Tag: Cheating and Divorce

Gray Divorce

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

It used to be unthinkable for couples to divorce after 50. Things have changed dramatically. These days more people over 50 are divorced than widowed. This age group now accounts for one-quarter of all divorces. This is a post about divorcing after age 50, otherwise known as the gray divorce.

Growing Apart: The New Trend

According to some reports, these so-called “gray divorces” have doubled since 1990 and, with half our married population being 50 or older, the rate is expected to grow, especially as more and more baby boomers become empty nesters.

Divorce is hard and complicated no matter what your age is. But divorce might be something to approach carefully if you’re over the age of 50. Here’s why.

Florida Gray Divorce

When couples choose to divorce in their 30s or 40s, they still have time to recover financially, because adults at that age have several years, if not decades, left in their careers.

But when divorce occurs when a couple is in their 50s or later, careers may either be coming to a close or are completed, and spouses are often living on fixed incomes provided through Social Security or retirement benefits.

I’ve written about this subject before. Here are some things to consider:

  • Valuing the Marital Estate – By the time a couple enters the golden years, they may have gold to divide, including businesses, retirement funds, and vacation homes. Valuing these assets can be difficult. The value of a business may not be apparent from balance sheets, and the sale or transfer of assets may have tax consequences. As a result, a financial advisor may be an important component in the divorce.
  • Medical Care – Health insurance is often tied to the employment of one spouse. With aging comes diminishing health, and declining cognitive ability. Courts may need to intervene if one party has dwindling capacity to handle their own affairs.
  • Long-Term Arrangements – Legal arrangements, such as wills and trusts, need to be reviewed to make sure they reflect post-divorce wishes. The same is true for long-term care, such as medical directives, living wills and trusts.
  • Retirement Plans – After 20 years of marriage, retirement plans can be substantial . . . and complex. Retirement plans vary in kind, and they all have different restrictions, tax consequences, distribution and vesting rules.
  • Lifestyle adjustment – Younger couples have time to re-accumulate wealth after divorce, but in Gray Divorces, the spouses have less time to re-establish themselves financially. One or both may be close to or in retirement, and face living on half of what they earmarked for retirement.

Why is it happening?

There are many explanations for the gray divorce phenomenon. Often, couples aren’t on the same timeline emotionally when it comes to divorcing, and that can make a gray divorce particularly painful.

People are surprised to be dealing with a spouse who wants out after many years of marriage. The “leavee” can’t imagine growing old alone. The “leaver”, may feel guilty for ending the marriage.

Two-thirds of gray divorces are initiated by women. Having put their needs aside to raise a family, and tired of a spouse who ignores their pleas for change, these women dread the years ahead in a “dead” marriage.

Once the kids are gone, these women choose to end the marriage, opting for a new, more rewarding life and relationships.

The Tweet on Gray Marriage is here.

 

Avoid the American Hustle

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

As if divorce wasn’t bad enough, the FBI warns the most common targets of dating scams are divorced women over 40. Women are courted online, and after weeks of intimacy, money is missing. This post contains a few post-divorce tips to protect yourself

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

According to an Atlantic magazine article, scams are abundant, and Derek Alldred seems to have scammed at least a dozen women out of about $1 million since 2010.

He used different names and occupations, but the identities he took on always had an element of financial prestige or manly valor: decorated veteran, surgeon, air marshal, investment banker.

Con artists have long known that a uniform bolsters an illusion, and Derek was fond of dressing up in scrubs and military fatigues. He tended to look for women in their 40s or 50s, preferably divorced, preferably with a couple of kids and a dog or two.

The age of the internet, with its infinitude of strangers and swiftly evolving social mores, has also been good for con men. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, which tracks internet-facilitated criminal activity, received nearly 300,000 complaints in 2016.

Of those scams, more than 14,500 were for relationship fraud, a number that has more than doubled since 2011.

Divorce Tips

I’ve written about practical tips after your divorce before. Consider that once the lawyers, are gone, who is there to guide you on the many questions? There are some immediate steps to take to ensure your hard-fought interests are protected – and your financial documents reflect your new marital status.

