With his presidential campaign seemingly going nowhere and rumors of its demise becoming louder every day, it almost seems irrelevant to spend much time discussing Rudy Giuliani's personal life. But Stacy Schneider offered up a nice take this week on Huffington Post. In fact, she pretty well nails it when she asks how Rudy can have the hubris to run for president and not expect his personal life to dog him every step of the way.

It's so interesting, the expectations we have of our leaders. We are an imperfect society. Our divorce rate is, what, about 50 percent? Nobody's life is perfect. But we go crazy the second a public figure or politician has an affair or splits up. People will never stop making Monica Lewinsky jokes at Bill Clinton's expense. And Rudy's missteps — his mistreatment of his ex-wife and his children — are just as fair game.

On one hand, it's unfortunate that we get bogged down in these things and pay more attention them than we do to a politician's ideas. But I think that what goes on in a politician's personal life can tell you a lot about what kind of person he or she is. It speaks to the question of integrity. How can you trust someone who would cheat on his own wife? Wouldn't it be great if, in one of the many debates there have been over these last months, somebody would have asked Rudy that?

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Divorce is hard enough when it's just between two people. It's even more complicated when there are children involved. But what happens if you and your soon-to-be ex own a business together?

I saw that question posed in a tax advice column the other day, and the answer provided something valuable, beyond the simple X's and O's of how the assets are shared.

Sure, there was the standard discussion of the tax implications — the issues to consider if you or your ex wants to sell off your share of the business, or if both of you want to sell. But then there's the other possibility: Nobody sells anything and the two of you continue to operate the business together. And that's the part of this that I found most interesting.

No matter how much we talk about collaborative divorce and co-parenting through a divorce, it's easy to assume that two people who split up are so eager to be rid of one another that they're never going to talk again once the divorce is final. But increasingly that's not the case. For every acrimonious divorce, there are plenty of divorced couples who spend holidays together with their kids. And if your business is your child — or one of your children — there's no reason to believe you shouldn't co-parent it as well.

Is it easy? Of course not. But guess what? That's life. Or that's post-divorce life, I should say. None of it is going to be easy. But it's what you've got. You adapt, you learn to work with it and you continue to live your life.

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He's come a long way since his days as Jeff Spicoli in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" and his first marriage to Madonna. But Sean Penn is back in the tabloids.

The actor and his actress wife Robin Wright Penn are getting a divorce. As celebrity marriages go, this one lasted quite a long time — 11 years. There aren't any details of the split circulating yet, but you can bet there will be eventually. Will this one become the first celebrity mess of 2008, or will it be handled gracefully? Who gets what? What was in their prenup?

New year on the way in a few days, but same old celebrity divorce questions to ponder.

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Now, on the surface, it doesn't sound like she's really doling out any earth-shattering revelations. But she has a lot of common sense tips she can offer about everything from financial management and the legal process to post-divorce privacy issues. In fact, she even goes by an alias — Samantha Woods.

Apparently her divorce was messy and expensive, so she's got a pretty good idea of the worst of what you might encounter. She doesn't want her ex knowing what she's doing now with her consulting business, hence the pseudonym. In the digital age, that's actually something a lot of people might be interested in. If you don't want your ex finding you or tracking your activities, there are steps you can take.

But to me, the most encouraging thing about Woods is the example she sets for what your life can be like after your divorce. We talk a lot here at FWW about the various phases of divorce, and you get a pretty clear picture of that when you look at Woods. She had a phase of her life when she was married at a young age and raised kids. Then she had a phase where she navigated the breakup of her marriage. And now her marriage is over and she's become an entrepreneur.

It's nice to see an example proving things can change for the better during and after a divorce, even if it's tough to see the forest through the trees at the time.

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Divorce is not a simple process for anyone, but it can take a really long time if you're rich. That's pretty much the main point to pull out of the latest story on pro golfer Greg Norman's divorce.

Now, we've written about this before. But just in case you're new to the story, Greg and his ex-wife Laura Theresa Andrassy are scheduled for another hearing in early November. They're still haggling over who will end up with the tax liability for one of their jets. Yes, that's jets, plural.

And then Laura's attorneys are going to try to make Greg pay her more money because he's been dragging his feet on coughing up the cash he's supposed to give her. As if he's really going to notice it when he finally does pay her. Let's be honest, though. Laura hasn't exactly been destitute, unless you ignore the $725,000 Greg gave her that she and her attorneys burned as they worked out the details of the settlement.

One day I hope I have money problems like these.

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As she campaigns for president, one of the questions that a lot of voters are asking about Hillary Clinton is why she's stayed with Bill for all these years. Through all of the turmoil of the Lewinsky scandal and other rumored infidelities, why has their marriage endured?

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the divorce question seems to be dogging French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Cecilia.

