It looks like Jim and Dina McGreevey are back in court this morning dealing with alimony. Yes, again. Talks have broken down again and they have to go in and have the judge sort out their mess to figure out who owes what to whom. Raise your hand if you're surprised. It's OK, I'll wait.

Perhaps I am the only person on the planet who is infinitely sympathetic to Jim McGreevey. Britney Spears, too. Oh, and let's not forget the ever pleasant Heather Mills?

I love these fine, upstanding citizens because they keep being moronic and I keep getting paid to write about it. If they could get it together to act like civilized human beings I'd be looking for a job right now.

Last week they finally agreed on custody arrangements for their daughter. Lawyers are hanging out behind closed doors and the estranged couple meet this morning at 10 a.m. to try and hammer out the financial details of the divorce and generally make a spectacle of themselves.

I hope it takes a long time — my youngest needs new glasses and my oldest is looking into summer camps.

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Although it's only May of 2008, Mr. Kent Gramm is having a bad year. After 30 years of marriage and more than 20 years of teaching, Mr. Gramm is getting divorced and leaving his teaching post at the same time.

Mr. Gramm currently teaches at Wheaton College, a well known conservative Evangelical Christian school, which requires all of its employees to display behavior acceptable to the school's religious teaching.

All employees sign a "statement of faith and community covenant," which spells out exactly the kind of behavior the school will accept.

Drinking, smoking, and gambling are not on the list, and dancing was only allowed four years ago after being banned during the Civil War.

While the school acknowledges that divorce can happen, they need to know all of the details of the divorce to determine if the employee has broken his signed statement by exhibiting unacceptable behavior.

Mr. Gramm acknowledges that he signed the statement but does not believe he should have to disclose the details of his divorce. As he is aware that not disclosing the details will get him fired, he has agreed to resign and will stay only until the end of the school term.

"I think it's wrong to have to accuse your spouse and to discuss with your employer your personal life and marital situation," Gramm said. "But I don't feel badly treated. There has been an attitude of compassion here."

As the school is concerned about how the behavior of one of its teachers will affect the student body, Mr. Gramm decided to discuss his resignation and the reasons behind it with his students. "I want them to know that divorce happens," Gramm said. "That you aren't deserted by God because your life doesn't turn out the way you expect. I hope this helps them acquire a broader understanding of what Christianity is and what faithfulness means."

Women's rights activists are up in arms about a contentious divorce case in Tennessee that may result in the local marital property laws to be changed. According to an article in Tennessean.com, "a wage-earning husband gets to keep $1.7 million in stock. His homemaker wife gets nothing."

Okay, I admit, when we're talking about the rights of the stay-at-home spouse — and let's face it, while many husbands including my own are starting to stay home, it's generally the wife — and there are a few million dollars in play, I can see why people are getting concerned. Some are suggesting that if this settlement goes through as is, it could be precedent setting and go against state laws.

But, and there's a really big but, I don't think that this case has anything to do with the wife being a homemaker. The court says that the husband is being allowed to keep the stock and not share it because all he did was hold it after receiving it as a gift from his father. Her employment status is irrelevant.

In my opinion — and I know this is going to make me the bad guy — when you decide not to work, you take a risk. A gift given to one individual is just that — a gift with only one intended recipient. If Daddy had given him a cheese knife, is she entitled to half of that, too?

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I have never been so angry in my life. Coming from a woman who separated from her husband after four months of marriage, that's saying something.

A girl in Yemen went to court last week to prosecute her father for making her marry a man 22 years her senior. She went to the court by herself looking for a judge to try her case. Her name is Nojoud Muhammed Nasser, and she is eight.

My son is eight. He does not yet have the hand-eye coordination to play his brand new PlayStation. He still needs me to cut his meat for him when it's too tough. On rough days, he still sleeps with his blankie.

"Whenever I wanted to play in the yard he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him."

She wanted to play in the yard. The girl is trying to sit outside and build goddamn sand castles and her "husband" drags her upstairs and rapes her.

Up until 10 years ago, Yemeni law said that children could not marry until 15. In 1998 that law changed, allowing parents to contract their children out into marriage, although their spouse is not allowed to engage them in sexual activity until maturity. For the record, that 10-year-old law was enacted two years before little Nojoud's birth.

The husband is in jail. "Yes I was intimate with her, but I have done nothing wrong, as she is my wife and I have the right and no one can stop me. But if the judge or other people insist that I divorce her, I will do it. It's ok."

Well, thank you, Faez. That's very big of you.

The father, who beat her when she objected to the marriage, was also jailed but released when he suffered health problems. The court does not plan to return her to her family, as there would be nothing to stop them from forcing her to marry again. She will instead be placed in the care of a non-governmental children's organization.

There but for the grace of God go we.

It looks like, once again, people are in an uproar about the divorce process becoming more automated. We talked about this a while back when one Florida county made it possible for spouses to fill out their divorce applications online. Now Australia's in on it, and they're complaining too.

"It's an unfortunate reflection of the times in which we live that these things could be so extraordinarily convenient as to perhaps make people rush to that kind of action," says Mark Holzworth of the Australian Family Association Queensland. "I think sometimes the cold hard document in front of us...causes us to reflect a little more, think a little deeper."

Sorry, Mark, but I'm going to have to disagree on this one. Divorce is never easy, and making the red-tape a little simpler to navigate doesn't make it so.

This kind of thing makes me crazy. The "family association" types act like we're all waltzing around in perfectly happy marriages until we read in the paper that we can break up our entire family online. Then we're tripping over our index fingers to click, "divorce."