Once your divorce is final – meaning a final judgment is entered – you should review and revise, if necessary, the following legal and estate planning documents:

  • Trusts
  • Powers of Attorney (property, healthcare, HIPAA, etc.)
  • Will
  • Life insurance policies
  • Retirement accounts

What can happen if you don’t?

One example is common. If your ex-spouse remains the beneficiary of your life insurance policy and you pass away, the proceeds will go to your ex-spouse instead your children.

The opposite can also be true. In Florida, the plain language of the documents controls. To the extent your or your former spouse claimed a right to remain as the beneficiary under a life insurance policy – as a condition of the dissolution of marriage – your rights can be waived.

The Sting

The FBI warns that in many scams, women are courted online by men who claim to be deployed in Afghanistan or tending an offshore oil rig in Qatar. After weeks or months of intimate emails, texts, and phone calls, the putative boyfriend will urgently need money to replace a broken laptop or buy a plane ticket home.

According to the Justice Department, only 15% of fraud victims report the crimes to law enforcement, largely due to shame, guilt, embarrassment, and disbelief:

You feel really crappy about yourself,” Missi told me, then slipped into a tone that sounded like the mean voice that lives inside her head: “I’m a stupid woman; I’m a dumb, dumb, dumbass.

One excellent way to dispel yourself of any con-man fantasies, however, is to spend some time with the people they’ve hurt. Their victims are negotiating ruined credit scores and calls from collection agencies.

Several were so flattened by the experience, they’ve had old medical problems flare up or have struggled to go back to work.

The Atlantic magazine article is here.

 

The Oscar Curse: Divorce

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

The Post about the world being unfair to women is no Phantom Thread. Even when women succeed, they face challenges men don’t – and may want to Get Out. Winning the Oscar for Best Actress, for example, is a major accomplishment, but can also be the Darkest Hour if winning the Oscar means divorce.

The Shape of Divorce

In recent years, anecdotal evidence suggesting that winning an Academy Award — the “Oscar” — for Best Actress puts a woman’s marriage at risk for divorce.

The phenomenon has prompted the media to speculate about the existence of an “Oscar curse” – that an actress’ husband will leave her once she’s won an Academy Award.

Is there any scientific evidence for the Oscar Curse?

After looking at the 751 nominees in the best actor and actress categories of the Academy Awards from 1936 through 2010, researchers concluded that Best Actress winners have a 63% chance of their marriages ending sooner than non-winners.

However, the Best Actor winners do not experience any increase in the risk of divorce after an Oscar. Is there any truth to this Oscar Curse?

According to a study reported in an article in the New York Times, the old social norms for marriages were that a husband’s income and job status was higher than his wife’s.

New studies are showing that men may even be avoiding women whose intelligence and ambition exceeds their own.

Studies are also showing that violating the old social norm about marriage can cause strains in a marriage. The result is that a wife’s high income has been linked to an increased risk of divorce at all levels of the husband’s income, but especially when the wife’s income exceeds her husband’s.

A Marriage’s Dunkirk

I’ve written about the causes of divorce before. There are many reasons clients file for divorce. The top reasons I hear repeatedly include: difficult in-laws, financial problems, constant separation due to travel, and bad communication habits.

I recently read a reason I hadn’t come across before: a church caused it! A Florida husband sued his church for encouraging his wife to leave him, even helping her move out of their marital home after 28 years of marriage.

“The defendant’s pastor made multiple visits to Plaintiff and his wife’s residence to play Wii games with them not at the invitation of the Plaintiff”

The husband says his wife paid 60 percent of the household bills, and that he has struggled financially since she left him. He is suing the church for $180,000, in addition to $10 million in punitive damages.

Not exactly the Oscar Curse, but the Florida case is another example of old marital norms putting a strain on a long-term marriage.

Oscar Party?

One study in the New York Times article found that Oscar wins are associated with a greater risk of divorce for Best Actresses. Interestingly, the correlation with divorce did not extend to winners for Best Actors.

The study shows an asymmetric effect of winning an Oscar for best actress but not best actor. What does that outcome prove though?

Some say it means women face an increased risk of divorce which may be due to their husbands’ discomfort with their wives’ fame and success.

