This is not gossip but truth: Kelly Rutherford, who plays scheming Lily van Der Woodsen on the oh-so-hip Gossip Girl, has filed for divorce from her husband of two years, Daniel Giersch.

Okay, you have to wonder what is really going on here. What provokes someone to get a divorce when you are three months pregnant? His baby is growing inside you for the next six months — clearly limiting your dating options — and you also have Hermes, your two-year-old son who carries the same man’s genes. Was it that he wiggled into someone else’s jeans and was unfaithful? It has to be pretty bad for Rutherford to want out at this moment of time. She certainly could have waited until she delivers her baby six months from now.

When she filed for divorce, Rutherford cited “irreconcilable differences,” according to TMZ. Some have wondered about the timing of this announcement. After all, her character on the hit series is a serial divorcess.

Will Rutherford now have the same complicated personal life as Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards?

It is so sad when children are involved in divorce — especially at such a young age.

Rutherford, who is 40, can also look on the bright side: at least she will have a sibling for her son Hermes. After a certain age, it is harder to get pregnant, and it’s not as though life partners are as plentiful as Prada sales at Saks. But obviously something has triggered her wanting a divorce from her German entrepreneur husband.

Rutherford is expected to be on the Gossip set in New York on Tuesday.

The splits. The fits. The emotional pits. And all the couples who called it quits.

This past year had it all. Some stories touched us, others moved us, many angered us, and a few even tickled us.

After much culling and sifting, we narrowed it down to 20 of our top picks from 2008. We hope you enjoy this little look back as we prepare to move forward.

The Let’s-Just-Be-Friends Award
(Most Amicable Divorce)

Robin Williams and Marsha Garces Williams

Talk about civil unions. No sooner had the couple announced their split after 19 years of marriage than they signed an official agreement stating "we commit ourselves to the collaborative divorce process and agree to seek a positive way to resolve our differences justly and equitably” — all for the sake of their two children. For those of you playing along at home, this is the way to go.

Runner Up: Dixie Chick Emily Robison and singer Chris Robison. How do we know they were both “ready to make nice”? Their divorce took a mere six months, and the filing was a scant two and a half pages.

The ‘Til-Death-Do-Us-Part Award
(Most Devoted Husband)

Mohammed Bello Abubakar

When Nigerian cleric Abubakar, 84, was told he had to divorce all but four of his 86 wives, he refused – even though doing so might lead to the death penalty. He is currently behind bars, fighting for his love. And you thought “Titanic” was the greatest love story ever told.

The Golden Goose Award
(Biggest Settlement)

Madonna & Guy Ritchie

In an annual survey of 1,600 British youngsters, kids under 10 thought being fat was worse than being divorced — however, the split-up of their parents was a close second. In fact, if given the ability to be King or Queen for a day, the law they would most like to create would be a ban on divorce — the first time it's ever been mentioned on the list. Bullying would also be banished from the kingdom.

However, despite the specter of divorce in many children's lives, the Telegraph reported that over 80 percent of the children questioned thought they would probably marry when they grew up, although 17 percent gave a definite "no" on the subject.

Sixty-six percent wanted to have children, with most of them stopping at one or two. Nearly one third were unsure about becoming parents.

While no one wants divorce, some families definitely benefit from splitting up. As Georgina Bloomberg said recently, her parents’ divorce stopped the fighting, and they became lifelong friends, co-parenting their children. Many children eventually learn to see that distinction and still believe in love.

This may explain the high number of children still wanting to get married.

Other tidbits that came out of the list is that Simon Cowell was judged to be more famous that God or the Queen. Yikes.

The nationwide research was carried out by Luton First, sponsors and organizers of the fourth annual National Kids' Day in Britain.

Patricia Murchie, of Luton First, said: "It seems clear that many pre-teens are more concerned than ever with their looks and weight — possibly reflecting media images of glamour, and new educational initiatives in nutrition and healthy eating."

Demi Moore recently starred in the film Flawless, an adjective that can also apply to her divorce. The actress, who is married to Ashton Kutcher, 30, says that she plans on having her ex-husband Bruce Willis, his girlfriend Emma Heming, 30, her husband, and three daughters for Christmas, as she had for Thanksgiving.

“I think the key with any past is that you recognize and hold on to what you loved and what you gained and you don't attach yourself to what you've lost," says Moore.

Don’t you wish more people would act like Moore? Both she and Bruce Willis have shown their daughters the endurance of love in how they broke up but simultaneously rebuilt a different family structure that still continues and thrives.

