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.

A website that promises to identify pedophiles recommends that especially single moms should remove pictures of their children from their social networking pages. “Many single moms are inadvertently creating happy hunting grounds for that subspecies of pedophiles who like their prey young – really young,” says Crystal the Jacquez, managing editor of Guys That Lie.com.

You may have heard about this one before, especially if you live in California. There is a new campaign in California that states it aims to make divorce illegal in California. The reasoning behind the initiative: Gay marriage has been banned with Prop 8 in California and a law protecting traditional marriage is a natural extension of Prop 8. Plus, the initiator claims the Bible hates divorce anyway and divorce has been illegal 99% of the time throughout the world’s history. Can such a proposition pass?

You may have heard the story about single dad Chris Savoie, whose former Japanese wife abducted the children to Japan. Savoie, who has been awarded full custody of the children here in the U.S., tried to bring his children back to their home, but was detained by Japanese authorities. He is now back home in Tennessee, without his children.

CBS had a chance to interview Savoie and talked to him about the experience he made and the painful return, leaving his children behind. There is another interview with Savoie’s lawyer that discusses Savoie’s imprisonment and the legal path ahead of him.

Eight countries have officially asked Japan to join an international child abduction treaty signed by 81 countries around the globe in 1980. Japan has been known as a haven for child abduction in cases where one parent has Japanese citizenship. Japanese law does not provide any room for international parents to get their children back home, if a child is brought to Japan.

Japans new justice minister Keiko Chiba met with representatives envoys from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and the United States late last week to discuss the child custody issue. According to a report published by AFP, a foreign parent is not denied access to the child in international divorce cases.

There is an interesting case currently being heard by the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. Jose Padilla, a Honduran-born immigrant faces deportation after pleading guilty to felony marijuana trafficking, but he claims that he received bad advice from his lawyer and wants the court to void his guilty plea.

The case is not only interesting for the almost 13 million legal immigrants living in the U.S., but also to many other cases that may have been impacted by bad advice from lawyers, including those that meant a loss of child custody.

Are you the spouse of a person that has been discovered in contact with child pornography? Have you discovered this fact and not reported it to the police, or have the police come to your door and informed you that the computers in your home or business are being forensically examined for indecent imagery of children?

A man who is a care worker with an exemplary record for close on half a century goes fishing. His life is ruined. In the previous week he was visited by police at his home and it was made known to him that he was being investigated for visiting Internet sites on which child pornographic imagery was available. His computer was seized and his wife was devastated by the news. His daughter arrived home from class to find without any warning that her life would never be the same again.

Maybe you’ve heard, but in case you haven’t, there is a relatively new trend in resolving family disputes calledCollaborative Family Law (CFL). Where traditional divorce litigation tends to be adversarial and focused on producing a winner and a loser, Collaborative Law is designed specifically to keep parties out of court and to reach consensus on a fair settlement.

One of the keys to the Collaborative process is that both parties and their attorneys agree not to go to court. In fact, the attorneys agree that if either client does end up deciding to go to court, both attorneys will with withdraw requiring their clients to retain completely new representation. This leaves clients with the option to go to court, if they determine that the process won’t work for them, but it motivates the attorneys to prevent that from happening by working toward an acceptable settlement.

Book Review – The Child Custody Book by Judge James Stewart is the book you are likely to see first when you research the child custody topic in a book store. Its compelling title (including the tagline “How to Protect Your Children and Win Your Case”) may be the reason why it is believed to be the best selling child custody book title in the U.S. This fact was reason enough for me to have a closer look at its content and see what you can expect.

Child custody is a pretty broad topic that is reflected by the book’s 13 chapters that range from the role of attorneys over parenting plans to psychological evaluations, tips how to find a great attorney (and dump that lazy one), how much your custody battle will cost and how you should behave in front of a judge and evaluator. In fact, I do not know any other book that covers more child custody topics.

You are a single mom with a young child. You have a job to make ends meet and find yourself dependent on the services of a nursery. You have met the staff and they are caring and friendly, and each morning that you arrive there you are met by a smiling and caring lady who knows all about your child’s quirks. She takes your precious bundle from you and you depart with great comfort and confidence that this is one aspect of your life that is well taken care of.

What in the world could possible go wrong? Vanessa George, Colin Blanchard and Angela Allen. That’s what can go wrong.

I am always a bit skeptical of how useful statistics are to prove a certain point that comes down to individuals, but we all have to admit that they are interesting nevertheless. These new numbers recently released by the census bureau provide some information on divorce and marriage rates.

MrCustodyCoach posted an interesting number about child abductions the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, between 300,000 and 400,000 children are abducted by parents each year. And no, the majority of these “kidnappings” do not happen during the divorce battle.

The writer concludes that the patterns of behavior ”are indicative of the reality that mothers are overwhelmingly the primary or sole custodial parent.” So, what do you do to protect your kid and yourself from parental abductions? MrCustodyCoach has a few simple tips what you can do. A useful read if you believe your former spouse could “kidnap your child”.