An Australian scientist working on “happiness projects” has found that you can put a dollar value on the pain and happiness women and men feel. At least according to that number, males are in fact much more emotional than females as far as major life events are concerned.

In fact, Paul Frijters of the Queensland University of Technology found that men might feel up to ten times the pain women do.

Book Review – You get a lot of advice during your divorce. Some you should follow and some you better leave alone. The best advice may not come from your family, close friends, counselors and lawyers. It may come from someone emotionally disconnected who, however, can relate to your situation. Michael Jeffries wants to be that distant friend and offers support with his own experience of extreme parental alienation. If scientific books about alienation do not speak to you, this one may.

Living close to an airport can be nerve wrecking, but can it cause your spouse to leave? A Bay Area man claims just that.

60-year old Stanley Hilton is convinced that the constant noise of the San Francisco International Airport led to his divorce. The price to alleviate his pain: $15 million.

British law firm Mishcon de Reya recently polled 4000 parents about events during a divorce, which yielded some not so surprising, but surely one astonishing result: More than one third of divorced fathers disappear from their children’s lives after a divorce.

Mishcon de Reya published the poll result marking the 20th anniversary of the British Children Act, which the company says is “not working” despite its good intentions.

An interesting study published in the journal Cancer found a correlation between serious illness and divorce and/or separation rates. Apparently, women are much more likely to be left by their men when they are diagnosed with cancer or multiple sclerosis than if their male partners were facing the same illness.

A New York art dealer and a German heir to a consumer products giant have settled a custody dispute that involved their 8-year old daughter, art, real estate and cash.

Shaquille O’Neal’s wife Va’Shuandya (Shaunie) has filed papers for divorce citing irreconcilable differences. Shaunie has requested residential and physical custody of the four children as well as spousal support.

What if you could erase all those bad memories, memories of fear and perhaps the traumatic experiences of your divorce? A team of researchers in Switzerland claims to have found the proteins that safeguard those memories – and a way to potentially erase those memories.

I have to admit that this article slipped below my radar, but a recent note of a website that keeps track of significant medical research stressed the importance of this discovery.
Scientists at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, claim that the use of a drug can wipe certain memories from your brain.

In a time where divorces are more and more considered a part of life it does not really come as a surprise that there is, in addition to a wedding fair, also a divorce fair. The first divorce fair we know of was held in Paris last weekend and reportedly attracted more than 4000 visitors.

Whether you think you were taken to the cleaners in your divorce depends on your view. Consider this: Sportscaster Jim Nantz will have to pay his ex-wife Lorrie Carlsen Nantz about $72,000 per month in alimony and about $4000 in child support every month for the next seven years. Lorrie will walk away with $916,000 per year and about $6.4 million over the entire period. Of course, Nantz has plenty of income right now and, hopefully, he won’t lose his job.

Managing your divorce and custody is most likely one of the most difficult tasks in your life. What you want, what you need and what you eventually settle for are, in most cases, three entirely different things. Every divorce is unique and while it is generally best to avoid expensive lawyers, you may not be able to settle out of court, especially if you are in a highly hostile divorce in which one or both parties aren’t willing to compromise.

The obvious conclusion in such a scenario is that you would go to war and fight. You may have a good reason to. But you need to be aware of the consequences of such a decision and you may want to look at some alternatives. Single Parent Gossip has some food for thought.

We have heard before that the recession has hit virtually every job sector (with a few exceptions, of course, like the dating industry), so it should be no surprise that divorce lawyers are suffering as well. Respondents to a survey sent out by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML) indicated that the number of divorce filings has dropped significantly since the fourth quarter of 2008.