Late last week brought an end to an ugly story of divorce and murder in Nevada. A 46-year-old Reno man was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his ex-wife and shooting the judge who presided over their divorce. The judge has since recovered from his injuries.

Every time I hear about one of these situations — and there are many horrific stories like these that arise out of divorce cases — I wonder about the legal process. Are all of the people who apparently are driven to this kind of violence by divorce just plain crazy? Or is there something about the nature of a divorce proceeding — the adversarial bitterness of it — that sends otherwise sane people over the edge?

I don't know if there's ever been any research on that topic, but there should be. It's bad enough to go through a divorce that can't be settled out of court, or without significant legal intervention. But to experience that and then also end up being impacted by a violent crime... well, it's more than I'd be able to handle. I know that much.

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Here's a problem few of us have encountered, or at least I assume it's few of us. A Florida woman ended up with a waterfront home with boat docks after her divorce. And now she's being sued by neighbors who say the docks jut out too far into the water and make it dangerous for them to sail their boats past her house.

Whatever will these people do if they can't sail their boats!?! What a horrible situation! And you want to know how much larger these docks are than what they're supposed to be? Five feet. Wow, some people really have too much time on their hands.

I'd find this awfully frustrating if I were stuck in this situation. You go through a divorce and end up with what must be a really nice house in a great location. All your neighbors have their own boats, so we're obviously not talking about the low-rent district. And now you've got people bickering with you about this nonsense. I'd lose my patience for this in a hurry. And I'd probably head outside one afternoon with a saw and a tape measure and settle this myself.

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A horrific tragedy that occurred last week in Maryland provides a cautionary tale for mothers who have split up from their abusive ex husbands.

A father shot and killed his ex wife and three children in a park where the couple met for visitation exchanges. He then turned the gun on himself and took his own life. To put it mildly, there is no end to the sorrow of this story. But perhaps the most tragic element is that it should easily have been avoided.

The mother won a domestic violence case against her husband while they were still married. Maryland law prohibits the subjects of protective orders from possessing firearms. There need to be more laws of that nature. One of the loopholes in Maryland is that the firearm provision doesn’t apply to the subjects of temporary protective orders. You hate to brand anyone as a potential murderer, but when the lives of children are involved, every precaution should be taken. If a woman feels unsafe enough to seek a protective order, nothing should be left to chance — especially not if the order is granted.

Of course, getting your hands on a weapon is not exactly that difficult, especially for someone who has already made up his mind to commit a violent act. What an incredibly senseless tragedy this was.

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The woman's ex-husband is on trial for first-degree murder for allegedly strangling a man in 1998 after a botched kidnapping. And it seems she is the key witness in the case. The woman will testify against her ex-husband, claiming that he twice confessed to her that he'd killed the man in question.

It gets better. Apparently, the first time he told her was in the car, as they were driving to Las Vegas to get married. But what happens in the car on the way to Vegas... uh, well, you know...

It sounds like they were playing a bit of truth or dare with one another. The woman admitted that as a child she had been sexually assaulted by her brother. And that's when her ex chose to say, "Oh, hey, this one time, I killed a guy."

You have to wonder why this woman would go through with the marriage after that. Weird.

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Tragedy struck a divorce proceeding in Italy this week when a man shot and critically wounded his estranged wife and killed her brother before being shot to death by police outside of a courtroom.

So many questions, and so few answers here.

Authorities will need to determine how the man managed to get a gun into the courthouse. If you've ever gone into any courthouse here in the U.S., you know that security is tight, and you don’t go too far inside the door without passing through a metal detector. Apparently, they need to beef up the security measures in Italy. You can see where this is the sort of thing that might lead to a knee-jerk reaction to really take strong measures.

And, of course, let’s not forget the pressures and difficulties of going through a divorce trial. Clearly, anyone who would do something like this has snapped in some way. But we should think about the way divorces are handled in the wake of something like this. Is there anything that can be done to ease the anguish of the ordeal that might keep something like this from happening again?

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Later this month in Austria, they’re going to have what is being called the world’s first divorce fair. The event will bring together all sorts of resources to help people navigate their way through the end of a marriage -- everything from legal information and tips for spying on your cheating spouse to advice on how to help children deal with what’s happening.

Provided that this doesn’t just turn into a way for money-grubbing attorneys to drum up more business, I think it’s a great idea. As prevalent as divorce is in the U.S., it seems like it’s only a matter of time before events like this one take place here.

The only drawback I can see is that it could be rather awkward to walk up to someone at a booth in a crowded convention hall and start asking for advice or talking about your own situation. Divorce is such a personal thing, it seems like the dynamic of the interactions at an event like this might be a bit stilted. Still, it’s an interesting and worthwhile-sounding concept.

One rather ironic thing, though. The organizer of this event also organizes wedding fairs. Isn’t that versatile?

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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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Rush Limbaugh makes all kinds of noise every day on his radio show, and he's been in the headlines lately for his crack about "phony soldiers." But there won't be anyone out there talking about his divorce settlement because a Florida District Court ruled that the records can remain sealed.

The Palm Beach Post had been seeking access to the settlement, but was denied. Limbaugh and his ex-wife Marta Miranda split up at the end of 2004.

The court's decision has drawn criticism from public information rights advocates, who say Limbaugh and other public figures get special treatment from the courts in matters of this nature. And while I have no
desire to nose into other people's business, I have to agree with them.

If you read FWW on a regular basis, you know that we regularly write about bizarre stories of divorcing couples from all parts of the country and around the world. In many cases, those stories are instructive or provide some insight into divorce. And court records are the way the media finds out about these stories. People without Limbaugh's means and celebrity don't have ways of preventing the details of their private lives from becoming public. It's not that everyone should have their dirty laundry aired. But the playing field should be level.

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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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