For every bride who discovers she had an ally, a mother-in-like, after the wedding, there are those who realize they have a monster-in-law. My monster-in-law gave me a fuzzy sleep suit with a big zipper up the front the first year of our marriage, possibly the least sexy piece of clothing ever. I felt like the Easter bunny. It was royal blue.

But the mother-in-law in the beautiful coastal town of Ravello, on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, must have been a doozie. The Italian press was all over the story of a man who got his marriage annulled this week because of interference by his wife’s mother. One Italian newspaper talked about mother-in-laws who put themselves between husband and wife, “with the docile tenderness of a Rottweiler.”

The Italian press readily conceded that it’s usually the husband’s mother, and not the wife’s mother, who acts like a Rottweiler. Last year a poll by Eures, a job portal on the internet, said that 3 out of 10 Italian divorces were due to "the unusually close attachment of Italian men to their mothers." The mothers sometimes move in, take care of the house, and often criticize their daughter-in-law’s housekeeping, cooking or child rearing.

This case was not nearly as severe; it hinged on an oral contract. Antonio Paolillo, a car dealer, was set to marry Maria Assunta Gemma Criscuoli in 1998, and there was a little bambini on the way. Paolillo, 27 at the time, apparently was apprehensive about his mother-in-law-to-be. So just before the wedding he told his bride, 21, that she had to keep her mother out of their marriage.

If not, he said, he would get a divorce.

A 50 year longitudinal study of 17,000 people in Great Britain, the National Child Development Study, has concluded once again that children of divorce are more likely to struggle academically and have emotional problems, are usually less well educated, and are more likely to divorce themselves.

But as Tolstoy said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And unhappy families, whether they divorce or not, have unhappy children.

Consider what life was like in one Italian family that is now facing divorce.

The mother and father face five years in prison for completely refusing to consider the effects of their incessant arguing on their 12 year old son as they pursued a divorce. Italian privacy laws have withheld the names of the parents, but not their behavior. Prosecutors in Milan have asked the judge, Cesare Tacconi, to charge the mother and father with mistreating a minor.

The child, prosecutors say, had a "syndrome of anxiety and depression" that prevented him from concentrating in school. When a court-appointed health worker visited the home, the report said the son seemed “disturbed,” had fallen behind in school, and believed, with some evidence, that his parents hated each other.

The prosecutors said, "Each blamed the other for shortcoming and educational errors in bringing up the child."

The parents, the report said, used the child as a psychological punching bag in their battle. It is the first such charge in a European court. Judge Tacconi will decide in December whether or not the case should go to trial.

No word on whether mom and dad have managed to get a divorce yet.

Back in 1979, mothers almost always got custody; joint custody was so rare it was almost unheard of. But one Minneapolis husband and wife pushed the courts (it helped that the husband was a lawyer) to consider their wishes to share parenting. In an interview with the father and daughter 30 years later (the mother died of cancer in 1994) Minnesota Public Radio revealed how beneficial joint custody can be.

John Bujan and his wife, Nancy Stein, decided when their daughter was 4 that their marriage wasn’t working. Molly Brom, that daughter, now 36, remembers riding in the car with her parents when they told her they were separating.

Her first question: Would her father still come to her birthday party? He did.

They separated for a year, during which time Molly went to kindergarten and spent three nights a week at her father’s home and four nights at her mother’s. The parents felt the situation was working beautifully, and said that to the referee when they filed for divorce.

The referee, on the other hand, discouraged them. “Why do you want joint custody?,” he said. “These things just don't work out.”

In the 1970s, with the divorce rate hitting an all-time high, the conventional wisdom was that children of divorce would end up delinquents, or misfits who would never make a lasting connection to another person. But Molly’s parents fought for and won joint custody.

It was so revolutionary then that The Minneapolis Tribune ran a story about the family in 1979 with the headline “After Marriage Break-up, Children Can Still Live with Two Parents.” It seemed almost an answer to the bitter divorce portrayed in that year’s Kramer V. Kramer.

All divorces involving children under 18 in Connecticut, Arizona, and Utah (and many counties across the country) require the husband and wife to attend parenting classes. No, not together.

But Thomas Dutkiewicz, of Bristol, Connecticut, filed suit saying he shouldn’t have to attend such a course.

His argument: Who said he didn’t know how to parent? And why isn’t there a decision made on the merits. Requiring such parenting courses, he said, was like convicting a person without trial. And, he said, it is the state interfering in family matters, and would violate a parent’s right to decide what’s best for a child.

This week the Connecticut Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling, confirmed the right of the state to require such courses. It rejected Dutkiewicz’s appeal, saying such parenting classes reflected “a compelling state interest by aiming to maintain familial harmony through a difficult transition.”

As for a constitutional right to decide family matters, the court pointing out that parents were not required to follow the advice offered in the classes.

It should be noted that, because of a technicality, Dutkiewicz was never required to take the course when he and his wife divorced in 2006. (If both parents and a judge agree, attendance can be waived; the six-hour course in Connecticut costs about $125 a person.) But Dutkiewicz, who by all accounts has the necessary parenting skills, wanted to make a case of it.