There’s another possibility. Others argue that after a major success in fame and money, a wife may grow dissatisfied with her marriage. Maybe the wife has outgrown the marriage, or has the confidence and to move away from a bad relationship.

The New York Times article is here.

 

Spouses and Spies

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

Can you spy on your spouse? GPS trackers, spyware, key logger programs, and hidden cameras are changing divorce, making it easy to become an amateur spy, and making it even easier to land you in trouble.

The CIA Home Kit

As NPR reports, couples are turning to the latest technology to spy on each other as their marriages fall apart.

New digital spy tools are cheap and easy to use — from something as simple as the Find My iPhone feature to spyware that can be installed in a spouse’s computer, phone, or even a car.

Welcome to divorce in the 21st century — how much privacy you’re entitled to is an open question. Cases involving domestic spying are not unique, and are becoming more common as the technology gets cheaper and easier to use.

Digital spying is changing divorce as we know it.

The tools are abundant. Clients use it in an effort to stay in control after a separation or to gather evidence of extra-marital affairs or drug abuse. But the laws can be murky.

Cyberstalking

There may be problems with becoming your own James Bond type spy. I’ve written about domestic violence issues before. Many people are unfamiliar with cyberstalking statutes in Florida, and that cyberstalking is grounds for an injunction.

In Florida, cyberstalking is also a crime, and it means conduct to communicate, or to cause to be communicated, words, images, or language by or through the use of electronic mail or electronic communication, directed at a specific person, causing substantial emotional distress to that person and serving no legitimate purpose.

Cyberstalking can involve communications over the Internet like: email, instant messages, text messaging, blogging, website or online forum postings, and social media posts.

Florida also has an aggravated cyberstalking law for protection against people who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows, harasses, or cyberstalks another person and makes a credible threat to that person commits the offense of aggravated stalking.

Spyware

Partners in breakups sometimes install spyware on computers or phones in order to spy on their soon-to-be ex. Once installed, people can see every incoming and outgoing message from the target’s phone, Web searches, even keystrokes and passwords.

The legality of tracking technology is messy. For example, parents can put spyware on a child’s phone or a home computer. But, putting it on a spouse’s or a partner’s computer or iPhone without consent is generally illegal.

Florida has a strong Constitutional right to privacy. Florida enacted laws to ensure each party to a conversation has an expectation of privacy from interception by another party to the conversation.

Be careful about becoming your own spy. Florida has made it illegal for a person to intercept wire, oral, or electronic communications. And, trial courts can and do exclude from evidence electronic communications illegally intercepted.

Back at Langley

As the NPR article reports, the messages from an ex-husband to his ex-wife can be unsettling:

“I know all of the ways you’ve described me to your friend.”

Unfortunately, the ex-wife went to an Apple store, but didn’t look for the spyware; instead they got her a brand-new phone. That meant that the evidence went along with the phone.

In 2012, the last time the Justice Department attempted to quantify stalking, it estimated that 1.5% of all adults in the U.S. were victims.

That figure more than doubled — to 3.3 percent — for people who were divorced or separated.

The NPR article is here.

 

Occupation and Divorce

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

If you marry a flight attendant are you more likely to divorce than if you marry a software developer? A recent report on occupation and divorce asks that very question.

The Study analyzed data from the 2015 American Community Survey, and, based on the number of people in a particular occupation who had married at least once, calculated the percentage of people who divorced.

Librarians have about a 28% chance of divorce, while phlebotomist have approximately a 46% chance.

Another un-surprising part of the study, people with less income are less likely to be married in the first place, and more likely to be divorced.

About 25% of “poor” adults aged 18 to 55 are currently married, compared to 39% of working-class adults, and 56% of middle- and upper-class adults (above the 50th percentile).

What the report found is that there is a divorce rate of at least 48.8% in the occupations “most likely” to experience divorce; the divorce rate is under 22% in the 10 occupations “least likely” to be subject to divorce.

Divorce in Florida

I’ve written about the correlation between occupation and divorce before. The numbers don’t paint the whole picture. If a person divorced and remarried by the time of the Census, they would be counted as married.

