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U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson will be in court next week for a half-day trial to determine whether his 24-year marriage was valid in the first place, or if his wife was still legally married to another man when they wed. **SNIP** Lolita Grayson filed paperwork accusing her husband of failing to pay her credit cards, refusing to provide financial support for their children. She also said, in an interview with WFTV-Channel 9 , that she had been forced to apply for a food-stamp card.

I’m an older O.C. divorcé with a young Filipino wife I met on the Internet, and I know what you’re thinking. Can’t say I blame you. But you’re wrong.I’m pouring drinks for my guests when the police arrive. It’s 3 p.m. on a Saturday and we’re hosting a friend’s baby shower in our open garage. The two officers survey the scene carefully before striding toward me with bad news. “We got a complaint from your neighbor,” one of the officers says with a nod. After they sort it out and determine we’re not committing any crimes or posing a public...

They have decided to end their marriage after nearly 20 years. On Sunday Chris Rock's wife Malaak Compton announced she was leaving the 49-year-old comedian. 'After much contemplation and 19 years of marriage, Chris and I have decided to go our separate ways,' she said in a statement. The founder of the nonprofit styleWorks added, 'Being fortunate enough to lead a life of service by working with those most vulnerable makes me well aware of life's blessings, even when faced with difficulties. 'While recognizing that this is a significant change, my children remain at the center of my life and...

YONKERS, N.Y. (AP) - A real estate developer who was shot in the head as he slept at home says his cheating wife did it in an attempt to kill him and avoid a messy divorce. Continue reading Kenneth Dearden provided an unusually detailed look at the case from his point of view by filing a lawsuit against his wife, a New York Police Department psychologist, a year after the shooting and two weeks before she was arrested. He said he was sleeping in their upscale suburban home on Nov. 14, 2013, and woke up with a searing pain in...

High in the catalogue of social pathologies afflicting marriage and the family in America stands our system of family law, the central purpose of which is to enforce no-fault divorce. In a letter to the Holy Father and the recent Extraordinary Synod on the Family, almost fifty international scholars and religious leaders joined us in urging the Church to consider the effects of no-fault divorce, along with other barriers to faithful, lifelong marriage. State laws on divorce began to be implemented in the late 1960s, but today have been absorbed into the legal and cultural mainstream nationwide. The logic of...

A Scottish monk has been arrested for distributing a series of leaflets in the Cambridgeshire area critical of homosexuality, fornication, contraception, euthanasia, abortion, and divorce. Brother Damon Jonah Kelly, head of the Glasgow based charity the Black Hermits, was arrested by Cambridgeshire Police on December 8 on suspicion of a Section 5 (religious/racial) public order offence after he wrote a letter to the homosexual news publication, Pink News, claiming responsibility for the distribution of leaflets in the city of Ely, as well as in Cambridge, King’s Lynn and several other Cambridgeshire towns and cities. Initially police declined to take any...

Among other things, the questionnaire asked how the church can care for families with gay children and discern "positive and negative elements" in heterosexual civil unions. It also asked how the church can better provide sacraments for Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the church. Church teaching holds that without an annulment, or a church decree that the first marriage was null, such Catholics are living in sin and are thus ineligible to receive communion. Francis has sought to end what he calls "de facto excommunication" for these Catholics, and the issue was a source of heated debate during the...

Pope Benedict XVI. Photo Credit: Mazur. Vatican City, Dec 4, 2014 / 03:16 pm (CNA).- News broke weeks ago that a new volume of Benedict XVI's collected works was being released in German with an updated version of a 1972 essay, which no longer suggests that the divorced and remarried can receive Communion, as it once did. But thanks to Sandro Magister and his translator Matthew Sherry, the full text of his “Retractatio” is now available in English. As CNA reported Nov. 25, Joseph Ratzinger published an essay in 1972, while a priest of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising,...

But here is the thing: It is no longer true that the divorce rate is rising, or that half of all marriages end in divorce. It has not been for some time. Even though social scientists have tried to debunk those myths, somehow the conventional wisdom has held. Despite hand-wringing about the institution of marriage, marriages in this country are stronger today than they have been in a long time. The divorce rate peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s and has been declining for the three decades since. Photo About 70 percent of marriages that began in the 1990s...

There are many predictors of the success of a marriage, among them the having of money, the having of children, and the length of time a couple spends dating before they tie the knot. Another big predictor, though, is age: The closer a couple is when it comes to their respective birth years, the greater their chances of avoiding divorce. That's according to a study that compiled polling data from more than 3,000 recently married and divorced Americans. The study—the overall findings of which my colleague Olga Khazan highlighted last month—used a multivariate model to calculate the factors that seemed...

