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.

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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