects for women, reduced gender inequality, and fueled development. All of which suggests that the more people are able to get out of bad marriages, the better off their societies are likely to be.

So, the more common divorce becomes in a society, the less of a stigma it’s likely to be. Conversely, divorce causes greater unhappiness in societies where it’s rare. The period before a divorce people report low life satisfaction, but the period after it is comparatively satisfactory, especially for women.

In the developing world, increased divorce rates have mirrored improvement in measures of gender equality.

In Brazil, the Rede Globo channel broadcasts a slate of soap operas that feature powerful female leads who work, make investment decisions, and commit infidelities as frequently as their male counterparts. During the 1970s and ’80s, as Rede Globo’s reach expanded across the country, the divorce rate went up while fertility rates went down, according to researchers from the Inter-American Development Bank.

Strange Reasons to Divorce and the No Fault Concept

On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Divorce on Monday, September 16, 2013.

The official term for divorce in Florida is “dissolution of marriage”, and you don’t need fault as a grounds for divorce. Florida abolished fault as a ground for divorce. This means you no longer have to prove a reason for the divorce, like infidelity. Instead, you just need to state under oath that your marriage is “irretrievably broken.”

Despite the concept of no-fault divorce, very often people blame others for their marriage ending. Recently, a Rhode Island man, whose marriage ended, filed a federal lawsuit seeking to silence the bells of the Catholic church next door to him.

John Devaney claims the ringing of the bells at St. Thomas More Catholic church contributed to the failure of his marriage and are disrupting the quality of his life.

In China, one man’s snoring was so disruptive it prompted his wife to file for divorce. In the filing, she claimed that she hasn’t gotten a full night’s sleep since they married. She also mentioned that the man’s heavy snoring made her ill and caused her to lose a significant amount of weight.

In Iran, a man filed to divorce his wife because of her snoring; she admitted to drugging him with sleeping pills at the beginning of their marriage so he wouldn’t notice her snoring habit.

One woman got married at age 30 but told her husband she was only 24. Ten years into their marriage, in November 2007, he found out about the lie–and asked for a divorce.

A pet bird started to say things like “divorce” or “be patient” and the bird’s phrases caused one woman to think her husband was cheating on her and filed for divorce.

In Florida, either spouse can file for the dissolution of marriage. You must prove that a marriage exists, one party has been a Florida resident for six months before filing the petition, and the marriage is irretrievably broken.

However, fault may be considered under certain circumstances in the award of alimony, equitable distribution of marital assets and liabilities, and determination of parental responsibility.

A Few Good Divorce Tips

On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Divorce on Wednesday, September 4, 2013.

You can get divorce advice all over the place. What you may not know is that no two divorces are the same. What happened to your friend, co-worker or manicurist in their divorce is completely different from what you’re going through.

You can also find advice about divorce all over the internet. Some is good, but most of it is bad. When you are in the business of divorce though, you see the same lessons being learned over and over. And, when I see other professionals offering advice that I think is good, I like to give them the credit they deserve.

Nicole Noonan, executive director of divorce finance company BBL Churchill Group, recently appeared on TV, and had some good advice for anyone suffering through a divorce.

Surprisingly, her first tip is to make sure you hire an attorney who is not too aggressive. This is surprising advice because most people think you will be better served by an over-aggressive lawyer. People learn the hard way that’s not true.

“Your attorney not only represents your interests, they also represent your style, she said on “The Couch” Thursday.” So if you hire a pit-bull attorney, it doesn’t mean you get a better settlement necessarily. You can have a long drawn-out legal battle…and it’s not always the right choice.”

She also advised against a take-it-all mentality in court.

“Pick your battles. Just because you’ve been wronged in the marriage doesn’t mean the court is going to look at that,” she said.

Divorce involves big decisions. You are always better served by identifying ahead of time what is most important to you and your children.

That decision involves knowing you and your spouse’s finances, identifying what you and your children’s needs are, and hiring an attorney who will help you identify and meet your needs.

You can watch the video here.

What Can You Learn from Rupert Murdoch’s Divorce?

On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Divorce on Thursday, August 29, 2013.

What interests me about divorce law is that it impacts all parts of society. It affects the rich, the middle class, the poor alike . . . pretty much everyone.

Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp and a billionaire, is going through his own divorce with wife Wendi Deng. No doubt before he married Wendi, Rupert had excellent advice. What can you learn from a billionaire’s experience that could help you through your own divorce, or perhaps save your marriage?

The New York Times recently ran a story and I thought it had some good lessons:

Agreements

The Murdochs not only signed a prenuptial agreement before they got married, but after their marriage they signed two additional postnuptial agreements delineating the separation of assets in the event of a divorce.

Agreements make the separation of assets cleaner. They do more than divide assets though, they can spell out each person’s obligations during the marriage, things like who pays for which expenses.