Lauren Beth Czekala-Chatham A Mississippi woman wants the state Supreme Court to recognise gay marriage – so that she can divorce a partner she married in San Francisco. Lauren Beth Czekala-Chatham, a 52-year-old credit analyst, who already had two children from a failed heterosexual marriage, moved to California in 2008 so that she could marry Dana Ann Melancon. But the relationship soured and they separated in 2010. When Ms Czekala-Chatham, who now has a new girlfriend, applied for a divorce, citing adultery and habitual cruel and inhuman treatment, she failed. The state predictably argued that Mississippi could not grant...

The state Supreme Court in Mississippi, where same-sex marriage is not recognized, will hear arguments Jan. 21, 2015, from a woman who has asked the state to recognize her gay marriage so that she can be granted a divorce. Lauren Czekala-Chatham and Dana Ann Melancon, who married in California in 2008, cannot be granted a divorce in Mississippi due to the state's constitution and statutes, DeSoto County Chancery Judge Mitchell Lundy Jr. ruled last year. "All same sex Mississippi couples lack a right to have their marriage recognized by the state regardless of whether newly arrived here, having lived here...

Jilted husband Kevin Cotter has turned the heartbreak of his divorce into a nice little profit by publishing a book full of ingenious ways to use his ex-wife's wedding dress. Kevin, 41, was crushed when his wife of 12 years walked out in 2009, taking all her possessions except the white silk gown. When he asked her to take the dress back, she refused and told Kevin to 'do what the f*** he liked with it'. So he did - and for the last four years he has come up with a series brilliant ideas and filled a book with...

There is a long list of women* who have amassed personal fortunes by divorcing rich husbands — and as far as I can tell, they deserved every penny. This week Sue Ann Hamm joined it when a court ordered her ex-husband, Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma oil man, to pay her some $1 billion in cash and assets, or about $38 million per year of a 26-year marriage. Ms. Hamm plans to appeal on the grounds that the award grossly undervalues her share of the wealth accumulated during the marriage, Reuters reported on Thursday. If Ms. Hamm gets anywhere near half...

The day my soul became Catholic was the day I found out that as a divorced and remarried woman I could not receive Communion. Tears of sorrow and joy flowed. Sorrow because I had by then grasped the truth of transubstantiation, only to find I couldn’t consume, and joy because at last we found the ground of real authority—his Church, the one he founded, the one tasked to keep all he taught her Apostles. I came to Catholicism from Calvinism. That’s a tough row to hoe if there ever was one. It was that prescient and beautiful encyclical Humanae Vitae...

After ecstatically going to the bank to pay off his alimony check for the last time, this man could not put into words how excited he was.

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis said the institution of Christian marriage has never been attacked so much as nowadays where a temporary or throw-away culture has become widespread. He said marriage should not be seen just a social rite and urged priests to stay close to couples and especially children experiencing the trauma of a family break-up. The Pope was replying to questions put to him on a range of topics during an audience with more than 7000 pilgrims belonging to the Schoenstatt movement, an international Marian and apostolic organization that is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding in Germany....

In his writings and talk on marriage, Cardinal Walter Kasper remains ambiguous but, or rather therefore, untrustworthy. He writes like a man trying to pull a fast one. Steven J. Kovacs notes in a New Oxford Review review of Kasper’s book The Gospel of the Family (the emphasis is mine): Cardinal Kasper correctly notes that someone in such a situation requires the sacrament of penance before receiving Holy Communion. Our Lord Himself said, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mk. 10:11-12). The Church...

While Francis I has nether denied not sought to change any doctrine, Cardinal Burke is correct. The pope has “done a lot of harm.” He has created confusion among the faithful and is soon going to have to speak with clarity on the unchanging truths of Catholicism. In his beatification of Paul VI on Sunday, Pope Francis celebrated change. “God is not afraid of new things,” he said, “we are making every effort to adapt ways and methods … to the changing conditions of society.” But among the social changes since Vatican II and Paul VI have been the West’s...

A half-century after the historic changes of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Francis is showing his intent to drive a comparably ambitious agenda for the Roman Catholic Church in the 21st century. The current synod of bishops in Rome, called by Francis to encourage reform and modernization, set a ringing tone of compassion this week with an opening call for a more welcoming attitude toward gay people, unmarried couples, divorced Catholics who remarry, and children in these unions. The bishops’ report on their first week of private discussions did not immediately change church doctrine. But it signaled the pope’s determination...