After 19 years, actors Marg Helgenberger and Alan Rosenberg have separated, reports The New York Daily News.

Helgenberger gained popularity on CSI and China Beach, while Rosenberg — who is currently the president of the Screen Actors Guild — is known for his roles on L.A. Law, Cybill, and Chicago Hope, among dozens of other television programs and movies.

The two met on soap opera Ryan's Hope in the mid-80s; they met again a few years later by coincidence at a Los Angeles bank. According to the Post article, they moved in together shortly after their chance encounter and eloped in 1989. They most recently appeared together on CSI in 2007.

Media reports have indicated that Helgenberger may be attempting to distance herself from Rosenberg as he enters tumultuous times with SAG — a strike is looming over Internet/new media residual payments. Perhaps other SAG members would do such a thing — but his wife? Not likely.

The couple has an 18-year-old son together, which makes FWW wonder if maybe they stayed together for his benefit? Seems a more plausible, answer, besides growing apart, of course. Let's not forget that a 19-year Hollywood marriage is unheard of these days.

US Weekly quoted Helgenberger's rep, saying the two have chose to "take some time apart" and that they continue to love and support one another. Perhaps it's a temporary separation. Either way, we applaud them for their amicable split. Role models for divorce, one could say...

As the economy worsens, forecasters predict that divorces will slow. Fortunately, local governments are offering relief to those seeking to amicably split who might not otherwise have the money to cover hundreds of dollars in legal fees.

North Dakota's Burleigh County recently introduced the Domestic Relations Summary Proceedings for those making less than $20,000, reports local area news station KFYR. Most likely unable to afford the cost of an attorney, qualified Burleigh County residents can take advantage of a new simplified process and forms.

By studying previous county divorce cases, a local law office developed a set forms and directions, which includes step-by-step instructions for both the plaintiff and defendant. The packets are available at the county clerk's office for $5.

Beyond purchasing the Summary Proceedings paperwork, the plaintiff must pay an $80 filing fee; the defendant, $50.

North Dakota isn't the only state looking to lend a hand. The Self Help Center of St. Petersburg, Florida, now offers residents a drop-in legal center, says Tampa Bay's 10connects.com.

Lawyers are on hand to assist with divorce procedures, filling out forms, and answering questions, all to the tune of $1 a minute. While the legal experts can't represent or file paperwork, they are available to counsel several days a week through the Pinellas County Clerks.

In the movie “First Wives Club,” Ivana Trump immortalized the words, “Don’t get mad, get everything.” In her indomitable way, she has done just that by shedding her latest husband, Rossano Rubicondi after seven months of marriage.

In the announcement, Trump said, “Rossano wants to live in Miami and work in Milan. But I am a New Yorker and my family, friends and businesses are here.”

It was no surprise that the marriage disintegrated. After Rubicondi, 35, was photographed snuggling with a blonde and licking a brunette named Sara Varone over the weekend, Trump, 59, trumped him by announcing that she had filed a legal separation three months ago and already said “Ciao.”

As she has often advised others, Ivana Trump had a pre-nup before walking down the aisle in the gardens of Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach estate belonging to her ex-husband, Donald.

Donald Trump told The New York Post that the family is happy.

"You can't be overly surprised by this, it's unfortunate it [the marriage] ever took place," The Donald told The Post. "The marriage was unfortunate and now it has to be unwound."

The Donald and Ivana had three children together: Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric.

You may recall a piece we covered in early October entitled, "Man Poses As Divorce Lawyer." At the time, Arizona resident Gary Karpin was facing 24 counts of theft and one count of fraud as a result of posing as a divorce lawyer and deceiving at least two dozen clients. (Check out how he was caught.)

Well, the verdict's in, and Karpin has been found guilty of all charges and has been sentenced to 15 years of jail time, reports zoniereport.com.

According to the article, the 57-year-old was ashamed of his behavior and said he would accept any punishment the court handed down (not like he has choice...).

