Chances are you’ve read about people trapped in unhappy marriages because they couldn’t sell their home, or couples whose lifestyles took a nosedive when they divorced.

Well, this weekend The New York Times ran an interesting story about real estate facilitating divorce!

For a number of years, Michele Kleier, a realtor on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, had a client who called her regularly to check on the price she could list her 9-room co-op for.

When the market was at its peak, the woman planned to divorce her husband, sell the apartment and live on her share of the profits.

This client went through with her plan, and now lives in a California condo, where she raves about the weather and revels in the distance she put between herself and her ex. “The real estate market allowed her to buy her freedom,” says Kleier.

Brokers and attorneys alike agree that the red-hot New York City real estate market has opened up a world of possibilities for unhappy couples. Up until 2006, it wasn’t that unusual to see home prices rise 20 or 30 percent a year, and though appreciation has slowed down, sales and market value haven’t. The price of the average Manhattan apartment this summer was $1.3 million. And the $3 million apartment is now the $7 million apartment. Half of that is a lot.

Gary Becker, an economist at the University of Chicago, has studied survey data and concludes that any couple who see a drastic rise (or drop) in net worth is at risk of divorce.

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How often have you thought that you’re doing more than your fair share? If you’re a woman with children and a job, plus a golf-playing, TV-watching spouse, probably a lot. It can make you feel so resentful that there are many days when you’d really rather not be married anymore.

Well, you aren’t alone. “Chore wars” are now one of the major factors in divorce, according to sociologist Lynne Prince Cooke at the University of Kent in Cambridge, England.

In a paper she presented to the Council of Contemporary Families, she stated: “I found that couples where the wife earns about 40 percent of the income while the husband does about 40 percent of the housework have the lowest risk of divorce,” she wrote. In contrast, the risk of divorce rises if the husband is the sole earner and the wife is the sole cleaner, or if the opposite is true — the wife brings in more than 80 percent of income and the husband is “Mr. Mom.”

While many husbands agree in theory to the concept of equitably sharing chores and child care, it’s been my experience that they’re long on rhetoric and short on action.

Were “chore wars” a factor in your marriage or divorce? See also Katherine McKee’s take on this topic.

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A number of Muslim communities in the United States are growing alarmed at the increasing divorce rate — now as high as 31 percent in some states. This is still under the national average of 49 percent, but it is cause for great concern because divorce, while not forbidden by the Koran, is considered a last resort and is cause for great shame to Muslims. There is always fault in a Muslim divorce, and it is most often the woman who is blamed.

In addition, American Muslim leaders are concerned about the lack of resources and social services for handling this divorce trend, and by the fact that domestic abuse seems to be the principal cause for failed marriages in the Muslim community.

Muslim scholars are urging mosques to provide premarital counseling, similar to what is mandated by the Catholic Church, and to consider ways to offer social services that will help divorcees reintegrate back into the community.

In a later post, I’ll look some of the factors Muslims believe are responsible for this trend. Some of them are fascinating and have applicability to all troubled marriages.

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Forget the image you have of a private eye as a hard-bitten, middle-aged man in a rumpled suit from Men's Wearhouse. More and more investigators are women — and they're finding a booming business in child custody cases and in tracking down cheating spouses.

Onesuch P.I. is Anji Fussell, who runs the She Spies Private Eye agency in Round Rock, Texas, just outside of Austin. "We're very busy," she told Channel 42 News, a CBS affiliate in Austin. And she's sure that a lot of her success is due to the fact that she's a woman. Most of her business is from divorced parents who want to know if their kids are being taken care of properly — "Are they leaving their children with babysitters and going out partying?" One male client who shared custody with his ex-wife was concerned about just this thing.

It turned out he was right, and when Fussell turned her video over to a judge, the man was awarded primary custody. Fussell is a mother herself, and it's important to her that kids "end up in the right home." And she also believes that being a woman in this field gives her a compassionate advantage that Sam Spade could never have.

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