But if there is only one prenuptial agreement, it could be so old it’s useless. Also, prenups can be challenged. Prenuptial agreements are routinely enforced in Florida, and you are allowed to make a bad deal.

Dividing Assets

Dividing assets between spouses is not as simple as deciding to split it 50-50 – even with agreements. Very often assets have appreciated over the course of several years.

When property appreciates, you need to distinguish between passive and active appreciation. A passive asset could be an investment account which is never traded.

A business, on the other hand, is an active investment, and the percentage a spouse is entitled to may depend on different things.

Even with the most sophisticated couples, such as the Murdochs, unless you clairvoyant, issues will arise that no one considered in earlier agreements, and are prime for negotiation.

Children

The care of any young child is the primary concern of the courts. The Murdochs are rumored to have some custody arrangements and child support for their daughters.

Custody arrangements and child support are rarely part of prenuptial agreements, and are often used by the less-moneyed spouse as leverage in negotiations – a practice sometimes called “linkage”.

Florida has child support guidelines which mandate what the minimum support for children should be. The basic child support payment does not include private school and extracurricular activities, which can be more than the child support.

When it comes to agreeing on what people believe is their rightful share, think of it this way: If you’re 10 percent apart, you’ll settle. If you’re 20 percent, there’s a chance. But if you’re 50 or 75 percent away, you’re going to war.” Knowing this, the Murdochs time and expense in signing agreements will help them avoid trial.

Divorce Costs . . . in 1845

On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Divorce on Friday, August 9, 2013.

Think divorce is expensive, time consuming or difficult for most people? Today it’s a breeze compared to how it used to be. Believe it or not, getting divorced used to be so expensive; it was out of reach for most people.

A clever judge in England in 1845 wrote a sly opinion complaining about how difficult and expensive it was:

Prisoner at the bar, you have been convicted before me of what the law regards as a very grave and serious offence: that of going through the marriage ceremony a second time while your wife was still alive.

You plead in mitigation of your conduct that she was given to dissipation and drunkenness, that she proved herself a curse to your household, and that she had deserted you; but I am not permitted to recognise any such plea.

The law in its wisdom points out a means by which you might rid yourself from further association with a woman who had dishonoured you; but you did not think proper to adopt it.

You ought first to have brought an action against your wife’s seducer if you could have discovered him; that might have cost you money, and you say you are a poor working man, but that is not the fault of the law.

You would then be obliged to prove by evidence your wife’s criminality in a Court of Justice, and thus obtain a verdict with damages against the defendant, who was not unlikely to turn out a pauper.

But so jealous is the law of the sanctity of the marriage tie, that in accomplishing all this you would only have fulfilled the lighter portion of your duty.

You must then have gone, with your verdict in your hand, and petitioned the House of Lords for a divorce.

It would cost you perhaps five or six hundred pounds and you do not seem to be worth as many pence. (Editor: about $72,000 today) But it is the boast of the law that it is impartial, and makes no difference between the rich and the poor.

You have thus willfully rejected the boon the legislature offered you, and it is my duty to pass upon you such sentence as I think your offence deserves, and that sentence is, that you be imprisoned for one day; and in as much as the present assizes are three days old

We may complain about the costs of no-fault divorce, but things are much improved now. Credit goes to the Volokh Conspiracy for the post.

Is the Marriage Rate Increasing or Decreasing?

On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Divorce on Tuesday, July 9, 2013.

You can’t have a divorce without marriage. So it is interesting to see what the marriage trends are. In the United States, the marriage rate is at a low point.

Worse, the number of marriages across the U.S. fell more than 5% during the recession. But a new analysis projects that pent-up demand and the large population of marriage-eligible couples, means the marriage rate may start to increase. The article can be read in USA Today.

Projections from the private company Demographic Intelligence of Charlottesville, Va., says a 4% increase in the number of weddings since 2009 is predicted depending on the economic recovery. They also expect this trend to continue through 2015.

A closer inspection of the marriage rate reveals that it differs among socio-economic groups and by education levels. Rates decline among those with a high school education or less, younger Americans, and the less affluent. However, among women ages 25-34, the college-educated and the affluent, the numbers are increasing.

“Declines in weddings are likely to set in towards the end of the decade, even though the number of young adults is increasing, because of the nation’s ongoing retreat from marriage,” the report notes.

From 2007 to 2009, the number of marriages each year fell The new forecast predicts the marriage rate to remain at the record low of 6.8 marriages per 1,000 population for 2013 (where it’s been since 2009).

This projected increase in weddings may mark a turnaround, but it’s not going to boost the low marriage rate, experts say.

New Florida Evidence Rule 702 Can Impact Your Divorce

On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Divorce on Wednesday, July 3, 2013.

Divorce law in Florida is becoming so complicated, that the use of expert witnesses – like accountants, vocational experts, and psychologists – are becoming very common to determine values, need and ability and parenting issues.

