With Valentine's Day coming up, every form of media is full of images of people getting engaged or married and the jewelry stores are obviously doing big business. But for the large segment of the population that is divorced, it's an entirely different thought process when it comes to wedding and engagement rings. The San Francisco Chronicle ran an interesting story on Friday about the question of what should happen to your rings once your marriage is over.

The accepted protocol on engagement rings seems to be that you get to keep it. Legally, it's not considered part of the marital assets because it was a gift given to you before you were married. And aside from that, a guy would have to really be a greedy bastard to ask to have it back. I can see a guy doing that, though, if the ring was a family heirloom. I think I'd have a hard time holding on to the engagement ring if it had belonged to my ex's grandmother, or something like that.

The wedding rings are a whole different story. Some people attach a lot of emotional meaning to them and choose not to part with them. Some people have them melted down and made into other pieces of jewelry. Some women sell both the wedding and engagement rings to pay for lawyers. One man quoted in the story said his wife sold her rings so she could get a boob job.

I think it's all a matter of personal preference. And it's probably a function of how amicable the breakup is, too. If it was angry and bitter, you might be more inclined to get rid of the rings, along with everything else in your house that had anything to do with the guy. One woman said she wanted both of the wedding rings to be kept together after her divorce, just because it seemed to her like the right thing to do. Her ex didn't see it that way, so it didn't happen.

So let's hear from all of you. What happened to your rings?

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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When we last heard from pro golf great Greg Norman, he was squabbling with his ex-wife over their multimillions while he was running around with former tennis star Chris Evert, who also broke up with her husband.

Well, it seems Norman and Evert are more than just a rebound fling for one another. Word came yesterday that wedding bells are going to be ringing soon. The sports power couple has gotten engaged.

Considering the legal wrangling he's been through with his ex-wife, you have to figure Norman is going to have his attorney draw up the mother of all prenups. Color me cynical, but do these celebrity couples ever really survive?

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Now, on the surface, that may seem obvious. Everyone knows a big part of going through a divorce is managing your finances. But if you think about it a little more deeply, it means that a lot of those women weren't paying all that much attention to their financial well-being prior to their divorces. And that's no good.

Experts quoted in a Financial Post story about the TD Waterhouse poll recommend more women taking an active role in money matters, regardless of their marital status. And further, they emphasize the importance of formulating a backup plan. Even if you like your present circumstances, you never know what's around the bend. Everyone needs a Plan B.

Perhaps it's something that comes with age, because the poll found that older women generally do have backup plans. But this is something that you should think about if you're in your 20s or 30s, regardless of where you are in your life.

Even if it's just putting some money into a 401k, or a CD if you don't want to tie up your money long-term, anything you can do to save now is in your best interest. If you've been through a divorce, you know that already.

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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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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I read an advice column the other day by a writer from Bankrate.com that outlined a sticky situation that could happen to anyone.

The guy caught in this scenario has been divorced for 13 years. Part of the settlement involved his ex-wife taking on $1,500 of credit card debt. And despite the fact that he claims to have also given her $27,000 in cash as part of the settlement, she never paid off the credit card. The balance is now at $6,500 and counting. The account has been closed, but the credit card company is coming after him for the money since his name was on the account.

The moral of the story here is that the stipulations of a divorce settlement don’t shield you from debt if the debt is in your name. The advisor from Bankrate.com who wrote the column suggested enlisting an attorney to deal with the credit card company if this happens to you.

But perhaps more importantly, there are some obvious steps you can take to prevent this from happening in the first place. Short-term debts like credit cards should be paid off from joint funds, before a divorce is finalized.

Just because you and your ex agree to something in your divorce settlement doesn’t guarantee it’s going to happen.

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