Was Chris Kattan just being polite? Or did his wife’s filing for divorce surprise him as much as John McCain cancelling the debate surprised Barack Obama? His soon-to-be ex, Sunshine Tutt, rushed divorce papers into the court system just a matter of weeks after the two announced their separation but said they had no plans to divorce.

Granted, there aren’t many divorce papers filed in California that show “Statistical Facts,” part C, as date from marriage to separation: 0 years 2 months.

The rest of the paperwork was pretty much as expected. Respondent (Tutt) requested dissolution of marriage based on (1) irreconcilable differences (although “unsound mind” and “incurable insanity” might have looked tempting, considering Kattan prances around in tights and sticks his crotch in people’s faces as Mango the monkey boy on SNL — probably not the person you want to relax with on a Sunday morning).

Page two declares that there are no community or quasi community assets or debts to be disposed of.

What about those wedding presents, huh?

But there is a check mark in front of “property rights to be determined,” and “spousal support and equalization if the parties do not reach a settlement.”

You know what that means: prenup.

It’s hard to imagine what kind of drama happened in the marriage’s two short months, but Kattan can be sure that a courtroom will hear about it if the terms of the prenup are not upheld.

As we remind lovebirds over and over, discuss finances, put it in writing, and commit to a prenup before getting married. You never know, when things are going well, how quickly they can go wrong.

Australian rabbis are now considering making couples get a prenup, or they will refuse to marry them. Including in that prenuptial agreement would be the mandatory release not only of predetermined amount of cash but something more valuable — a spiritual divorce.

In the Jewish faith, whether one is Reform or Orthodox, couples have a religious marriage as well as a civil marriage. Couples sign a "ketuba," a marriage contract, which signifies their union to their faith and each other.

But after a divorce, unless a “get,” a religious divorce, is given, the wife or husband is not considered spiritually divorced and cannot remarry in the Jewish faith.

These holdouts cause many religious Jews serious angst; some rabbis consider spouses who don’t release the get to be vindictive.

The Chicago Rabbical Council puts it well when it says: “It is the expectation of our tradition that parties that were once bound by sacred vows will respect each other sufficiently to participate fully in the Get process. This cooperation allows both parties to proceed with their new lives, in a spirit of propriety and dignity.”

Unless it doesn’t. One case in Israel has stretched on for 18 years, with the couple legally divorced, but not divorced spiritually.

It is to typical that it is the husband who will not give a get, there is a name for women who have failed to get a spiritual divorce from their ex-husbands: agunot.

Hence, some progressive minded Australian rabbis have discussed making it a mandatory item in a prenup, along with the regular division of assets and determination of financial support.

Here's a startling fact: Divorce rates in United Arab Emirates (UAE) countries have reached 46 percent, according to a Saudi Arabian study.

In the U.S., the land where Islamic leaders criticize the so-called morally loose and oh-too-independent women, the divorce rate is roughly the same.

Seems like a veil has finally been lifted to expose a problem that happens when a husband can just utter "I divorce thee" to his wife and then, poof, the marriage is annulled without going through a judicial process.

Now, according to Islamic scholars meeting in Abu Dhabi as part of the tradition of welcoming Muslim scholars during the holy month, divorce has become an epidemic in the Gulf and a crisis that need to be addressed to prevent family break-ups.

One solution being discussed is getting rid of the ability to have an oral divorce.

Some Arab countries, such as Morocco and Tunisia, have already moved away from oral divorce and now require divorcing couples to appear before a judge, mainly to safeguard the rights of the wife. (Always a good thing).

Regardless of how divorce proceedings are reformed, most scholars agree that preventing family break-ups is a crucial issue.

Sheikha Naima bin Yaish, a Moroccan scholar specializing in family Islamic jurisprudence, urged greater investment in programs that help keep families together and educate couples how to have a fulfilling marriage both sexually and emotionally. She blames the West -- natch -- for our cultural influences, but it sounds like it is a reality that needs to be addressed and cannot be ignored.

“Family now has a different role than it did in previous generations. It’s not possible for newlyweds today to enter into a marriage with the same mentality as their parents,” she said.

Well, at least there’s a man somewhere who believes in marriage. Really believes in marriage.