In California, pets are protected from outright abuse during divorce and marital problems. But there is increasing evidence that divorce itself, even without abuse, is stressful for pets, especially cats and dogs. (No one has yet proven that hamsters, parakeets, rabbits, turtles, and fish are particularly affected by family tensions, but perhaps some day a study will show that.)

It’s easy to understand why divorce upsets pets as well as children. There is tension in the home. There are arguments and slammed doors (which can sound like a gunshot). People disappear. There may be a move to a new home. And all of the usual routines are interrupted.

Dogs and cats know their routines: a time to wake up, a time to eat, to play, to go outside, to go to bed. Anyone who has forgotten to feed a cat will know just how insistent that cat will be that, Hello! It. Is. Time. To. Eat!

Dogs may be more flexible, at least some dogs, unless it’s time to go for a walk.

But there are dogs who are particularly nervous. And the older the dog, the less likely that he or she will adjust.

Sometimes, couples can actually put the pet’s needs before their own. Raoul Felder has noted that one couple getting a divorce agreed to stay in their apartment to continue to care for their sick dog. “Here,” Felder told PetPlace, “instead of making the dog a trophy in the divorce case, they stayed together until the dog passed away.”

According to David “David the Dogman” Klein, dogs are particularly social animals, long domesticated, able to read emotions, expressions, and to react badly to shouting and arguments.

They may be Fluffy and Woofy to you, but to a divorce court it’s pet 1 and pet 2, and those pets are considered property, not part of the family. If the spouses can’t settle the matter, the court will usually assign custody to whichever spouse bought it, fed it, or brought it into the relationship.

In one case in San Diego, when Stanley and Linda Perkins fought for two years over Gigi, a mix of pointer and greyhound, the judge awarded custody to the wife after she showed a video, “A Day in the Life of Gigi.” The video showed her relationship to Gigi, who slept under her chair at work, and played fetch on the beach.

Sometimes you wish people would take as good care of their children.

Last year the courts in Wisconsin began following a new Solomonic rule on animal custody. The couple decides who gets the pet, or the judge decides custody, and if that doesn’t work, the animal goes to the local Humane Society.

Husband and wife are invited to apply for ownership of the pet there.

But that’s all about what’s best for the humans. What about what’s best for the pets?

Animal rights is one of the fastest growing areas of law. And many of those laws come into play in divorce. For one thing, there is a close correlation between spousal abuse and pet abuse. Anger about the marriage is deflected onto the pet who is kicked, abandoned, kidnapped, or even killed.

Some women wish they’d never been married. We’re sure Sandra Boss, the London management consultant whose 7-year-old daughter was famously kidnapped in July by her ex-husband, must feel that way.

But wait. What if she was never married?

Now we begin with the quote marks: Boss “married” her “husband,” “Clark Rockefeller” (born Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter), in 1995 in a small Quaker ceremony in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Nantucket is real. So are Quakers.

Somehow they got divorced, last year, in Boston, and a court-appointed evaluator gave custody to Boss. “Rockefeller” refused, we’re told, to reveal his actual identity, and Boss gave him $800,000 in go-away money.

So Rockefeller (we’re quitting with the quote marks now) grabbed his daughter on a supervised visit and has since said that he just wanted to spend some quality time her, like the rest of their lives.

He was arrested in Baltimore, and returned to Boston, where several other identities became known.

Now that authorities are trying to figure out what charges to lodge against Rockefeller – being a jerk, liar, phony, and weasel not being statute crimes – they have petitioned to see the sealed divorce and custody papers.

But Rockefeller’s lawyer, Stephen Hrones, argued that the papers should remain sealed, because they contain “private” and “personal” information. Besides, he said, "They weren't legally married. How do you divorce when you're not legally married?"

The man who abducted his seven-year-old daughter in Boston last month was arrested in Baltimore over the weekend, and the girl was returned to her mother. On Tuesday the father was charged in a Boston court with felony parental kidnapping, assault and battery. He was held without bail.

And then the mysteries deepened.

Who is "Clark Rockefeller"? Could he be wanted in California under another name? Is he, as he presented himself, a secret agent? Or is he, as investigators believe, a former German exchange student? 

Another question: How could his ex-wife, Sandra Boss, a high-powered executive at the London office of McKinsey & Co., be deceived by such a shady character? Actually, any woman who has ever been wooed by a psychopath will know the answer to that one.

The London papers reported that Boss, who made more than $1 million a year, paid "Rockefeller" $1.5 million last year in exchange for exclusive custody of their daughter, Reigh.

The sticking point for shared custody, Boss said, was that she wanted to see "Clark Rockefeller's" valid birth certificate, and to know, finally, who her husband of 12 years really was.

He refused to reveal his identity, took the money, and began plotting their daughter's abduction, including buying an apartment in Baltimore under another assumed name.

She, finally sure that he wasn't a Rockefeller, changed their daughter's last name to Boss.