There are various reasons cited in the study for the fault behind the divorce rate. It could be that spouses in some jobs are just quicker to jump into the next marriage than others.

The data on occupation and divorce doesn’t reveal whether it’s the nature of the jobs that lead to divorce, or if people prone to unstable relationships are drawn to certain professions.

Florida abolished fault as grounds for filing a divorce. The only ground you need to file for divorce in Florida is to prove your marriage is “irretrievably broken.”

But is no fault divorce the reason the for a higher divorce rate among bartenders than optometrists? Some people think so, and want to return to the old “fault” system to promote families.

Occupation as Predictor of Divorce

So, what are the occupations with the highest divorce rates:

  • Telemarketers
  • Bartenders
  • Flight Attendants

The occupations among the lowest divorce rates:

  • Actuaries
  • Physical Therapists
  • Chemical Engineers

Keep in mind that correlation is not causation. No one knows which bartenders are likely to stay married or divorced, nor give advice on choosing a profession based on the divorce rate.

Nor can the report tell you about those who choose to become bartenders may be less likely to have stable marriages for reasons other than their choice of profession.

Rolling machine operators seem to be in the same category today more because of their declining employment prospects than because of increased temptations to stray.

One question that does not command enough attention is why the correlation between relationship stability and employment prospects is so strong.

Commitment to an unstable partner — someone who runs up the credit card bills, incurs large health care expenses, or needs to be bailed out of jail — can diminish family savings, a source of peril.

The report is available here.

 

Women Cheating and Divorce

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

Since 1990, the rate of married women who report they’ve been cheating on their spouses has increased by 40%, while the rate among men has remained the same. What is the impact of adultery and divorce?

The CNN Report

According to an article in CNN, more women than ever are cheating. What exactly is happening inside marriages to account for the closing gap between men and women and adultery?

According to the article, from a distance, the couples seemed happy enough, or at least content to be doing the family thing. They had cute kids, mortgages, busy social lives, matching sets of dishes.

On the surface, their husbands were reasonable, the marriages modern and equitable. If these women friends were angry unfulfilled or resentful, they didn’t show it.

Then one day, one of them confided in me she’d been having two overlapping affairs over the course of five years.

Almost before I’d finished processing this, another friend told me she was 100 percent faithful to her husband, except when she was out of town for work each month.

Often, they loved their husbands, but felt in some fundamental way that their needs (sexual, emotional, psychological) were not being met inside the marriage. Some even wondered if their husbands knew about their infidelity, choosing to look away.

Adultery and Divorce

I’ve written about the cheating before. Adultery can be the cause of a divorce, but can it impact the outcome? Since Florida became a no-fault state, the fact that, “she (or he) is sleeping with a co-worker” doesn’t hold much traction in court any more.

Anyone can file for divorce without proving any reason for it other than the marriage is “irretrievably broken.” Or is it? When is adultery relevant in divorce?

However, there is still a statutory basis for infidelity to be an issue in your divorce proceedings, but not in the way most people think. Here’s a quick review of when adultery can potentially creep into your divorce:

Parenting Plans/Custody

Chapter 61 discusses the “the moral fitness of the parents” as one of the factors the court considers in determining the best interests of a child.

So, if one parent can prove that the other parent’s adultery had, or is reasonably likely to have, an adverse impact on the child, the judge can consider adultery in evaluating what’s in the best interest of the child.

Equitable Distribution

Adultery may impact the division of property. Florida is an equitable distribution state, and it is presumed that property should be evenly divided.

This presumption may be overcome by proof that one spouse intentionally wasted marital assets.

This waste is sometimes known as dissipation. Paying for expensive jewelry, foreign trips, rent, car payments, and dinners for girlfriends and boyfriends is considered wasting marital assets. The court has the power to reduce an adulterer’s equitable distribution to credit the marital estate for waste.

Alimony

Florida law specifically provides that a court may consider the adultery of either spouse in determining the amount of alimony, if any, to be awarded.

However, courts have struggled to reconcile the “fault” of adultery with the concept of “no fault” divorce. The result is a mix of opinions depending on the judges.