Mohammed Bello Abubakar was first sentenced to death by an Islamic court in Nigeria, the Jamatu Nasril Islam, if he didn’t divorce all but four of his wives.

How to choose? It’s a much tougher question than what CD’s you’d take to a desert island.

Abubakar argued that nowhere in the Koran is a man limited to four wives, and that none of his wives or 170 children had been forced to beg. The court in its fatwa said that he was guilty whether “out of ignorance” of the law or “by mistake,” and urged him to seek forgiveness or prepare to die.

He defied the court. “Some of these are people I have married and stayed with for over 30 years,” he told a local newspaper. “How can they expect me to leave them within two days?"

In the face of international coverage, the court lifted the death sentence.

Then it said Abubakar and his 86 wives and his 170 children would be evicted and banished from the state, if he didn’t divorce all but four of his wives.

Local sources told the media that Abubakar has agreed finally to go to court and get a mass divorce. He said he needed a few days to return all of the wives to their families. (Does he even know all their names? And what about child custody?)

But before the world could absorb that news, this just in. Abubakar, who has become a Nigerian cult figure in the space of a month, has now announced that not only will be not divorce his current wives, he plans to marry more.

Japanese husbands may want to cry “entrapment” over the practices of a company that hires professional seducers to help unhappy wives get rid of their husbands.

In most U.S. states, you can just say sayonara to husbands who are belligerent, boorish or belching bores. But In Japan, where women’s rights are not highly valued, wives now see the value in fetching divorces by using fetching women to lure their husbands, thus giving them the necessary grounds for divorce.

The Times of London ran an excerpt from Lesley Downer’s new book, The Last Concubine, which reports the blow by blow — pardon the expression — of several of these stings. Here’s one:

“3.30 pm. Mr. A is outside a bank in a busy part of Ikebukuro, a faintly seedy area of Tokyo, waiting for his date. He beams as she teeters across the road on high heels. Kyoko, 20, is half his age. She has a mane of black hair, sloe eyes, a fetching smile and a cute giggle. Her blouse is open to reveal her cleavage and she has on a short skirt and sheer black tights. Mr. A is a bald 40-year-old salesman in a crumpled gray suit and glasses.

“Mr. A doesn’t know that a team of private investigators is recording his every move. The boss, the ebullient Mr. Tomiya, lurks behind a lamppost on the other side of the road and takes photographs as Kyoko meets Mr. A. Tomiya’s equipment includes a packet of cigarettes and a pen, both of which are actually cameras. Shimizu, a heavy-set man with a bullet head and cropped hair, carries a black bag. It contains a camera with which he films continuously through a tiny hole in the bag. A third man acts as a lookout. …

“When presented with the evidence, the embarrassed husband not only agrees to the divorce but agrees to favorable terms for the wife.”

Imagine being a refugee from a war-torn country and being told that in order to stay in safety, you had to get divorced. I’m pretty sure we can all say that would be tragic and a travesty of justice.

Now imagine you had two spouses, and the country you were living in said you had to obey the law and pick one. Not such a travesty of justice anymore, is it?

An unidentified Iraqi man has recently decided that he would rather go back to Iraq than stay in Denmark and give up one of his wives. Man, even writing the words “one of his wives” freaks me out. It seems like many of the men I know have a hard enough time being married to one woman, let alone two.

The lawyer handling his case explains the situation like this: “Most of all his wives are saddened by this affair; they don't feel welcome in Denmark.” When I read that the first time, it sounded like they were saying most of his wives were saddened. As in, most of them are saddened, but the rest are handling it like troopers. How many wives does this guy have? But no, he’s only got two — and they’re both bummed.

The crazy thing about this whole situation is that if he did divorce one of his wives, no one in the family would face deportation. They’d all get to stay. The wife who got the axe could still stay in the same house. Let’s face it, they’re in Denmark — nobody’s going to stone him for having two baby mamas. But he likes his family the way it is, so he’s packing up the wives and kids and heading back home. “Now they have left to see how things are in Basra,” says his lawyer.

Well, I think we all know how things are in Basra, but the best of luck to him. I hope to God nothing happens to his children when he gets there or he will be regretting his decision for the rest of his days.

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Phil Collins isn’t having Another Day in Paradise this week, because he will be paying his third wife, Swiss-born Orianne Cevey, around $47 million in their divorce case, the largest payout ever by a British entertainer.

