By all accounts the Divorce, Separation Support Group of Raleigh, North Carolina, is a terrific bunch of people, both men and women, at least 600 members, who meet once a week to give advice and help each other. The group was betrayed last January by a Fayetteville woman, Margaret Irene Haithcock, 51, who got $6,241 out of them by lying.

She came to the group and announced that she had a triple tragedy that had put her in debt. Her son had been killed in Iraq, she said, and she had cancer, and needed further treatments at Duke. Also, a fire had burned down her house and her letters from her son who was killed in Iraq.

The group, in response, held several fund raisers for her and actually had a memorial service for her son.

But it turned out that none of that was true.

An arrest warrant was issued in June, charging her with obtaining property by false pretenses. The warrant said that the claims of her illness and a dead son were offered only as a way to get money from the group. It took authorities more than two months to find her.

Haithcock, who is also known as Margaret H. Cooke, was arrested last month. According to records at the North Carolina Department of Corrections, she has a history of arrests and convictions dating from 1984 to 1990. She was imprisoned, most recently, for six months in 1990 on forgery charges. Other charges included credit card fraud, credit card theft, attempted forgery, and cheating on property services.

Haithcock/Cooke pleaded guilty on Thursday (October 9) to the charges, and has been ordered to repay the divorce support group. She was given three years of probation, fined $200, and ordered to undergo a mental health assessment.

Finally, she was told not to be in touch with the support group ever again.

What no one has made clear, however, is whether or not Haithcock/Cooke lied about another thing: Was she ever divorced?

Guys use sex to reduce the increased pressure in their lives. With the Dow dipping, no prob if they were turning to wives and girlfriends. But according to a New York Daily News story, they’re down and getting down with sources of gratification that are potential trouble — with a capital T.

On lunch hours they are visiting massage parlors. They are hiring prostitutes. They are going to strip clubs after work. And they are indulging in Internet porn, sometimes at their office computers… and getting caught. They are becoming addicted to sex to relieve their stress.

In a tight job market, this is not an appealing thing to have in one’s file. Most of the men, by the way, are married.

In the Daily News story, psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert reports a jump in sex-addicted men at his Manhattan practice in the past six months.

"Since early spring, maybe late winter, there's just been an increase, and I believe it might have something to do with the economy," he says. "A lot of the Wall Streeters use sex as a way to cope with stress. Bankers do tend to rely on pretty unhealthy ways of coping with stress — drugs, sex.

"A lot of them will use adult services," Alpert adds. "Some of them come right out and say, 'I'm stressed. This is how I deal with it. It's not the worst thing in the world. I'm not using drugs.' But when it starts to increase, then it's a problem."

How do these testosterone titans practice safe sex? According to Alpert, they consider going to an Asian massage parlor to be permissible. To some, as long as they don’t go all the way, being masturbated doesn’t count as cheating.

read more »

Actress Shiva Rose's divorce from fellow actor Dylan McDermott is taking a toll on the family home, reports contactmusic.com. Rose is unable to buy out McDermott's share of their Brentwood residence; consequently, they are selling the house.

Actually, that's one side of the story. A source told the New York Post that Rose is being forced to sell the home, while a statement released from Rose's camp said the two have agreed as a couple to sell the house they shared for nine years.

Regardless, divorce is expensive. If you remember, McDermott filed after 11 years of marriage, stating he would represent himself in the divorce process. Perhaps he was attempting to save a few bucks?

Warren Buffett, the world's richest man, admits he made a poor choice. No, not that he didn't invest more in Google than Microsoft, but that he didn't work harder on his relationship with his late wife, Susie, the mother of his three children.

"The biggest mistake I ever made was letting her walk out the door," he says.

As with many separations, Susie was driven to it.

Buffett, 78, who spent hours and hours talking with the author Alice Schroeder for the book The Snowball, regrets that he gave Susie so many reasons to leave, say Rush & Molloy in The Daily News.

One was Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, and Newsweek. Buffett was 46 when Graham, then a 59-year-old widow, became smitten with him. They spent time at her Martha’s Vineyard home and traveled widely.

What is surprising is that Graham's own marriage was ruined by her husband’s infidelity. And who knew before this book that Katharine Graham was one of the early cougars? (While we at FWW approve of dating someone who's fabulously younger and cute, it is verboten to date a married man no matter what his age.)

Graham, it turns out, was pretty open about the affair with Buffett, and was seen tossing her house key to Buffet at parties. Schroeder writes that Susie "made it plain to several friends that she was furious and humiliated," but reports that she sent Graham a letter granting her permission to date her husband.

"Kay showed the letter to people as though it let her off the hook," Schroeder says.

Naturally the humiliation at home marinated into resentment.

read more »

Canadian resident Gerald Moore says something's suspicious about his step-daughter's winning lottery ticket, namely, that it's his, says the Ottawa Citizen.

The 81-year-old claims his 59-year-old wife, Patricia Moore, medicated him to the point of incoherence, swiped a winning ticket off his nightstand and handed it off to her daughter, Bobbie-Jo. Shorty after, Patricia filed for divorce.

Gerald discovered his step-daughter was the recipient of $3.5 million when he read it in the newspaper. Hmmm...now that seems a bit suspect.

Patricia denies the allegations, stating that they all regularly play the lottery, and the winning stub was her daughter's. And what a generous daughter Patricia has: Bobbie-Jo gave her mother $1.5 million.

Patricia says Gerald's nine children are at the root of the allegations, looking to get their hands on the cash, and plans to counter-sue her husband for "character assassination."

Patricia and Gerald should take a lesson in civility from the Brititsh lottery winner who gave a portion to her ex.

