Saudi men who divorce non-Saudi women are currently allowed to force their wives to leave the country and in many cases never see their children again.

Unlike in Western countries where marriage to a citizen grants automatic citizenship in and of itself, non-Saudi women who marry Saudi men do not get citizenship and can be asked to leave the country at any time. Since the children are the property of their father, the ex-wives can't take the kids with them.

One divorced mother of six who is originally from Syria told the Saudi Gazette that since she got divorced she has not been allowed to see her kids. She is terrified of being expelled from Saudi Arabia and never seeing them again. Her oldest child is only eight years old, and they "still need the care of their mother," she said.

The Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry is in the process of examining possible solutions, including granting residence permits for women caring for their children.
While this is great in theory, I have a feeling that most Saudi ex-husbands will find a way to throw a monkey wrench into the best laid plans. The Foreign Ministry might let the women stay in the country, but the ex is under no obligation to let them anywhere near the kids.

While I sympathize with the plight of these women, there's an element of "What did you think was going to happen?" going on here. We've said it enough times before — Saudi Arabia is not exactly known for its women's rights movement, and the laws are barbaric at best. When it comes to Saudi marriage proposals, let the buyer beware.

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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.

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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Custody sucks. Everything about it is hard. As a member of the couple getting divorced, nothing is ever good enough. If you get full custody, you're overwhelmed. If you don't get full custody, you're lonely and angry and you have to watch your kids get handed around like a tray of cakes.

A concerned grandmother recently wrote in to The Washington Post, looking for advice. Her three-year-old granddaughter is in primary custody of her daughter's ex-husband, but living arrangements are split in half. Two weeks of the month she's with Dad and new girlfriend, the other two she's with Mom and Grandma, and every other weekend she's with the other grandparents.

The granddaughter's in pre-school while she's with Mom, but Dad thinks she needs more family time and keeps her at home during his weeks. Grandma is concerned the little girl will feel rootless, and that being away from pre-school means "she is losing any consistent social and educational opportunities."

Frankly, honey, there's nothing you can do. As far as feeling rootless goes, the only way to give her one consistent location is to remove at least one important person from the equation and that person is likely going to be Mom. Dad's already got custody and it seems there's nothing wrong with him, so that's unlikely to change. If it were to change, you might be doing the little girl more harm than good when taking her away from one of the homes she's known for two years out of her three-year life.

As for preschool, relax. She's three. She's not missing out on anything. Three-year-olds are barely verbal, so missing out on hanging out with her "friends" and discussing the latest episode of "Go, Diego, Go" isn't going to do her any harm.

Because I work for a website about divorce, I have a Google news alert that notifies me when anything related pops up in the news. These days, it seems to be all about Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, but I ended up reading a funny — and not funny in a good way — question to an advice column over the weekend.

The writer lives in a small town and his wife cheated on him. He's got little kids and wants to know if a formal divorce announcement indicating they've split up might stop the gossip and protect the boys. Samantha Louis wrote a piece a while back about The Sunday Times saying that divorce announcements are a growing trend. But will it work in this case?

Um, no. You live in a small town. Your wife had an affair. You have young twins. This is salacious stuff — the gossip will not be stopped. It certainly won't be stopped when all your friends and neighbors get an engraved announcement in the mail.

Over the last few decades, a lot of the stigma has been removed from things that were previously taboo. People are openly gay, teenagers have babies, and people get divorced. In New York or San Francisco, nobody bats an eye. But small town living means small town gossip. This man can turn the other cheek, wait it out, or move — that's about it.

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A couple divorcing usually means division of assets and two separate households. A study which took place in 12 countries was just released examining the impact separate households have on our environment. Researchers found that use of electricity rose 53 percent, while water usage increased 42 percent. In the US alone, 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity were used in 2005 that would not have been used if couples had stayed together.

Each parent with visitation rights has to find a place that will not only house themselves, but has room for the kids as well. That means children with two bedrooms, two beds, two sets of furniture, two sets of clothes — the whole deal.

Obviously, expecting people to stay together for the sake of the environment is ridiculous and bordering on ludicrous. But it certainly gives you something to think about. Some habits we can change, some we can't. Perhaps this will give us all cause to think about the things we can change to offset the damage we're doing to our environment. Maybe Junior doesn't need that second Chicken Dance Elmo after all.

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