I thought that all states in the U.S. followed separation of powers in their government. Apparently, one Missouri state legislator thinks otherwise. He wants to impeach Circuit Court Judge Christine Hutson for her actions in giving a father, Brent Vance, custody of three of his six children, ages 14, 12, and nine.

This divorce case has political overtones since Claire Noland, who filed for divorce in 2005 against Vance, is the daughter of a former Republican state Senator who ran for Congress against a Democratic opponent who was supported by Judge Hutson. Rep. Lembke has railed against judges and has introduced a constitutional amendment giving the Missouri Senate an advisory role in judicial appointments.

I don't think the impeachment resolution is warranted. Judge Hutson's visitation orders were apparently violated by the mother since the father saw his children for only thirty minutes in a two-year period. The judge found that the children "have been alienated from their father by their mother."

This is a serious finding by the judge, who found that Claire failed to produce "any credible evidence of abuse" which she alleged. After hearing from 17 witnesses, the judge followed the custody advice of the children's attorney who believed the older children, aged 19, 18 and 16, were influencing the younger children against their father.

This is a messy divorce, now under appeal. Impeachment is meant for cases of dereliction of duty, crimes, and misdemeanors. Here the judge did what was best for the children's welfare. It was proper to award custody to the parent who will more likely allow contact with the other parent.

This judge should not face any impeachment hearing. The Legislature should not interfere with the operation of divorce courts. What do you think?

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I've wondered in amazement why some orthodox Jewish husbands are stubbornly reluctant to grant their wives a religious divorce, a get. It could be a power struggle, a control issue or disbelief that the woman stood up to the guy in asking for her freedom.

Jason Moscovitz of Montreal refused a divorce for 15 years after the Canadian civil divorce. Without the get, a religious woman can't remarry in the Jewish faith.

The Canadian Supreme Court upheld the lower court award of $47,500 to Stephanie Burker, the wife, for violating a civil contract to grant her a religious divorce. Moscovitz is again challenging section 21 (1) of the divorce law, claiming it discriminates against his religion and also violates separation of church and state.

Experts agree that the Supreme court will not rehear the case, which was a 7/2 decision. It is clear to me that the penalty clause does not discriminate against his religion since it applies to all religions where spouses refuse a religious divorce. Here Moscovitz already granted the get after a 15 year delay. Perhaps he is wishfully thinking that he can inflict more harm.

Orthodox women, in my opinion, already suffer unequal treatment in securing a religious divorce. Only men can grant a get and a man may remarry after a civil divorce, even if the wife refuses to accept the get. But if women remarry without a religious divorce and have children, the children are viewed as illegitimate, and therefore cannot marry under Jewish law. These women who enter a new relationship and marry without a get, are considered as adultresses and cannot marry under the religious rules.

After a divorce, how would you like it if you had to pay half of the mortgage on the marital home into which your ex has moved his unemployed new girlfriend? It rankles one divorcée each time she delivers her children for visitation with their father.

I wouldn't like it — it's unfair and unacceptable. This is among the horror stories which have resulted from the inability to sell the marital home due to the decline in value. Nationwide, there has been an almost 27 percent fall in housing sales in 2007. Certain markets have been harder hit and in 2008, prices haven't been reduced significantly in those area which enjoyed sharp increases in value.

Unable to sell at a fair price, divorcing couples are forced to stay attached. One woman took her home off the market after a $40,000 reduction produced no sale. She will get a second job to make ends meet.

Often husbands cannot afford separate living quarters if they are contributing to the marital home expenses. In another case, a divorcing husband and wife must continue to live together because they cannot move before the sale of their home. In divorce settlement agreements calling for a 50/50 split of the equity in the property, split couples gulp as they watch the equity shrink.

Without the sale of the home, divorcing couples cannot move on. Economists do not promise an upturn in the price of real estate. It is a market favoring buyers, and buyers are unwilling top pay asking prices. But if sellers paid top dollar when they bought the property, they can't take significant losses, especially going through a divorce.

The Federal Reserve has been lowering interest rates, and it may be necessary for the spouse remaining in the property to refinance at great costs. The immediate future is bleak but we hope in the near term there will be a correction in housing prices, compatible with the economy and consumer confidence.

Coupled with remarriage of a divorced parent and subsequent death, adult children are often left to cope with the relationship and care of stepparents. With fractured and blended families, grown children, and families that are geographically dispersed, many face challenges in caring for stepparents and ex-stepparents.