The good news is that more and more couples are recognizing the benefits of amicable divorces vs. nasty ones, and mediation is on the rise. Divorcing well is no longer an "indecent proposal."

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.

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.

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.

Madonna is about to find out that she can’t flex her muscles when it comes to her soon-to-be ex-husband’s parenting style. The self-described control freak reportedly gave a list of rigid rules documenting what Guy Ritchie could and couldn’t do when he has sons Rocco, 8, and David, 3.

The list reportedly included a ban on TV, no Miley Cyrus for these boys, no non-organic food such as microwaved pizza and soda, nor any clothes that were not 100 percent cotton and sent by her. She even wanted her total blessings on what water they drank — Kaballah preferred — and no toys that are “spiritually or ethically unsound.”

What this sounds like is a recipe for disaster.

Divorced women tell me all the time that the hardest part of divorce is not leaving the husband but leaving the kids with him. And if you, like Madonna, are used to control, it becomes agony to realize the limited power you now have over your ex-spouse’s parenting style. It’s as though handcuffs have been put on you just when you thought you were finally liberated.

“Moms go nuts about this but all they can do is write to Dear Abby or Firstwivesworld,” says noted divorce lawyer Raoul Felder. “The courts will not mini-manage or arbitrate parenting styles unless it involves safety or basic acceptable serious judgment issues.”

Such as?

“Other than allergies like peanuts, religion and sky diving, the hand of the parent who turned the kids over for their weekend with Pop has about as much to say in what the kids do there as Bush does in the choice of the next Secretary of State,” Felder says. “But isn’t that what week-end Dads are all about? Lot’s of hot dogs, chocolate and crummy blood and gory movies.”

For every bride who discovers she had an ally, a mother-in-like, after the wedding, there are those who realize they have a monster-in-law. My monster-in-law gave me a fuzzy sleep suit with a big zipper up the front the first year of our marriage, possibly the least sexy piece of clothing ever. I felt like the Easter bunny. It was royal blue.

But the mother-in-law in the beautiful coastal town of Ravello, on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, must have been a doozie. The Italian press was all over the story of a man who got his marriage annulled this week because of interference by his wife’s mother. One Italian newspaper talked about mother-in-laws who put themselves between husband and wife, “with the docile tenderness of a Rottweiler.”

The Italian press readily conceded that it’s usually the husband’s mother, and not the wife’s mother, who acts like a Rottweiler. Last year a poll by Eures, a job portal on the internet, said that 3 out of 10 Italian divorces were due to "the unusually close attachment of Italian men to their mothers." The mothers sometimes move in, take care of the house, and often criticize their daughter-in-law’s housekeeping, cooking or child rearing.

This case was not nearly as severe; it hinged on an oral contract. Antonio Paolillo, a car dealer, was set to marry Maria Assunta Gemma Criscuoli in 1998, and there was a little bambini on the way. Paolillo, 27 at the time, apparently was apprehensive about his mother-in-law-to-be. So just before the wedding he told his bride, 21, that she had to keep her mother out of their marriage.

If not, he said, he would get a divorce.

Rebecca Romijn knows a thing or two about X-Men and wants to set the record straight. In an interview with Page Six magazine, Romijn, who starred as Mystique in the X-Men movies, refuted rumors that her divorce from John Stamos happened because she didn’t want kids.

“There is absolutely no truth to that,” said Romijn who has a recurring role in the hit television show Ugly Betty. “I desperately wanted kids. I was never a girl who dreamed about what her wedding day would be like, but I’ve always dreamed about decorating my baby’s nursery.”

Well, her dream is coming true. Now happily married to Jerry O’Connell, who played a detective in the TV series Crossing Jordan, she is seven months pregnant with twin girls and looks, as she says, like a “beached whale.”

Romijn was married to Stamos (best known from ER) from 1998 to 2005. But one can suppose that she may have had lingering doubts about the relationship, and wanted to wait until she was certain about the marriage before building a family. Sometimes you don’t really know someone until you live with them for a while. They can be fun boyfriends or even a romantic husband but a wife might wonder if they have the qualities to be a good family man.

As for O’Donnell, Romijn said, “I knew early on he would be a fantastic dad. He’s a pragmatic, smart, savvy, enthusiastic person. He really lives his life with tremendous integrity and he’s a healthy person in every single way.”

The couple married in 2007. O’Connell had to backtrack on a comment he made on Conan O’Brien’s show in September, when he called his wife “huge.” He told People magazine, "I meant to say that there are specific areas of my wife that are larger than normal and growing every day. All other portions of my wife are quite petite. I apologize to her and will be coming home with flowers."