The couple separated briefly in 2005, but the divorce rumors have been on the rise this week because Cecilia did not travel with her husband on a trip to Bulgaria this week. She was to have been honored by the Bulgarian government, so her absence was conspicuous, to say the least.

She skipped a lunch with President Bush in August — though there are those of us who might not blame her for that — and apparently she's only made three public appearances in an official capacity with her husband.

I remember during the height of Lewinskygate that folks in Europe thought a lot of Americans were overreacting. So it'll be interesting to watch how France reacts if the Sarkozy's marriage does break up.

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Here’s another story that shows things aren’t always so rosy in religious families. We’ve written a couple of times about the mis-matched ministers, Juanita Bynum and Thomas Weeks.

Well, here’s a story out of Alabama about a pastor whose wife walked out on him and their two kids six months ago. Actually, according to a report in the Mobile Press-Register, Beth Smith is still seeing her children on a regular basis, and sources say she is a good mother.

But in March, she hocked her wedding ring while attending a religious convention in Louisiana and bought a bus ticket to New York without telling her family anything. To say the least, details like that make her sound unstable. She was living in a women’s shelter in New York when authorities finally located her in July and brought her back to Alabama.

Her husband, Rev. Jason Lee Smith, has filed for divorce and it seeking custody of the kids, who are 10 and 7. Beth Smith’s attorney said there was conflict in the marriage and that the couple had grown apart. And he talked about the toll that keeping up appearances can take when you’re married to a religious leader. Indeed, if you start to question the life you’re living, that’s a difficult place to be. But walking out on your family? She’s going to have a tough time explaining that away.

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The story comes out of Madrid, and I saw it on the website of Pakistan's Daily Times. The gist of it is that a lot of professional athletes get divorced and abuse drugs during the first year after their playing days are over.

It doesn't take much thinking to figure it out. You spend all those years being cheered, making millions, having something all-encompassing around which your life revolves. And then it's all gone.

I'm not sure what happens abroad, but here in the U.S., a lot of former pro athletes and coaches end up taking jobs as sports analysts on TV. For some, it turns into a long-term second career, and I think a big part of the reason they do it is that it keeps them connected to the game. And if that keeps their marriages from falling apart, then it's a good thing.

There's been a lot of talk lately about the National Football League's poor record of taking care of its former players, many of whom suffer tremendous physical problems after retiring. But you have to wonder whether any of the pro leagues are seeing to the mental health of their former players. With all of the spouses and families that could be impacted when athletes have trouble adjusting to retirement, it seems like something the leagues should be doing.

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It’s not often that you see stories of flat-out, honest-to-goodness deception. But here’s one of them. A woman in England got swindled out of her divorce settlement by nothing more than a few very transparent lies, and now the guy responsible is headed to jail.

Britain’s Plymouth Herald reports that Pervez Alvi, a bankrupt businessman, convinced Anne Gale to give him nearly half of her divorce settlement (about $200,000) so he could lease three pubs that the two of them and their significant others would run. Gale, who eventually remarried, didn't figure out that Alvi was stringing her along until it was too late. Alvi asked her for a check and told her to leave the payee line blank. And she actually complied. So Alvi just dumped the funds into an account in his wife’s name. And by the time Gale realized what was happening, most of the money was gone.

I’m not sure which one of them deserves more of my disdain. The guy is obviously a creep. And she did something extremely foolish. Here are words to live by: When you’re writing a check for a large sum of money (I do that every day, don’t you?) you probably want to fill the whole thing in yourself. Fortunately, the court is going to make Alvi pay it all back. And he’s going to spend 18 months in jail. It’s nice to see justice served.

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There’s more news out of Pittsburgh in the saga of billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife’s divorce and his battle with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

A judge this week refused to order the Post-Gazette to return previously sealed documents related to Scaife’s messy divorce from his wife, Margaret Ritchie Battle Scaife. It’s a fun story from the standpoint of the First Amendment implications, but also because Scaife owns the rival newspaper in Pittsburgh, the Tribune-Review.

Scaife’s attorneys argued that the only reason the Post-Gazette obtained the documents was due to an error that made them publicly available on the Web for a few days in August. Prior to that, the papers had been sealed by the court. But the judge declined to hold the Post-Gazette responsible for a computer mistake made by Allegheny County prothonotary's office.

Indeed, the documents were available to anyone who might have gone looking for them during that time. As luck would have it, the Post-Gazette had a reporter doing what all good reporters do: poking around.

So it’s a win for the Post-Gazette and the First Amendment. Scaife is well known as a supporter of conservative causes, so he’s squarely in public figure territory. But there’s still no word on how the divorce is shaking out. According to the documents, there’s custody of a dog hanging in the balance. Obviously we can count on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to keep us informed.

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