The bitter divorce saga between former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey and Dina Matos McGreevey continues. McGreevey, in 2004, publicly disclosed that he’s gay, resigned and came clean about having an affair with a male aide.

Dina McGreevey, who last month published a tell-all book, Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage, blames Jim for lackluster book sales because he called her “homophobic.” Unlike what she says in her book, Dina has also taken issue with the fact that he now claims she knew he was gay while they were married.

Meanwhile Jim says her book isn’t selling because it’s “poorly written” and “dull,” and, get this, because she dressed inappropriately for an interview on “Oprah” to plug the book. In a letter to a family court judge, McGreevey cited Dina’s “awful appearance” in “an inappropriate and ill-fitting ballgown with a plunging neckline.”

Thought your divorce was bad? Boy, do these two ever hate each other. My first impression of Jim’s comments, like most everyone’s I’m sure, was just a big “Huh? How stupid is that?” But think about how deep these marital wounds must be on both their parts.

I bet those fashion comments have less to do with Jim being an idiot and more to do with a well-thought out way of publicly humiliating Dina. He wasn’t trying to trash her for her appearance. He’s trying to prove she wasn’t the “in-the-dark” wife she says she was and, that she knew he was gay by making the most stereotypically gay comment possible.

If that’s not a man giving his ex the ultimate “up yours,” I don’t what is.

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Poor misguided Britney Spears. It seems the 25-year old poptart contacted a lawyer to cut her mother Lynne Spears out of her will, according to Life & Style magazine.

The latest in Britney’s long-running feud with her mom is that her ex, Kevin Federline, is getting cozy with Lynne and is quickly becoming her biggest ally, according to Jeannette Walls of MSNBC.com. A lot of the trouble reportedly started this winter when Lynne took Britney to rehab. Since then, the only time Lynne sees her grandchildren, writes Walls, is when K-Fed takes them to visit her. So Lynne is siding with K-Fed on the issue of custody.

Good grief! First, Britney rises to stardom with a fan base of 8-year-old girls imitating her dance moves and gyrations, then moves on to playing with a giant snake on stage, a quickie marriage, then marriage to K-Fed, bears two kids, drinking binges, partying with Paris, maybe some drugs, and public meltdowns culminating with her shaving her own head.

I remember when Madonna first came on the scene with “Like a Virgin.” I watched her morph into a Marilyn impersonator followed by a svelt brunette, then shock the world by parading as a sex fiend, later sacreligious Catholic girl, Warren Beatty’s girlfriend, lesbian, Brit, yoga worshiper, Jew and now uber-homemaker/mom and children’s book author.

Madonna’s transformations were shocking, swift and radical. But unlike Britney, they appeared to be mostly by design. Even though it shocked our parents, Madonna’s marketing genius and penchant for reinvention are what keep her in the limelight more than 20 years after she first rose to public awareness. In many ways, she's lasted much longer than contemporaries like Cyndi Lauper and Deborah Harry.

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Remember when Billy Joel and supermodel Christie Brinkley were married? Well, since her separation last year from fourth husband Peter Cook—the guy who humiliated her by flinging with his teenage assistant—it looks like Brinkley is enjoying fond recollections of her days with the Piano Man.

NBC’s “Extra” caught Brinkley and Joel on camera, albeit separately, arriving at their daughter Alexa Ray’s concert. Arriving alone, serial bride Brinkley, wearing an ear-to-ear grin, told reporters that she and Joel are friends. “We had the quickest, shortest, fastest most amicable show-biz divorce,” Brinkley said. “That’s what my lawyer told me anyway.” Joel and Brinkley married in 1986 and divorced in 1994. Joel is married to Katie Lee Joel, 26, a cookbook author and food correspondent for Bravo and the Food Network.

Granted, Brinkley was mugging for the cameras, and if her divorce from Joel was tough at one time, it’s history now and she certainly wouldn’t mention it to reporters. Still, it makes you wonder why her split from the musician wasn’t bitter, while the divorce from Cook presumably is. Could it have been because Joel didn’t cheat on her (as far as we know) and Cook did?

As easy as it is to understand how people fall into adultery, it remains the hardest thing to forget. Even separation due to something like substance abuse doesn’t have such a significant long-term effect. That may be because it’s not personal. The inability to stay on the wagon has little to do with one’s spouse. So does financial irresponsibility.