Back to the Study

These women from the CNN article were turning to adultery not as a way to explode a marriage, but as a way to stay in it. The women seemed in control of their own transgressions. There seemed to be something new about this approach.

Twenty or thirty years ago they might have opted for divorce, because surely there was another man out there who could do better in this role, who could satisfy them completely.

But a lot of these women are children of divorce. They lived through the difficulties divorce can create.

The CNN article is here.

 

Suing Your Spouse’s Lover

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

Historically, you could sue your cheating spouse’s lover. Although cheating comes up in divorce, suing your spouse’s lover is a different cause of action. In North Carolina, a man is now arguing that these laws violate his Constitutional right to engage in intimate sexual activity, speech, and expression with other consenting adults.

Alienation of Affection

American law used to recognize the tort of “alienation of affection” — causing a woman to lose affection for her husband and often to leave the husband because of the cheating lover.

The law also recognized the tort of “criminal conversation,” which basically consists of suing someone having adulterous sex with your spouse.

Many people think heart balm laws are dead. But a few states — Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico, Florida, South Dakota and Utah — still recognize them.

In North Carolina, Marc and Amber were a married couple. Amber is a nurse. The Defendant, Derek, is a medical doctor at the hospital where Amber works.

In early 2015, Derek and Amber began a sexual relationship. Marc discovered Amber was cheating on him with Derek, and sued Derek for alienation of affection and criminal conversation.

Derek tried to dismiss Marc’s lawsuit on the ground that common law causes of action for alienation of affection and criminal conversation are facially unconstitutional.

The trial court agreed with Derek, and granted his motion to dismiss. Marc appealed the decision.

Florida’s Heart Balm Statutes

I’ve written about heart balm statutes before, especially as they relate to engagement rings.

These common law torts are commonly referred to as “heart balm” statutes, because they permitted the former lovers’ heartaches to heal without recourse to the courts.

The purpose of the heart balm statutes was originally to prevent the perpetration of fraud by litigants who would use the threat of a breach of promise of marriage to force defendants to make lucrative settlements in order to avoid embarrassing publicity.

The Florida heart balm statute, originally passed in 1941, abolishes common law actions for alienation of affections, criminal conversation, seduction, and breach of contract to marry.

The Florida Legislature found that those who break engagements may be “free of any wrongdoing … [and may be] merely the victims of circumstances.”

The preamble declares it to be Florida public policy that the best interests of the people of the state are served by the abolition of the breach of promise action. Now, the rights of action existing to recover money for the alienation of affections, criminal conversation, seduction or breach of contract to marry are abolished.

Back to North Carolina

Surprisingly, the appellate court reversed the trial court, and found that the statute was not unconstitutional:

Our holding is neither an endorsement nor a critique of these “heart balm” torts. Whether this Court believes these torts are good or bad policy is irrelevant; we cannot hold a law facially unconstitutional because it is bad policy.

These common law torts are facially valid. They further the State’s desire to protect a married couple’s vow of fidelity and to prevent the personal injury and societal harms that result when that vow is broken.

Simply put, these torts are intended to remedy harms that result when marriage vows are broken, not to punish intimate extra-marital speech or expression because of its content.

The appellate court opinion is here.

 

Divorce and Adultery

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

South Korea’s Constitutional Court revoked a law that imposed a penalty of up to two years in prison for adultery — but adulterous spouses are not allowed to divorce their spouses. What is the role of divorce and adultery in Florida.

South Korea’s New Law

The South Korean case concerned a 68-year-old plaintiff who left his wife and three children to move in with another woman 15 years ago. He was unable to arrange a divorce with his separated wife, so he sued to get one in 2011.

South Korean law states that the person responsible for a marriage’s failure isn’t permitted to file for divorce, though divorce settlements can be arranged with cooperating spouses.

Lower court decisions upheld this statute and dismissed Baek’s suit because he had conducted an extramarital affair, but he and his lawyers challenged its legitimacy.

South Korea is a conservative country that is still ironing out the legal parameters for marital infidels. The Constitutional Court’s decision to decriminalize adultery was based on the idea that a person’s right to pursue happiness includes the freedom to conduct a private sex life.