What's more troubling than the $300,000 he essentially stole from his clients is the financial condition he left them in. One woman, who paid Karpin $90,000, was forced to declare bankruptcy and is unable to purchase plane tickets to visit her ailing parents.

There was no talk of restitution, but an additional hearing will address the matter, and a civil case has been filed against Karpin, as well.

Photo: The Arizona Republic

Parents worried about the lasting impact of divorce on their children can take solace from Georgina Bloomberg. The equestrian daughter of New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Georgina says that her parents’ divorce was “the best thing that ever happened.” She was 9 years old when her mother, Susan, and father divorced after 17 years of marriage. That was 1993.

The Bloombergs had just moved into a townhouse on East 79th Street when her parents sat her and her sister, Emma, down and told them they were divorcing.

“I went from having parents who didn't get along and never wanted to be around each other to having parents who are friends,” she told The Post’s Page Six Magazine. In fact, her parents loved she and her sister enough to minimize hostilities and work on an amicable relationship.

It was so amicable that they continued living together in the town house for a year after the split.

At that time, Susan Bloomberg started dating real estate mogul Richard Chapman; then Georgina, her mother, and her sister moved into Chapman's home on East 67th Street. When Susan and Richard broke up, in 1996, she and her daughters moved back in with Mike Bloomberg, who was not yet Mayor of New York City.

“My mom's boyfriends would come and pick her up, but it seemed normal," Georgina added.

Luckily Bloomberg's success as a businessman provided a lot of space in the house. But under any circumstances, this was a divorce where the couple realized that they were bonded forever because of the kids. They could find ways to like each other based on what initially attracted them to each other, and most importantly their mutual love for their children.

Even now that Michael Bloomberg is dating Diana Taylor, they often get together with Susan, now single, for family functions.

Moses may have passed the Ten Commandments on to the Israelites, but a preacher has added a new one. Thou must have sex every day for a week. And guess what? Couples say it is helping their marriage.

As The New York Times reported, on November 16, Rev. Ed Young, a TV host and pastor of the evangelical Fellowship Church in Texas, told his parishioners to have a week of "congregational copulation." He did so while preaching in front of a large bed and reading from the Bible.

In encouraging people to have more sex, he noted that it would turn people from "whining about the economy to whoopee."

And having more whoopee certainly has helped improve people's moods and mindsets.

Lisa Young, the pastor's wife, who gamely dressed in knee-high black boots and jeans, noted that a week of sex may even help people forgive infidelities, addiction to pornography and bitter hurts, although, she said, in addition, “there’s been some pain.”

As we've reported, infidelity is hard to forgive; maybe sex can be as helpful as therapy, which many can't afford right now. It's hard to have sex with someone you feel betrayed by, but maybe the lack of sex was a cause of problems too.

After all, in the early stages of courting before marriage, most couples are having a lot of sex. That eventually tapers off with the strain of kids, jobs and mortgages. The Youngs, parents of four children, have been married for 26 years and can relate to these real-life problems. As Rev. Young jokes, kids stand for "keeping intimacy at a distance successfully."

If you make the time to have sex, it will bring you closer to your spouse and to God, he said. You will perform better at work, leave a loving legacy for your children to follow, and may even prevent an extramarital affair.

Some day, in addition to taking your child’s temperature if you think she’s sick, there might come a time to take a child’s cortisol level to see if the arguing between you and your husband (or your ex) is stressing her out.

Researchers know that children who get upset when their parents fight are more likely to have later psychological problems. Science Daily reports that cortisol, a stress hormone, may be a culprit, and also a good marker.

Three universities — Rochester, Minnesota, Notre Dame — collaborated on the study, which looked at 208 mostly white 6 year olds and their mothers. The “arguments” were not face to face, but simulated arguments on the telephone. During and after the call, the researchers measured the child’s distress, hostility, and level of involvement in the argument. They also asked the mothers to record what kind of behavior they saw at home when there was an argument between the parents.