But at least the 57-year-old singer-songwriter has had a Groovy Kind of Love in the past few years with WCBS-TV anchorwoman Dana Tyler, a divorced woman, 49, who at least is closer to his age.

The two met when Tyler interviewed him in 2005 and they realized there was something In the Air Tonight.

Cevey acknowledged in a later interview that the couple had grown apart in 2005, and were leading Separate Lives. “We really got on well and then we realized our interests were not the same anymore,” said Cevey, 35, who met the singer when she was 22.

But she says, he will always Be in My Heart since she is looking on the “positive side.”

He has agreed that That’s Just the Way It Is, and, frankly, I Don’t Care Anymore.

Collins will keep a home in near Lake Geneva, in Switzerland, near their two young sons, Nicolas, 8, and Matthew, 4, as well as a bachelor pad in New York and a home in England.

But this is shaping up to be a far more amicable divorce than his previous two. Maybe he has learned from experience.

To end his relationship with his second wife, Jill Taverman, after he met Orianne, Collins gave her the heave-ho via fax. Apparently he couldn’t wait One More Night.

(The fax maneuver was worthy of the Artful Dodger.)

However, he still was generous in his divorce settlement, which at the time was more than $34 million for a 14 year relationship. They had a daughter, Lily, together.

Collins also had an earlier marriage to Andrea Bertorelli, which ended in 1980, and produced two children, Simon, 28, and Joelyi, 33.

Like everywhere else in the world, divorce rates are rising in Egypt. It's not too surprising, really — we've written before about the rising statistics of divorce in basically every country where it's legal. According to an article I recently read, though, the rate of divorce in Egypt isn't just up. It's way up.

It seems that almost 50 percent of couples are getting divorced. That's comparable to most of the Western world, but rare for an Islamic country. Here's the interesting part, though — these couples are getting divorced within the first four years of marriage, and one of the two leading causes is sexual frustration.

Islamic and sociological scholars are blaming the harsh rules on sexuality outside of marriage. Apparently, even kissing outside of marriage is condemned. While I'm sure that keeps their teen pregnancy rates down, it doesn't take a genius to figure out why the Egyptian people are frustrated.

In the Western world, we experienced similar troubles until the advent of birth control and the womens' lib movement. The difference was that in our society prior to that, divorce was still largely stigmatized and woman couldn't really work. Apply the same sexual rules to economically free couples who are able to get divorced whenever they want to, and you've got yourself a one-way ticket to splitsville.

Let's face it, if you tell a bunch of adolescents and young adults that they can't get past first base without getting married, you're going to see a lot of ill-advised weddings. What did they think was going to happen?

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The hand-wringing over Silda Wall Spitzer's future with her now defamed husband, the governor of New York, has officially begun. Newspapers, talk radio, TV pundits, therapists and armchair shrinks — yeah, that's you and me and all of us — all chipping in with our two cents.

Silda, Silda, Silda... Whatever was she thinking standing by her cheatin' hubby, the gov of New York? Well, she and the gov are married for 20 years. They have three kids together. She shelved her prestigious and lucrative legal career to raise the kids and to be a dutiful political wife. She's also a passionate philanthropist and organizer, having founded a children's advocacy program (Children for Children), among other activities.

This is a dynamic woman. She is no fool. Will her children, three beautiful girls, ever be able to trust the men in their lives? What message does it send to them if she stays?

All bets are off on Silda's marriage. Yep. In what's likely to become the Super Bowl of divorces, I anticipate a separation and divorce proceedings to begin within six to eight months, or at least before the end of 2008.

The two met in 2001 and married in 2006 in Costa Rica. A publicist for Pink simply said the pair had separated and "While the marriage is over, their friendship has never been stronger".

Yeah, everyone says they want to stay friends right after a breakup.

Rumors had been swirling about the marriage being on the rocks, probably mainly due to the couple rarely being seen in public together. Last August, Hart dismissed all the rumors as "just a bunch of trash talk".

It seems that it was their separate careers that perpetrated the split. Pink is working on a new album and will be returning to the studio soon, and Hart has been opening new nightclubs, the first of which is scheduled to open in May at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas.

It would be nice to see the pair remain friends, but let's face it, nothing sours normally amicable people like divorce proceedings.

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