The sharp division of the court’s decision in the case, with seven justices ruling against six, suggests that the argument for freedom of choice in personal matters held considerable sway, but it was defeated out of concern for spousal and child welfare.

Divorce and Adultery

Adultery can be the cause of a divorce, but can it impact the outcome? This is a subject I’ve written about previously. After Florida became a no-fault state, the fact that, “he (or she) is sleeping with a co-worker” doesn’t hold much traction in court any more.

Anyone can file for divorce without proving any reason for it other than the marriage is “irretrievably broken.” Or is it? When is adultery relevant in divorce?

In Florida divorce and adultery mix. There is still a statutory basis for infidelity to be an issue in your divorce proceedings, but not in the way most people think. Here’s a quick review of when adultery can potentially creep into your divorce:

Parenting Plans/Custody

Chapter 61 of the Florida Statutes mentions that the “the moral fitness of the parents” as one of the factors the court considers in determining the best interests of a child.

So, if one parent can prove that the other parent’s adultery had, or is reasonably likely to have, an adverse impact on the child, the judge can consider adultery in evaluating what’s in the best interest of the child.

Equitable Distribution

Adultery may impact the division of property under Florida Statutes. Florida is an equitable distribution state, and it is presumed that property should be evenly divided.

This presumption may be overcome by proof that one spouse intentionally wasted marital assets. This waste is sometimes known as dissipation. Paying for expensive jewelry, foreign trips, rent, car payments, and dinners for girlfriends and boyfriends is considered wasting marital assets.

In Florida, the court has the power to reduce an adulterer’s equitable distribution to credit the marital estate for waste.

Alimony

Florida law specifically provides that a court may consider the adultery of either spouse in determining the amount of alimony, if any, to be awarded.

However, courts have struggled to reconcile the “fault” of adultery with the concept of “no fault” divorce. The result is a mix of opinions depending on the judges.

Back to South Korea

South Korea still has no law that provides for alimony or child support in divorce; divorce settlements generally provide for this assistance, if they are agreed upon.

If the court were to allow philandering husbands to divorce their wives outright, the court explained, this would potentially force many wronged women into financial difficulty.

Despite the election of Park Geun-hye as the country’s first female president two years ago, gender inequality persists in South Korea.

Data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development shows that South Korea has the highest gender wage gap among the organization’s 33-member states, with a median wage disparity of 36.6% in favor of men.

South Korea criminalized adultery in 1953 to protect women at a time when they were generally reliant on their husbands financially and confined to domestic duties.

Divorce could leave them stigmatized and vulnerable, facing considerable difficulty in finding employment or a new spouse.

The adultery law was intended as a safeguard that granted women a measure of legal power over their husbands.

The article is here.

 

Texting and Divorce

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

A wife in Taiwan was recently granted a divorce from her husband, who she accused of ignoring her — and her unanswered text messages were a key piece of evidence. Ghosting, as it is called, is a way of ending a relationship by ignoring communications.

Ghosting

In the Taiwan case, the wife sent her husband messages via the Line app for six months. The messages were marked as read — meaning he presumably opened and read them — and yet the wife rarely, if ever, got a reply.

At one point, the wife sent her husband messages saying she was in the emergency room and demanding to know why he wasn’t answering her messages.

The judge in the Taiwan family court saw the unanswered messages (and the terse, unemotional replies the wife did occasionally get) and concluded the wife had enough grounds for a divorce:

“The defendant did not inquire about the plaintiff, and the information sent by the plaintiff was read but not replied to. The couple’s marriage is beyond repair.”

Divorce

Florida abolished fault as grounds for filing a divorce. I’ve written about no-fault divorces in Florida before. The only ground you need to file for divorce in Florida is to prove your marriage is “irretrievably broken.” But is no fault divorce the reason the United States has a high divorce rate? Many people think so, and want to return to the old “fault” system to promote families.

The divorce process is really no mystery. If you or your spouse has decided to file for divorce in Florida, at least one of you must be a resident of the state or a member of an armed force stationed in the state. Proving fault, of course, is not required.