Don’t worry: no needles were involved. Cortisol can be measured with a simple saliva test. And the children who seemed most distressed by the mock argument showed higher levels of cortisol.

"Because higher levels of cortisol have been linked to a wide range of mental and physical health difficulties, high levels of cortisol may help explain why children who experience high levels of distress when their parents argue are more likely to experience later health problems," said Patrick T. Davies, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, who led the study.

The poll our site ran last week shows that the vast majority of our members feel that if the parents are truly unhappy, it never makes sense to stay together “for the sake of the children.” Children clearly suffer when there is tension in the home.

Ever since Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil tied the knot in May 2007, rumors have swirled that their marriage was over. The New York Post's Page Six, however, reports that two have split-this time for real. The paper says the 25-year-old admitted to a British tabloid that she has split from her 26-year-old husband.

She's a drug-challenged, Grammy-award-winning artist; he's currently serving time for assault and bribery charges. Both have their issues, sure. But is one of them codependence?

Winehouse may say it's over — she says that Fielder-Civil left her for a German model — but who's knows what she'll say tomorrow. One thing's for sure: Their reported shared sex kink (see the link to the article, above) is enough to keep our finger on the Winehouse-Civil pulse...

Photo: popbuzzUK.com

She was a tall, young Armani model from Yugoslavia. He was a short billionaire who happened to be the head of a Formula 1 racing federation. They met at a Formula 1 race in Italy in 1981, and didn’t speak a word of each other’s language. Well, she did know how to communicate one thing: rejection, with a fake phone number.

But, as The Telegraph of London said, “Ever since he was a boy, growing up in wartime Suffolk, Bernie Ecclestone has coveted things of sleekness and beauty that cost a lot to run and vanish at amazing speed.”

He tracked her down and married her.

The marriage crossed the finish line last week, after 24 years, which is actually a pretty long race. What is astonishing: Slavica Ecclestone’s filing for divorce seems to have caught her husband by surprise.

Let’s consider, this stunning woman, once a blonde now a brunette, and her two stunning daughters, Tamara, 24 and Petra, 19, lived under the thumb of a man who once said “Women should be in the kitchen... They should wear white, like a domestic appliance, and they shouldn’t be allowed out. You don’t take the washing machine out of the house, do you?”

Oh boy. And he didn’t see this coming?

When asked about the divorce action he told The Telegraph, "Really? ... You hear of things — I must find out."

He’s now 78, and she is 50. He is 5 foot 4, and she is a willowy 6 foot 2. Their daughters are stars in their own right in London, one a presenter, the other a fashion designer.

When are children acting in their parents’ best interests? And when are children acting in their own best interests? Usually these questions come up in billion-dollar cases, like the one with Anna Nichole Smith and her husband, J. Howard Johnson, 63 years her senior.

Who’s to say that Anna Nicole Smith, a former Playboy playmate, did not make the last years of Johnson’s life in Texas a lot happier, even if they never lived together?

Ok, let’s leave that extremely messy question behind.

Next question: if a penny-pinching widower named Claude Thomas, age 87, secretly marries Susana Martinez Ramirez, 45, in 2001, and if she spends a lot of his money on things like cars for her ex-husband and clothes and such, who is to say that Claude Thomas is not happy to be throwing some money around, including in her direction.

Why of course it’s his children. They say that their father amassed $1.5 million by being frugal. And that his second wife has spent down that estate to a mere $165,000 since their marriage in 2001. And so they petitioned the court to force their father to divorce his wife.

Although Claude Thomas had exhibited some early signs of dementia, in court he said that he was happy with his wife, and her spending habits. He had met her when she was pushing a tea cart in a local restaurant. After that she came to help clean his house. And even though she doesn’t speak much English, and he doesn’t speak much Spanish, they found comfort in each other after Thomas’s wife died.

Somehow, two years later, in 2001, Thomas and Ramirez got married. His children claim that there was no sign of the marriage. And that she didn’t live with him.