But it’s near impossible not to feel the deep hurt that comes when a partner has been cheating. It’s hard to believe we’ll ever hear Brinkley singing the same tune about friendship and amicable divorce when it comes to Cook now, or 20 years from now.

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While George Bush and friends ponder whether it’s ethical and morally correct to use stem cells from a handful of embryos for scientific advancement, one couple—ironically from Texas—are battling each other over the rights of their own embryos.

The couple, Augusta and Randy Roman, are divorced but stillfighting over their frozen embryos that they stored after Augusta miscarried. Despite the divorce, she wants to have children using the embryos and he wants them either to be destroyed or kept frozen.

Augusta, who is 45, says using these embryos—which were created from her own extracted eggs and Randy’s sperm—are her last chance at having her own biological children. Randy says the embryos weren’t intended tobe used outside of their marriage or in a way that limits him to serving as a “sperm donor.”

The fight and court case of Roman v. Roman is so heated it will go before the Texas Supreme Court. Previously, a Houston trial court ordered the embryos to be turned over to Augusta, but Randy appealed and won. The Supreme Court case isn’t yet scheduled, and there are reasonable arguments to be made in favor of both sides, but it’s plausible that the fight will ultimately come down to one simple document. It’s a consent form signed in 2002 stating that the embryos would be discarded in the case of divorce.

I can see how Mr. Roman, at this point in time, doesn’t want children to come out of a marriage that’s ended. But let’s face it, sperm is cheap and rather easy to come by. For him, it’s only about masturbating into a cup.

I’ve never personally had eggs extracted, but I know it’s not fun. And it’s certainly not something a woman would want to do more than once, even if she wasn’t considered “too old” to have her eggs harvested. I hope for Augusta’s case the decision is made with the sensitivity of the issue in mind.

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Make no mistake about it: I’m a die-hard Larry David fan. I adore his crankiness and when I catch “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on HBO, I can see more clearly which bits Larry contributed to “Seinfeld.”

I'm also convinced that the TV Larry David is pretty much the same as the real life Larry David so I was particularly disappointed when the news broke last week that Larry is separating from his wife Laurie, upon which Cheryl Hines' character is based. Was the split his idea? Does he have a young girlfriend? What’s the deal?

Most reports I’ve read assume it was Laurie who initiated the split because she could no longer take being around such a curmudgeon. There are people who love him and those who hate him, but as one of those in the former group, I find Larry’s self-centered ways and neurosis quite endearing.

I’m finally starting to realize why: My husband Ted is very much like Larry. I get a huge kick out of some of that complaining. In fact, I would often watch “Curb” thinking to myself, “My God, that’s Ted, but more verbal and with much more time and money on his hands. How cute!”

But as adorable as it is on TV, if you’re a fairly optimistic person, it turns into a hellish situation. If types follow suit, what Larry doesn’t portray on the show is the constant and irrational pity he has for himself. On TV, Larry’s typically a moody drag. His wife on the show, Cheryl Hines, does a fair amount of placating.

There are many other issues between Ted and me apart from his being a curmudgeon, but I can tell you with certainty, the charm of a grump wears thin after a while.

Maybe some day we’ll know what actually happened between the Davids, but for now, I guess I have to liken my affection for Larry to my Woody Allen crush—understandable, but unrealistic once you really look at the man.

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I know there are a lot reasons men and women don’t agree to a divorce when one partner wants to leave. I wish that wasn’t the case. I wish they’d just let their partner go.

Disclosures last week about Carl Bernstein’s book on Hillary Clinton which alleges that she refused to give Bill a divorce, got me thinking about the topic.

According to Bernstein, Hillary was worried about being a single parent. She also, apparently, had come to terms with Clinton’s tendency to stray before they wed, which is one of the reasons she married him.

I personally know of a few couples with similar situations where one wanted to leave and the other wouldn’t agree.

In one case, the husband of a female friend of mine won’t let her leave. From the things she tells me, he behaves like a sadistic, control freak and it sounds like he gets pleasure out of her unhappiness. (Many of their marital troubles revolve around his lack of ethics in his business, lying and putting his family in a precarious financial position).

I know of other cases that are less complicated, but have to do with economics, where the wife is fearful her husband won’t continue to contribute to the household if they separate.

What makes me the saddest though, is when women don’t let their husbands leave because they’re afraid to be alone. Maybe they can’t imagine not being with their husbands or they think they love their man too much to let him go, or perhaps they have low self-esteem.