Divorce is called a “dissolution of marriage” in Florida, and begin when you or your spouse files a “Petition for Dissolution of Marriage” with the circuit court. Any assets and debts amassed during the marriage, referred to as “marital assets,” will be divided “equitably”. Assets you had before marriage may be considered “non-marital assets”. Judges will divide marital assets equally, unless there is a basis for unequal distribution, and your non-marital property is set aside.

Alimony is an extension of the obligation for spouses to support each other financially during the marriage. In Florida, a court can order alimony, and will look at statutory factors such as the standard of living during the marriage; the length of the marriage; and the age and physical condition of each spouse.

If children are involved, the court will also make a decision based on what is in the “best interests” of the child. Unless there is a reason that it would be detrimental to your child’s upbringing, the court will grant shared responsibility.

Additionally, the court will calculate your child support based on our statutory guidelines that attorneys use to properly calculate the child support needed for a child and how much each parent has to pay.

Answer Your Texts

The dissolution of marriage procedure, once it is completed will change your taxes. Property transfers, the taxability of alimony payments, allocating the federal; dependency deduction for children may all have tax impacts. Working with an accountant and lawyer will help you avoid costly mistakes.

Answering your spouse’s texts might also help.

The NextWeb article is here.

 

Divorce Extortion

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

Producer and director, Stephen Belafonte, and Spice Girl Melanie Brown have a daughter together. Belafonte just gave the LAPD an audiotape of someone trying to extort him for a million dollars while he goes through his divorce.Recorded on March 20, the phone call features a woman who tells Belafonte, ‘I’m gonna take you down’ unless she’s paid $500,000 within 48 hours, a fee that’s later upped to $1m.

The woman in the recording says:

‘I want a million bucks in my account in two days otherwise you’re f***ed, it’s your choice.

 

‘I swear to God I’m gonna talk so much sh*t about you, you have no idea, it’s your choice. And it’s gonna be really really bad.’

During the call, it is also alleged ‘people’ representing Belafonte’s estranged wife Mel B asked Contreras to take the ‘ugly’ story to the media.

Extortion

In divorce, it is easy to cross the line from harmless threats to the crime of extortion. The fact remains that in Florida, it is a second-degree felony to threaten to expose another for the commission of any crime or offense for one’s own pecuniary advantage.

File this under how not to act in divorce, a subject that I’ve written about many times before: from not wearing Nazi uniforms into court, to not getting in fights with the judge.

There can be little doubt that if Belafonte’s allegations are true, and that a spouse was recorded threatening to disclose confidential information in exchange for money, Florida’s extortion statute could cover the kind of situation facing him.

Divorce & Extortion

Very often in divorce, it is very easy for a spouse to cross the line between idle threats and criminal extortion. How? There are several examples. One which comes to mind, is taxes. It is typical for spouses to threaten to report the other spouse to the IRS for underpayment of taxes unless money is paid to keep the silence.

Another very common extortion technique – which is especially true these days – is to issue a threat to report a spouse to immigration officials. One spouse will to use the threat of deportation unless money is paid in a settlement. This has become more common these days as the country cracks down on illegal immigration.

Extortion also happens when signing settlement agreements. For example, spouses sometimes threaten that if the other spouse does not sign the settlement agreement, the other spouse will tell the children about infidelity, or something else to ruin what reputation the spouse has.

Belafonte’s Case

Contreras – who has a 12-year-old daughter Giselle with Belafonte – has denied the recording is authentic.

‘This audio is clearly not me. Stephen is falsifying stories because I have told the press the truth,’ Contreras told TMZ.

An LAPD investigative report obtained by DailyMail.com echoes TMZ, stating Contreras called Belafonte at 10pm on March 20, which is also the day Mel B filed for divorce.

In the police report filed on Thursday, the officer completing the document wrote: ‘Susp called victim and demanded $1million deposited into her account or she would disclose personal information to media.’

The alleged audio tape is the latest revelation in Mel B and Stephen Belafonte’s messy divorce proceedings, which has played out in the tabloid media since the former Spice Girl filed for divorce on March 20, citing ‘irreconcilable differences.

The Metro article is available here.