The Florida rule for experts is Rule 702 of the evidence code, and it was just amended. In fact, it is so new that it just became effective on July 1st. There are some interesting things about the new rule.

1. The amendment was made by the Florida Legislature, not the Florida Supreme Court. That’s unusual because rule making authority is the court’s job.

2. The way the the Rule came into being by the Legislature could create a constitutional challenge to the rule down the road.

3. The new rule forces Florida courts to abandon the Frye test for admitting expert testimony, a test we’ve used for around 70 years.

4. The new rule requires Floirda courts to apply the standard developed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Daubert; something the Florida Supreme Court has said it doesn’t want to do.

5. The Frye test was a very lenient test, especially as applied here in Florida. In Florida, Frye allowed in all expert testimony – even some “junk science” opinions – as long as they were generally accepted standards.

6. The new (for Florida) Daubert rules, require judges to act as gatekeepers, and focus on an experts qualifications, the relevance of the testimony and the reliability of the testimony using a multi-factor test.

7. The rule change will require state judges to become familiar with the new evidentiary test, and even brush up on the scientific method.

8. For family lawyers, the Daubert test offers an opportunity to challenge the qualifications, relevancy and reliability of experts which we never had before.

9. The change will also force expert witnesses to stay on top of their professional literature, and be able to defend their choice of methods, tests or evaluation techniques.

The Florida Legislature seems to be on a mission to re-write family law, trying to pass alimony reform, change equitable distribution, and modify Rules 702 and 704. Big changes have occurred, and clients need to discuss with their family attorneys about any new issues and strategies to consider.

Unseen Problems with DOMA

On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Divorce on Monday, June 24, 2013.

Because many people are familiar with divorce, either through their own divorce or living through their friend’s divorce, it can be a prism to understanding legal controversies.

I was involved in a case on behalf of a client who was in a 9 year relationship, and this client has a 2 year old. There is a house and a rental apartment, and two 401(k)s to distribute. We are also going back and forth about the amount of child support and alimony to be paid.

In other words, this is a typical divorce. Except for one thing, both of the parties are women. Under the federal Defense of Marriage Act (otherwise known as DOMA), the law we apply in every other divorce doesn’t apply to this relationship. This form of discrimination can lead to unfairness which directly impacts your bank account.

In a typical divorce, one party might have to pay alimony to the other. Under our tax code, alimony when paid pursuant to a court order or written agreement, is tax deductible to the paying spouse, and is included in the taxable income of the payee spouse.

The tax-deductibility of alimony allows divorce lawyers to use the tax deductibility in ways to maximize the dollars available to everyone. Sometimes the payor spouse may actually want to pay more alimony because the overall payment for both child support and alimony could be less after you tax effect the payment.

However, under DOMA any support payment paid cannot be construed as alimony in Florida, and would not be deductible under our Federal tax code, because the couple is homosexual. Under DOMA certain tax advantages available to every heterosexual married couple are not available to homosexual couples by law.

Many people have different views about same-sex marriage, but there are a few far-reaching effects of DOMA that many people may not be aware of. Sometimes, putting it into perspective of a divorce, which many people are familiar with, can give people a better understanding why people oppose DOMA.

In the next week or so, the U.S. Supreme Court will announce its decision in the federal DOMA case. The name of the case is United States v. Windsor, and can be followed here.

Reducing the Stress of Your Divorce

On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Divorce on Monday, June 17, 2013.

Divorce is not a sprint, it’s an endurance race. Sadly, divorce is also one of the most painful you may have to go through. Even couples who are amicably divorcing suffer through major divorce-related stressors.

Believe it or not, dealing with stress can help be the difference between resolving the divorce successfully or not. I’ve seen clients do some of the most harmful and self-destructive things to themselves and their case solely because of the stress of the divorce.

So, how do you overcome stress? Recently, Huffington Post asked some of their readers on Facebook how to keep calm during the most burdensome days of their divorces.

“From repeating simple mantras to finding solace in their favorite Pandora station, click through the slides below for some of our favorite answers, then head to the comments and tell us what helped you de-stress during your divorce.”

Some of the best suggestions I read:

  • Exercise: “A 10-15 mile bicycle ride (and boy was I fit!)”
  • Being Proactive: “planning my future”
  • Music: “Pandora.com and a long walk”
  • Self-improvement: “Massage therapy school”
  • Entertainment: “classic movies”
  • Friendship: “My best friend”
  • Family: “My daughter”
  • Staying Active: Painting

There are many stressful situations in life. Finding your stress relief can help you deal with stress ad hopefully resolve problems. Sometimes it may not seem hard, but it isn’t too difficult to find pleasure in this world. Even simple things such as chatting with a friend, watching a good movie, or going for a long walk or run can ease the burden of splitting up.