No. That's not how it goes and it's not how it ever has gone and it's not how it ever will go. Normal people do not get divorced this way. If someone wants to get divorced because of this, nobody wanted to be married to them anyway.

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When you have a Google News alert for the term "divorce," you get some crazy stuff in your inbox. Most of it gets immediately thrown into the virtual round file, but this recent piece in the Korean Times stopped me in my tracks.

"There may be many factors driving couples to a divorce, but what makes them run out of patience the quickest?" Hmm. Good question.

According to a statistics from the Korea Wedding Culture Research Center, when there's cheating involved, couples tend to hit the courts between seven and eight years post "I do." Family troubles bring the split after 3.7 years and money drama comes in at around 5.9. Drug addiction — drug addiction! Did that really make the list? — causes a split after around 6.6 years, and physical illness comes in at 5.3 years.

Interesting stuff, but what does it mean?

What I took away from it is the fact that people will stay with a crack addict or an adulterer longer than they will stay with someone who has a pain in the ass mother. Crazy stuff, and it makes me realize my mother wasn't so archaic when she told me I wasn't marrying the man, I was marrying his family.

Also noteworthy are the answers from the couples who didn't necessarily get divorced. Apparently, Korean couples lose sexual chemistry with their spouses after three or four years, causing researchers to suggest that Koreans get a three-year-itch to coincide with our seven-year-itch. Who knew?

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It seems like judges outside of the West are starting to understand the value of joint custody, in India at least. I read an article over the weekend stating joint custody rulings are becoming a growing trend in India, and I have to say, I'm impressed.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the rising divorce rate in India. With a rising divorce rate comes the need for more enlightened views on divorce rulings — when it's the rule, rather than the exception, better standards need to be put in place. Thankfully, it looks like judges are starting to pay attention to that in their custody decisions. While there is no law in place demanding joint custody in cases where there is no history of problematic parenting, lawyers are calling for one.

"Most of the couples who come to seek divorce are good people but the problem is that they may not be compatible and hence unable to live with each other. But the child needs to grow in a healthy environment with the involvement of both the parents," says Mrunalini Deshmukh, a family law attorney.

Finally, people are starting to understand that just because Mom and Dad can't get along does not mean one of them is a crappy parent. It's not the kids' fault they can't work it out.

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As a recovering Mormon, I love me a good Mormon joke. I love the bigamy jokes and the 15-children-per-family jokes and the magic underwear jokes. But Mitt Romney? Perfection in joke form.

Back in December, there was great hullaballoo in the divorce industry about a new study showing that divorce was bad for the environment. A lot of taxpayer money was spent discovering that two toasters use more energy than one, and the Christian right took the opportunity to claim that this was further evidence that they were correct in saying divorce was the work of the devil.

Now the delightful Bella DePaulo at Huffington Post has taken it upon herself to make the should-have-been-obvious connection between Mitt Romney and the study in question. She wrote a time capsule piece, jokingly looking forward eight years to see what will happen as a result of the environmental study.

"Some are intent on establishing households comprised of just one man and one woman," says her fictitious Romney of the future. "I am a Mormon and Mormons have a long, rich history of living with many people under the same roof. We marry again and again and again, and we stay married each time."

In DePaulo's prediction, while Romney didn't do well in his 2008 presidential bid, he fares much better in 2016 because of his heavy focus on bigamy and the environment.

She also predicts a new discontent among children of this new generation. She says that children who would have believed their parents stayed together for the sake of the kids would finally know the real truth... "Mom and Dad were not protecting them; they were saving the planet."

It looks like it's not just the adulterers getting divorced these days. According to an article I read over the weekend, many evangelical Christian groups are relaxing both their attitudes about and criteria for divorce.

Traditionally speaking, the only acceptable reason to get divorced in many of these circles was adultery. I guess that meant that if he beat the kids you could leave, but you couldn't make it legal. Nowadays, many Christian churches are expanding their list of reasons to split to include abuse, abandonment, and emotional cruelty, and they're saying all of the above reasons can be biblically justified.

Well, it's about time. Here's my issue: There seems to be a prevailing belief in the churches of the nation that says divorce is wrong because God can solve your marriage problems. That may be, but both husband and wife have to want to make it right.

If one of the members of the union is being unliveable and sees no reason whatsoever to change their behavior, why should the victim be forced to remain in the marriage?

Try counselling, they say. But what if your spouse won't go? Pray together, they admonish. But what if your spouse won't pray?

Paula White, the divorced author of You're All That, says that God can mend any relationship "if both persons are willing to come into alignment with His principles." Frankly, if both parties are willing to align on any principles, their marriage can probably be saved. If not, let them get divorced and make somebody else miserable.

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It turns out flirting on Facebook can not only lead to a divorce, but be used as evidence in one.

I've talked before about the rising statistics of people using electronic evidence in divorce proceedings as proof of adultery, but according to divorce attorneys, it's also being used as evidence of unreasonable behaviour.

So even if you're just flirting and not cheating, your spouse can use it against you in a court of law.

Really, this shouldn't be too surprising. Flirting with friends, strangers, and old flames is pretty unreasonable within the context of marriage. It's a whole lot more unreasonable when you do it in a way that they can not only see, but print out and prove.

According to Antonia Love, head of family law at a British law firm, "People who use social networking websites to send flirtatious emails to people who are not their partners are often lulled into a false sense of security that they are doing nothing wrong because correspondence is electronic and therefore isn't real life."

Here's an idea. Take what you're doing, and then pretend your spouse is doing the same thing. You're staying up late, sending Facebook messages full of winking smileys to your ex.

Would you high-five your spouse for doing it? Would you give them your blessing? Would you deem it to be reasonable married behavior? If not, cease and desist, or they'll see you in court.

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