A wife lasts only for the length of the marriage, but an ex-wife is there for the rest of your life.
You know, that's the only good thing about divorce; you get to sleep with your mother.
Meanwhile I married and I adopted three kids who were all from one family and then later I was divorced.
I am a step mother, so how children deal with divorce is something I've witnessed first hand and thought about a lot.
I've got some kids out there; it's no secret. I've never been late on payments. I've handled it as best as I possibly can. There's no lawsuits. I try to stay on top of it.
I've got one young family by the first wife, with four children.
There's something about sitting face-to-face with an attorney in an office that enables people to come to grips with the very idea of divorce - or to reconsider the idea. Like a number of my colleagues - not all - I offer that preliminary consultation for free.
Divorce isn't just the person, it's everything that goes with it - your kids, the adjustment, everything.
Like the marriage contract you entered into, your divorce is a legal transaction. Treat it that way. Try not to let emotion, hurt, fear or anger dictate the circumstances of your discussions or negotiations.
If you go from a structure where you have the support and that partner and that construction of a family and that's broken apart, I think that's probably a lot harder than always being a single mom and having the father being a support in another area.
Years later I would hear my father say the divorce had left him dating his children. That still meant picking us up every Sunday for a matinee and, if he had the money, an early dinner somewhere.
'Unexpected Legacy' reports the findings of the California Children of Divorce Study, which began in 1971, a year after the nation's first no-fault divorce law was imposed in California. Wallerstein was the principal investigator on the study.
We urgently need to address the assumption bound up in our employment laws and custody arrangements that women are the 'natural child carers' and men don't really want much to do with their children.
Marriage made more sense when it was indissoluble. It's the woman trying to cope with the strains of a one-parent family who will suffer most from the relaxation of the divorce laws.
Unlike most divorces, where the children were usually the first to know, my parents were very good about keeping that a secret.
