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What can we learn from serial celebrity break-ups, billionaire bust-ups, misbehaving spouses, pants-on challenged politicos and the ever-shifting landscape of divorce law? Question is, "What CAN'T we learn"? With latte in hand and clicky finger at the ready, dive in for the best in divorce news, views, gossip, and buzz – assembled below for your reading pleasure.

Our current contributors are Jill Brooke, Maureen Dempsey, Naomi Dunn, and Linda Lee.

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Man Splits with Wife, then Splits House in Two

Posted by Jill Brooke on Thu, 10/02/2008 - 11:28am

Here's what happens when a divisive couple deals with a housing slump. A Cambodian couple resorted to a drastic solution to combat the country's notoriously corrupt and expensive court system by literally — and we mean literally — cutting their house in half.

According to the Khmer-language "Koh Santepheap" newspaper, Meuon Rima sought a divorce from his wife, Nhang, both 40, because she refused to nurse him during a recent illness. They decided to split their house, which was built on stilts, rather than deal with what they considered a diseased court system.

Rima sawed the house down the middle with "surgical precision," the newspaper reported. He was last seen driving away from the village in southeastern Prey Veng province hauling half of the home with him.

It was not known where he had gone with his very detached piece of marital assets, it said. And apparently Rima had not felt the same need to divvy up the couple's two teenage children, both of whom were left with Nhang.

One would argue that the heart of the home is the family, so in that sense he left the home mostly intact. 

FWW has reported on many solutions to deal with divorce and housing, including how to divide the family home and if you should keep the house, but we don’t recommend actually splitting the house. Granted that just last year a man in Germany, facing divorce, chain-sawed a house he shared with his wife in two, and then hauled “his half” away to his brother’s property on a forklift truck.

Usually when couples resort to what is called “The War of the Roses” solution, referring to the 1989 movie about a fractious divorce, they simply keep living there, each taking separate quarters and turning the kitchen into a demilitarized zone.

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Hogan's Divorce: Hulk Muscles His Way Out of Condo

Posted by Jill Brooke on Tue, 08/19/2008 - 12:10am

Hulk Hogan's wrestling days may be behind him, but as E! News so aptly stated, he can still avoid being pinned.

Judge George W. Greer of Florida released the pro wrestler from a commitment to purchase a $4.2 million Las Vegas condo, a property he agreed to buy with estranged wife Linda Bollea back in 2005.

The commitment on the condo, in a sinking Las Vegas real estate market, has been a sticking point in their ongoing legal dealings, with Bollea just last month seeking to get her ex held in contempt of court and jailed for failing to pony up his share of the condo’s purchase price.

Her Miami lawyer, A.J. Barranco, Jr., said that the condo would be a good investment, even if other condo values have gone down, because Linda Bollea believes that their properties sell at a premium.

And if they walk away from the condo, they stand to lose much of their $840,000 down payment.

For Bollea and Hogan, divorce has become a spectator sport, and an example of what not to do. Some observers believe that it will be more than a year before the divorce is final. The divorce was started in 2007.

“We are thrilled that the judge did not require us to continue to engage in the folly of purchasing a $4.2 million condo at a time when we should be considering other matters,” Hogan's attorney, David Houston, told E! News.

Houston added that, in addition to his client getting off the real estate hook, a stipulation outside of court allowed Hogan the right to reside in a beach house that had previously been awarded solely to Linda.

Perhaps this was the judge's way of penalizing Linda Bollea for wasting the court's time. But she also gained some traction too.

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