I would hate to think someone was staying with me out of obligation, or worse, because I begged him not to leave. Letting the man who wants to leave, go, is probably the hardest thing to do, but it’s also one of the kindest things we can do for ourselves.

 

The Brits are right up there with Americans in terms of escalating rates of obesity and it appears they’re following us in another alarming trend: The increasing use of private investigators in divorce cases.

A new private investigation firm in the U.K. is getting most of its business from spouses who want proof their partners are cheating. God almighty: Following your spouse during lunch, snapping pictures from a parked car, posing as a construction worker…it all sounds eerily similar to the divorce detective character played by Nicholas Cage in the 1992 movie “Honeymoon in Vegas”. But this game is being played at a higher level.

Beyond spying on suspected adulterers and adulteresses, both husbands and wives are increasingly hiring investigators to hunt for secret assets one maybe be hiding from the other. In the long run, this quest is probably more practical and ultimately, may yield far more satisfying information.

Have the urge to say “Gotcha you x!?&”? Want bona fide proof that he’s not just working late every night, losing weight and dressing better for nothing?

Before you spend all that money to hire a detective, consider that if you live in one of the 15 states (including California, Arizona, Colorado and Michigan) that allows no-fault divorce, getting confirmation that your spouse is cheating probably won’t help your bottom line. Why? Because marital assets (or community property) will likely get split down the middle, no matter how much of a louse he is.

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They're unromantic and pessimistic. Yes, prenuptial agreements get a bad rap whether they ever have to be invoked or not. And for those of us who are divorced, a fair and equitable prenup may have saved us a lot of grief, not to mention legal fees.

But here’s a new twist: Acendi Interactive, a crafty company specializing in online legal information, inexpensive prenups and other self-help information latched on to the recently released data on declining divorce rates and linked it to prenups. “Premarital agreements help smart couples stay together,” said Charley Moore, RocketLawyer.com legal commentator in a press release. “Mature couples…and their frank understanding of the financial relationship created by marriage is resulting in happier and longer lasting marriages,” Moore noted.

When I got married, I was deadset against a prenup, but in retrospect, I see Moore’s point. When my then fianceé sheepishly mentioned it (he brought more to the table financially), I was insulted. At the time, when he said he only brought it up for my protection, my response was flip: “Any prenup that I’ll agree to, you won’t want to sign.” Yes, I forgot that marriage is, in fact, not much more than a legal contract.

In my case, not having a prenup wasn’t cause for divorce, but I do believe my husband would have been less territorial about money if we had one. I married a man who, in his own words, “worked very hard for whatever savings he had,” and he didn’t want to feel he’d “lose” half if we didn’t stay married. This made me livid, and his response was to joke about “spending everything quickly” if need be.

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Think of couples in the public eye that are splitting up or have gotten divorced. Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen? Paul McCartney and Heather Mills? Elizabeth Taylor and everyone?

We know the regular folks, regular couples who are having problems, but when it comes to breakups in popular culture, glamorous celebrities come to mind. But for all those couples that seem to have a free and easy lifestyle, there are plenty of others that have the same problems.

This week, a man who represents perhaps one of the most conservative businesses in the world, country filed for divorce after 37 years of marriage. Most of us don’t know him by name and he’s managed to keep his personal life private: He’s A.G. Lafley, the Chief Executive Officer of Procter & Gamble, the company best known for marketing brands like Tide, Pampers and Crest.

Lafley’s a respected businessman though not a visionary like a Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos. According to the divorce filing, the salt-and-pepper haired 60-year-old CEO of Cincinnati-based P&G and his wife agreed that they’d become incompatible. Sounds perfectly reasonable, right?

Among divorced and divorcing executives and entrepreneurs Lafley doesn’t have the image of those testosterone-charged men about town like CNN founder Ted Turner, Revlon chairman and Ellen Barkin’s ex, Ron Perelman, or the ubiquitous Donald Trump. But perhaps underneath the guy-next-door exterior and the conservative appearance lies another larger-than-life ego, whose relationship was marred by a sense of entitlement and a huge salary. Or maybe he has a mistress, who knows.

In any case, Lafley and his soon-to-be ex-wife appear to have put a normal spin on the breakup. But one wonders just how much his wife helped him on the way up the corporate ladder…

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