I can appreciate the anomaly of feeling obligated for providing assistance to the spouse of your parent who has passed away. It feels odd to maintain the relationship with your parent's new husband or wife. In a study of grown children of divorce, Elizabeth Marquardt and Norval Glenn reported that these children are less likely to have a close relationship after their parent remarried. There was concern for how to care for their estranged divorced parents who were ill and living alone.

It's been noted that nearly 40 percent of adults have experienced their parents' divorce. Many others were born to parents who never married each other. The consequences of divorce and remarriage are felt by older children in different ways. Sometimes the stepparent relationship is good but in other cases there is resentment and a fear that their inheritance is at peril. We're in unchartered waters in the study of care for stepparents by adult children.

The problem of divorce, remarriage and the care for elderly parents and stepparents is greater if the children do not regard the stepparent as part of the family. It's the quality of the relationship which determines how or if care is extended to the stepparent who survives the biological parent.

I strongly believe there is something wrong with Saudi Arabian Islamic law. I just came across a very strange and disturbing annulment which shocks my common sense.

A Saudi marriage was forcibly annulled, in absentia, when a judge granted the annulment request from some of the wife's family because she married a man beneath her tribal status.

According to Saudi law, a woman must have permission of her family to marry. In 2003, Fatima received her father's consent to marry her husband, Masour, but her half-brother and other relatives persuaded the father to give them power of attorney to file for an annulment. Unknown to the couple, the case slowly proceeded through the courts and in February 2006, police served the divorce papers showing an annulment, granted nine months earlier.

Under Saudi law, the couple could no longer live together. Fatima went to her mother's home with her two children, aged two and four months. After three months, the couple took up residence in a distant city to live in anonymity. Police found and jailed the family. Fatima decided to stay in jail with her infant son and after nine months moved to an orphanage facility.

The husband's appeal to the court was denied in 2007 and now Fatima has appealed to King Abdullah asking for reversal of the court ruling. I am appalled that a marriage can be annulled for these reasons. It sounds to me that Saudi family law has run amuck. Breaking up a marriage is not compatible with the preservation of family life as advocated by Islamic tradition.

It's doubtful that authorities will intervene in what is considered a private family matter. If the King does not reverse this case, Fatima has threatened to take her own life. Womens' rights are trampled in Saudi Arabia. We in the west do not get it. What do you think?

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I was reading a passionate and painful letter to the editor from a divorced father complaining about the "standard visitation rights" granted him. This dad sees his children every other weekend and every Wednesday night for two hours.

Living two miles away from his ex-wife and their kids, he requested more equal time for visitation. Why did the court decide that visits every other weekend are adequate? Why not every weekend?

Apparently, this guy did not want the divorce and bitterly faults no-fault divorce and the Florida family court system. I strongly support no-fault divorce but that shouldn't preclude reasonable non-custodial parent visitation. It appears that the parents were unable to come to court with a fair visitation agreement, so the judge applied standard visitation rights.

He's correct that visits every other weekend doesn't provide the opportunity to build a meaningful relationship with his kids. School night visits, which usually take place from 6-8 p.m., may interfere with homework or extra-curricular activities. The judge demands that he show "a substantial change in circumstance" to warrant additional visitation time.

This judge is being inflexible and bureaucratic. If he hasn't done anything wrong, this father should be able to make a reasonable request for modification. Children need and want the presence and support of both parents.

If hard feelings and rancor were not present, the split couple should have been able to reach a reasonable and equitable agreement regarding the children. This is an example of the all too common practice of women punishing their ex-husbands, just because they can.

This dad, if he is supporting his children financially, should be allowed to support them with a solid, stable, continuing relationship. Without more information, we can't explore why the mother and court are being hardnosed about additional time for visits. What do you think?

I was reading a column by Glenn Sacks, a men's and fathers' issues columnist, radio commentator, and blogger who criticizes conservatives for their feeble defense of men and fatherhood issues. He perceives a new tack by some Christian conservatives who have embarked upon a softer and more acceptable approach, advocating "shared parenting" in divorce actions.

There's really nothing new here. If religious leaders are facing up to vital family matters like divorce, custody, and the problem of large numbers of fathers frozen out of their children's lives, it is some progress.

Most enlightened people would favor joint custody except where abuse, drugs, or alcoholism was present. If both members of a divorced couple want to be part of their children's lives, they should both have that right, and that responsibility.

