Last week, we highlighted the story of a husband who threatened to divorce his ex-smoker wife if she lit up again; this week, cigars are the point of contention.

An otherwise happy Egyptian wife is divorcing her husband — and his stogie habit — reports Russian news source Novosti. The woman alleges that her partner refuses to smoke outside their home, and, consequently, she has developed a heavy allergy.

In her own words:

"My husband deliberately puts my life to danger. And I am not ready to sacrifice my life for the sake of love for him," she said.

She calls him "inflexible"; he calls her "inhumane":

"I am a draftsman engineer, and I often take additional work home to earn more money for my loved but ungrateful wife," he lamented.

Feels like everything's going up in smoke these days...

Gov. Sarah Palin may be not be getting a wink of sleep now that an Alaska state judge allowed a probe to go forward into whether she abused her power. The Republican vice presidential nominee is under fire for pressuring Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire her ex brother-in-law, a state trooper.

The charges are that pressure to fire the trooper came from the Governor herself, her husband, Todd, and her staff. After Monegan did not agree, she fired him, citing disagreement over budget cuts.

And to her, that's a heck of a good reason and why should it be questioned otherwise?

On Thursday Judge Peter Michalski threw out the lawsuit filed by five Republican state legislators who claimed that Palin was the victim of an unfair partisan probe. The Republicans appear to be worried that a damaging report may surface before Election Day and affect voters. Or at least the kind of voters who vote based on performance.

The attorney for the five state legislators, Kevin Clarkson, claimed that the body that ordered the investigation had exceeded its authority.

But Michalski agreed with defense attorney Peter Maassen, who argued that the Legislature has broad authority to investigate the governor. The mere appearance of impropriety does not mean any individual's right to fairness was violated, Michalski wrote in his decision.

“It is legitimately within the scope of the legislature's investigatory power to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the termination (of) a public officer the legislature had previously confirmed,” the judge wrote.

Talk about a bitter pill. In order to get health insurance, a devoted husband divorced his wife just so she would qualify for Medicaid and could have chemotherapy.

As Rudy Friece, a 72-year-old truck driver, told the “Star Banner” newspaper in Ocala, Florida, he and Emily had been happily married for almost 50 years, had two children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. But they divorced in order for Emily to have weekly $2,800 treatments for terminal bone cancer.

Through the divorce they wiped out her right to their joint assets, thus making her eligible for Medicaid, which is intended for the poor. It would pay all of the medically necessary costs.

Medicare, which Emily qualified for based on her age, has deductibles and upper limits for hospitalization. In addition, Medicare would reimburse only 80 percent of approved out-patient treatments and doctor bills.

She could stay married and collect Medicare, but it wouldn’t cover enough; or she could get divorced and get Medicaid to cover her treatments.

Isn’t this the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard?

Friece said his wife refused to consider a divorce for a while out of principle. She burst into tears at the thought of dissolving their marriage. But as her cancer progressed, she gave in. “I told her she had no choice,” Friece told the newspaper. “She was getting worse and worse.”

In 2005, the couple picked up a guidebook on marital dissolutions, and marched into an Ohio courthouse, their $75 divorce petition in hand. Do you know what the judge told this loving couple, divorcing out of desperation?

Rudy Friece said the judge told them, “I've never given anyone a dissolution that had been married this long.”

Jo Wood has tried everything to get her husband to come back. Her kids have intervened. So have friends. But maybe the thought of paying $90 million may finally make Ron Wood sober.

As we reported in July, The Rolling Stones star, 61, was having an affair with Russian cocktail waitress Ekaterina Ivanova, 20 who encouraged his drinking and offered freeflowing vodka among other vices. Finally, after countless pleas from his family, Wood agreed to go to rehab.

But now that he's out, he's out and about with Ivanova again and was just seen taking her out to a London restaurant.

Natually the London papers caught them. And now Wood's wife Jo, 53, is fuming mad. After 23 years of marriage, she has consulted with divorce lawyers.

Jo Wood told “The Daily Mail”: "We've been through too much together not to stay as friends whatever happens next. … Despite everything I still really care for Ronnie."

Sounding the way we hope all women going through divorce will sound, she said: "Everything is fine, and everything is going to be fine.”

And she admitted that after spending “so many years concentrating on Ronnie … suddenly I can now concentrate on me.” And if that weren’t enough, she said, the stress has made her drop a little weight.

As has benn reported, Wood's wife has played an integral part in his career, working as his executive assistant, holding a controlling stake in the couple's finances, and acting as his personal management assistant on a number of profitable deals. Jo also serves as a joint director of Rockyarch, a literary and artistic limited company Ron Wood incorporated in 1986, and is company secretary for his fine art publisher and gallery Scream Art.

Pop sensation Pink isn’t blue that she’s through with her ex-husband, the motocross biker Carey Hart. But she does blame her career. She’s not alone in feeling work drove her marriage straight into the dirt.