Bad news for Las Vegas: one luxury condo will never get the “celebrity bump” expected from once having been a home to Hulk Hogan or his estranged wife, Linda Bollea.

Vegas has already had enough bad real estate news. Foreclosures are everywhere. There is an eight-month inventory of existing homes. Some 60 percent of the homes sold in July were owned by banks.

Into this scene came the brawling Hogans. When things were going better for the couple, and for Las Vegas, they had made a 20 percent down payment on a $4.2 million penthouse in a boutique condo hotel known as the Palms Place. In other words, before the building was completed, they put down $840,000 as a deposit to butt into a building that was being touted as a Vegas home to “hot young celebrities” like Eminem and Jessica Simpson — adding Hulk Hogan to that might seem to some people like a nightmare list of neighbors, rather than an incentive to buy. But this is Vegas, baby, Vegas.

Then the Hogan/Bolleas filed for divorce. Hulk Hogan wanted to get out of the Vegas condo rather than come up with the remaining $3.36 million. (They already had two homes in Florida.) Linda Bollea, on the other hand, wanted to go ahead.

The boring part: two courts, one in Florida, one in Nevada. Blah blah blah. One said they should go ahead, one said not.

The knockout blow: Hulk finally won. So no Vegas condo.

But it’s not like the Hogan/Bolleas will be getting the $840,000 back. Instead the Palms Place is keeping $640,000 as “liquidated damages.” Or in colloquial terms, “the price of changing your mind.”

That’s pretty much the standard in real estate deals gone bad. If there is no fault on the seller’s part, the buyer loses the down payment.

read more »

As we reported earlier specifically in reference to the U.S., divorce has decidedly slid into "luxury" status. Filed alongside indulgences, such as second homes and exotic vacations, legally disbanding a marriage is now something reserved for those with the financial power to do so, reports The Guardian.

The recent article details the money woes of Spanish citizens now forced to remain in unhappy marriages, or if couples do divorce, are forced to take up roommates or shared housing situations.

We're all feeling the crunch right now, from skyrocketing gas prices to a plummeting housing market. Maybe it's, in fact, time to take a cue from countries like Australia and China and allow the government to come to the people's aide?

The attorneys’ fees were bad enough, but $655 in emergency in-house photocopying! In a 21-page petition filed in the California Superior Court last week, Britney Spears’s lawyers requested the approval of their legal fees. The hearing will be September 25 at 1:30 in Los Angeles County.

Any woman afraid to open an envelope from someone whose name ends in an Esq. will appreciate that this is one time when it’s good to have your dad running your life.

Since February, when Britney went off to a mental hospital for the second time, her father, James P. Spears, has been the Temporary Conservator of her person and a Temporary Conservator of her estate.

Her person seemed to be in fine shape over the weekend when she shined in silver while picking up three Video Music Awards. But her father, along with the lawyer Andrew Wallet, is also responsible for her estate, which means her money and her assets and her bills.

So her father has to paw through all the legal charges associated with her child custody issues as well as business matters. The lawyers fees for the entire divorce and custody battle will surely add up to one of the largest ever in the US. (There is always that case in Connecticut a year ago that ran up $13 million in legal fees. And a Canadian couple recently topped $1 million in legal fees.)

The petition that was just filed in the Spears case lists $248,625 for February through August already paid to the court appointed attorney Samuel D. Ingham.

read more »

The Australian government has just committed to spending $17 million on programs to help traumatized children from divorced families, and it's about time.

This new initiative is part of a divorce related spending spree, and the government has agreed to spend nearly $40 million over the next four years. Money will go to programs for the children themselves, as well as programs to teach divorced spouses how to parent after the split.

I'm cautiously optimistic about this. The commitment to spend this kind of money is clearly an indication that the government of Australia is concerned about the welfare of the children involved.

On the other hand, while that's a lot of money, there are a lot of children being affected, and one wonders how far the money's going to go. A parenting class here and there certainly won't hurt, but I hope the money won't be spent for nothing.

The good news is that Australia has had the biggest single year drop in divorce rates this year, down six percent from 2007. Marriages are also on the rise, spurring some commentators to say that the country is experiencing a "marriage renaissance".

Hopefully, between an influx of funding to help children of the divorced and the rates of separation on the way down, the money will end up helping the kids who need it most.

Recent revelations by Heather Mills’s former publicist may make it more difficult for divorcing women everywhere to bring charges of spousal abuse into the courtroom.

The publicist, Michele Elyzabeth, says she launched vicious rumors against Paul McCartney on Mills's orders and now — surprise, surprise — regrets it.

What Elyzabeth also surely regrets is that Mills has stiffed her for her $295,360 payment. Thus her new title “former publicist” and her tendency to call Mills a “pathological liar, a witch, a bitch and gold-digger who married Paul McCartney for his money”.

In The Daily Mail in London, Elyzabeth, who is based in Los Angeles, now says the accusations against McCartney in the divorce battle were all lies. And she also tattled that Mills’s promised contributions to charity have not happened.

Elyzabeth worked for Mills for four years before their relationship unraveled in a screaming phone call.

One admission in the Daily Mail story resonated with me. Mills realized that horrible lies about McCartney — including claiming physical abuse — would eventually wear him down and give her a more favorable settlement.

But hurling the charge of abuse is dangerous. Moreover it is disrespectful to all women who have actually experienced it.

Now that Elyzabeth has revealed it was all a lie, it may make it easier for others to question the validity of claims in future cases.

According to Elyzabeth, Mills claimed of having a video where Sir Paul was abusive and threatened to sell it to a US TV station for a million dollars. But, in fact, the publicist saw it and "all she had was home movie footage, which showed nothing more than normal family life."

read more »