Sacks has been labeled, as an "unabashed testosterone-driven advocate for males", regardless of the subject. He quotes Michael McManus, criticizing the norm of granting sole custody to one parent and thereby separating the other from the lives of their children. McManus wants to replace no-fault divorce with mutual-consent divorce.

I don't agree with this proposed change. No-fault divorce became universal because there was a real need to reform the war-like atmosphere of proving fault on the part of one party. The key flaw of mutual consent divorce is that without your spouses consent, or proof of abuse or infidelity, you stay married, no matter what. I believe the Christian conservative movement's hidden agenda is to simply make it more difficult to secure a divorce.

The Canadian Supreme court issued a landmark ruling which establishes precedent for the state to intervene into religious divorce matters. The court ordered an orthodox Jewish husband to pay damages to his former wife for reneging on a promise, made in their 1980 civil divorce, to give his wife a religious divorce, called a get.

This decision could help other Canadian Jewish women who are also marginalized by husbands who refuse a religious divorce. Without a get they cannot remarry in the Jewish religion, and subsequently, can have no more children. The decision will also impact other religions as well.

I fully support the reasoning of the Supreme court but as an American, I worry about that line of separation of church and state. How far can a secular state court go in meddling with religious divorce?

In this case, the court claimed it was only penalizing a breach of a contract which related to a religious issue. If the promise for a get was not part of the case, I don't think it would have been proper for the court to enforce the issuance of a religious divorce. It acknowledged that the infringement upon the husband's religious freedom was inconsequential compared to the wife's loss and suffering.

The husband did relent and agreed to the divorce in 1995 but she opted to continue her action for damages. She originally sued for $1,350,000 including loss of consortium. This amount was unjustified and unreasonable. She was awarded $47,500 for the 15-year breach.

Boundaries for court interference into religious affairs have been widened in a democratic country. It remains to be seen if this is a positive development which could be followed elsewhere. I worry about the consequences of court intervention into religion.

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In November, I wrote about a divorceés appeal to prevent her ex-husband's bankruptcy trustee from seizing her share of their marital home. Wendy Haines won her appeal to the British Appeals Court, which ruled that she wouldn't have to give up her share of the proceeds from the sale of the family home.

After their divorce, David Haines petitioned for bankruptcy. The trustee claimed that the transfer of the sale proceeds of the marital home defrauded David's creditors and was void. I'd written that I thought the High Court judge was wrong in awarding the trustee Wendy's share. If this decision was allowed to stand, it would place all property settlements in jeopardy where an ex-spouse files for bankruptcy.

Wendy does not have to help payoff her ex-husband's creditors by relinquishing part of her divorce settlement. The Court of Appeals reversal of the High Court's decision assures that divorce court settlement agreements could not be undone because one spouse becomes bankrupt. I rooted for Wendy, who now can enjoy a "clean-break divorce."

Vindictive spouses, by deliberately creating huge debts, can defeat a divorce property settlement agreement. In this case, with a 10-year-old child, Wendy needed a financial settlement after divorce which could not later be nullified by a bankruptcy trustee. Divorce actions need some closure and predictability.

The trustee is appealing to the House of Lords, the British court of last resort. I hope the Lords refuse to accept the case, or if they do, will affirm the Appeals Court holding.

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I read in The Guardian that for over eight years, Iqbal Mubarik, owner of a world- wide jewelry enterprise, has been able to thwart numerous court orders for a lump sum payment nearly £5 million (around $10 million) to his former wife. Mubarik's wealth is tied up in trusts, making it difficult to enforce the court orders.

It's puzzling to me that the British family court is unable to enforce their divorce orders. Instead of bringing finality, they are peppered by continuous court filings and appeals. Mubarik has spent £2 million (around $4.5 million) attempting to avoid paying his former wife.

Because of the legal complications, the British government is paying over £30,000 ($65,000) in legal aid to protect his two minor children's interest in the family trust. It's ludicrous that public money is used to protect children of millionaires. The wife, to date, has collected only £266,000 (about $450,000) due to the forced sale of some of the ex's property. He's also in arrears in paying £14,000 a month (around $30,000) for maintenance and legal fees.

The judges have taken notice of this protracted case and the attendant costs. They noted that Mubarik, with world-wide interests, is able to escape paying British taxes. I can't believe the court does not have the requisite tools to bring this charade to an end. This case is making a mockery of the British family justice system. This is a form of legal aid for the rich.

I think that U.S. courts would take more decisive action. What do you think?

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