In an interview, Pink says, “It ‘s such a cliché when you talk about a Hollywood divorce, but the scheduling did get very hard. And it seemed that I was always the one left in charge of it. I got tired of being the Schedule Woman.”

Indeed, it can be exhausting having to juggle so much. Which is why one West Virginia University study shows that working women have a higher divorce rate and cites as a major irritant the disparity between the housework they do, and the housework their mate does.

Maybe it’s also because guys seem to have the lazy gene but when you are capably steering a demanding career, it’s not easy to come home and cater to a husband who collapses into a chair and expects burgers and beer, even if he has had a hard day being a Moto X daredevil.

She married Hart in 2006 in a celebrity-packed wedding in Costa Rica. He, now 32, was a star of “The Surreal Life” reality show and is famous for his tattoo parlors, Hart & Huntington, in Las Vegas, Cabo, and Hawaii.

When you have a career, and like Pink, you are young, successful and fun, you don’t need to put up with a guy who isn’t doing even 65 percent of his part. Financial independence does give you the ability to say, or sing, “See ya.”

In fact, that is what the 28-year-old Pink did. In a new song, she belts out the following lyrics, which could be interpreted as a slap in you-know-who’s face.

“And I don’t need you/ And guess what?/ I’m having fun.”

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.

It’s a “Basic Instinct” to want to raise your child. But Sharon Stone has lost the chance to have 8-year-old son Roan live with her after a California family court ruled that Roan will reside fulltime in San Francisco with her ex-husband, Phil Bronstein.

Stone had petitioned the court to allow Roan to live in Los Angeles for the school year. Instead, according to court documents, Bronstein, whom Stone divorced in 2004, will have “permanent physical custody of child.” Previously, the couple had shared physical and legal custody.

The decision said, “Court finds the Respondent (Sharon Stone) failed to meet her burden of proof and denies her request for modification of custody.”

There’s no sugarcoating here. It is highly unusual for a father to have permanent custody of a child so young.

California courts may ask the “reasonable preference of the child,” but the statute is very clear that that is only “if the court deems the child to be of reasonable intelligence, understanding, age and experience to express such a preference.”

How old would that usually be? “Possibly 15, but usually 16,” says FWW’s Clifford M. Solomon, a divorce attorney for the White Plains, N.Y., firm of Solomon & Tanenbaum. “The court looks at the maturity of the child since you don’t want a situation where a father bribes a child to live with him to stop child support payments.”

So why would Bronstein get fulltime custody of his young son?

It’s too bad their names were kept secret, because an English couple in Gloucestershire has had a doozey of a divorce. The husband, an investment banker who worked in the City, was worth a bundle. They were married 11 years. There were no children, although she miscarried in 2001. But there were three horses, including a foal her husband gave her in 2004.

The husband and wife separated in 2005, with $4.5 million in marital assets. In 2006, a judge decided that the wife should get $148,000 a year in maintenance, including $93,000 a year for the upkeep of her three horses, and a one-time payment of $1.7 million so she could buy a home with enough grazing land for her horses.

Turns out, the wife was passionate about the sport of Eventing, which is a kind of triathlon for horse and rider.

The sympathetic judge noted that before the marriage the wife had worked part time in the City, London’s financial center, but she had given that up to become an interior decorator and part-time book-keeper. “In any event,” he said, “the wife does not want a 9-to-5 job, because this would not give her enough time with her horses.”

It was another recent trial in which pets became a major battleground in a divorce.

An Australian woman's split form her husband in Saudi Arabia has her trapped in the country, reports Arab News.

The woman, who is married to an Australian man, split from her husband while living in Saudi Arabia. Her husband proceeded to hide her passport and file for custody of the couple's children with a Saudi court. Consequently, she cannot leave the country or take her children elsewhere.

On top of a residency crisis, local police have reprimanded her for showing her face to neighbors.

Her husband has since gone into hiding and left her stranded. Australian officials and ambassadors have not been especially helpful to the woman, who could face arrest if her husband does in fact hold her residency papers, and "obtaining an exit visa may be difficult without her husband's permission," says the article.

Add two more dogs to the list of victims of divorce. While a golden retriever and a border collie's owners, Gary and Lula Schneider, were in the midst of a divorce, the dogs stayed with Gary's parents. When Gary unexpectedly passed away in the middle of proceedings, the dogs remained with their "grandparents," reports cleveland.com.

Now Lula wants her dogs. The result: a custody battle, which appears to be more bitter than the original divorce case. Lawyers on both sides have presented a strong case — and it's wonderful to see two good homes for these animals — but Lula won in the end. Gary's parent's plan to appeal.

In other pet-relationship news, New York actor Joseph Petcka is facing up to two years in prison for killing his girlfriend's cat. He says it was self-defense (the seven-pound feline attacked); she says it was a demented case of jealousy. The New York Daily News revealed that the cat had been declawed; Petcka is expected to explain himself, er, take the stand today.