Divorce and Your Real Estate

Disposition of the family home frequently causes problems in a divorce. Custodial parents may want to hang onto the home for the sake of the children. Perhaps one or both spouses can't afford to purchase a similar replacement home. Much depends upon the amount of equity in the home and the ability of each spouse to keep it.


The following is a portion of a chapter from Divorce Strategy that contains information to get you started on the road of evaluating your divorce decision about your real estate.


For the full article click the attached link: Divorce and Your Real Estate.

Is adultery ever justified

The following article is from Psychology Today:

In my first post on adultery, I avoided discussing the ethics of cheating. Well, I tried to, at least; it's hard to discuss a topic like that without lapsing into the morality of it, so here goes. (For those of you that read my post on the ethics of procrastination, some of the discussion of moral philosophy will sound familiar.)

At the risk of spoiling the ending, let me reassure you that we'll find that adultery is wrong—most of the time. (Maybe that's not such a reassurance.) It's almost never justified just because you really really want to get together with that hottie in your office or at your club (sorry). But it might be justified in extraordinary circumstances, which to some people, unfortunately, might be rather ordinary.

For the full article click the link: Adultery ever justified

The power of secrets and the effects on family

There's no question that family secrets are destructive. But it matters mightily when and how you reveal them. Resist the temptation to handle them at transition times such as weddings, graduations, and new beginnings.

As a family therapist, I'm a professional secret-keeper. I'm often ~the very first person with whom someone risks telling a longheld secret. Several decades of guiding people struggling with secrets have taught me that they have an awesome if paradoxical power to unite people--and to divide them.

From government conspiracies to couples having affairs, secrets permeate every level of society. Secrets have existed throughout time, but the nature of secrets has recently changed in our society. Today's families face special dilemmas about secrecy, privacy, silence, and openness.

We live in a culture whose messages about secrecy are truly confounding. If cultural norms once made shameful secrets out of too many events in human life, we are now struggling with the reverse: the assumption that telling secrets--no matter how, when, or to whom--is morally superior to keeping them and that it is automatically healing. My own experience, however, has shown me that telling secrets in the wrong way or at the wrong time can be remarkably painful--and destructive.


For the Full Article click the link: Power of Secrets.

After you split up - Who gets the friends?

When a couple breaks up, there may be a division of property and money, and if there are children (or pets), there will be a custody arrangement as well. The final thing to be divvied up will be your mutual friends. This process can be unsettling for everyone involved.

Most of the time, true friends try to remain neutral, and make no mistake, being in this position is tough and it can be burdensome on the friendship. The good ones won't want to take sides, and they can find it hard to listen to the breaking-up friend vent. It's simply uncomfortable to hear that kind of negativity about somebody you like.

For the full article click the link:  Who gets the friends?

"Some people come into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never ever the same." Flavia Weedn

Alongside with the increasing rate of divorce and separation in modern society, we are witnessing a greater tendency to search for ex-lovers. Is such a search able to rekindle past loves and make them continue longer? The answer seems to be positive.


For the full article click the link:

Searching for an Ex-Lover and Your Marriage

Divorce and Your Real Estate

Disposition of the family home frequently causes problems in a divorce. Custodial parents may want to hang onto the home for the sake of the children. Perhaps one or both spouses can't afford to purchase a similar replacement home. Much depends upon the amount of equity in the home and the ability of each spouse to keep it.

The following is a portion of a chapter of my Divorce Strategy that contains information to get you started on the road of evaluating your divorce decision about your real estate.

Some questions that you need to answer are:

* Should you sell the family home?
* Do you keep it until the children are grown?
* Should you keep the home and buyout your soon to be ex-spouse, or vice versa?
* Can either of you afford to keep it after the divorce?

The answers to these questions and others can help you avoid or plan for problems associated with your real estate. Historically, the family home is the asset that most often causes controversy both before and after a divorce.

The principal reason for this problem is the timing of the sale of the home and the division of the net proceeds. Both events frequently occur some time after the divorce. In addition, couples seldom plan as they should for the payment of household maintenance and upkeep during the pendency of the divorce. At first glance the family home appears to be the easiest asset to identify and describe. For purposes of a divorce, the description of your ownership interest in your home and other real estate can be very complicated with pitfalls for the unwary. As with the division of personal property, the rules and laws regarding the division of real estate vary from state to state. Consult with your lawyer about your rights and responsibilities after you have read this section and put together your worksheets.


For the Full article click the link: Divorce and Your Real Estate

Til Debt do Us Part

From undisclosed debt to unstated resentment, couples increasingly lead covert financial lives.

This secrecy creates a new form of infidelity one that's more dangerous than sexual betrayal.

Emilie Pooler's suspicions were aroused one night when she called her Lawrenceville, New Jersey, home and her husband, Paul Rybinski, didn't answer.

"I was with the girls visiting my family, and he was home alone," Emilie recalls. Later, when she did get hold of him and asked where he had been, he didn't lie. "Well," he said, "there's this woman whose husband died..."

Paul and Emilie both test developers at Education Testing Service in Princeton and parents to two young girls, consider themselves prudent by most standards. They agree on most financial decisions. They own a three-bedroom town house, never carry a balance on their credit cards and splurge only on vacations.

But Paul has a comic-book collection—about 9,000 strong, most acquired before they were married—and it's Emilie's pet peeve. "When I found out that they were worth about $34,000, I thought, 'Great, we can sell them and use the money as a down payment on a house.' But I had to come to the realization that the collection isn't mine; it came before the marriage. If he wants to keep it, that's fine—so long as he's not using our money to buy more!"


For the full article click the link: Til Debt do Us Part