Tag Archives: divorce laws

There’s just one country other than the Vatican where divorce is illegal — and some want to change that

Ana P. Santos
What do you do when you find yourself in an unhappy marriage but live in a country where there is no divorce?

You go on Facebook and hope to find others like you.

“I didn’t have anyone to talk to,” said 45-year-old Maviv Millora. “I was sure there were others like me who wished there was divorce in the Philippines, I just had to find them.”

After being married for more than 20 years, Millora separated from her husband in 2011. Since then, it’s been a vicious cycle of survival. She supports the two youngest of her four children with her earnings as an English teacher. She cannot claim child support since she is still technically married, but she also can’t afford the considerable legal costs of separation proceedings.

Online, she found Divorce Advocates of the Philippines, a Facebook group of more than 5,000 people. The group has since spun off into two other divorce groups, Pro-Divorce Philippines and Divorce for the Philippines Now International.

Some members were depressed and wanted to talk; some were angry and wanted to vent; and some just wanted legal advice without going to a lawyer who would charge by the hour – but they all wanted to demand the legalization of divorce.

In this devout Catholic country with deeply conservative views on marriage and family, Millora and others like her were expected to hide any cracks in the marital union and simply suffer in silence.

Full Article – http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-philippines-divorce-snap-story.html

A Look at How Social Media is Impacting Divorce Cases

06/23/2016 11:40 am ET | Updated 6 days ago

William Morrow Internet Marketer, Link Builder, Blogger, Entrepreneur, Content Marketing Strategist at SEO POW LTD

Most people with a smartphone are constantly tapped into some form of social media. Sharing cute pictures of kids and pets is simply a routine part of life these days. Some people even use social media to vent frustrations or look for advice.

In a divorce case, however, shares on social media can create ample evidence that can be used against one or both parties to affect alimony, child support, child custody, and more.

Email and Text Messages

Email and text messages are admissible in court and can even be subpoenaed. If one party in the marriage reveals something about a new job or an upcoming bonus that hasn’t been revealed in court, this can be used as evidence that the person isn’t being honest in his or her financial declarations.

Someone once claimed in court that he didn’t have a job, yet he posted about his job online (along with the expensive vacations he took with his girlfriend). With this evidence in court, his request for alimony was denied.

Lawyers advise people to keep all written communication free of sensitive information during a divorce. If you wouldn’t want a judge reading it, don’t write it – anywhere.

Finances
Most people don’t list their income on social media, but they find plenty of other ways to brag about their financial prosperity. If someone claims a low income to avoid high alimony or child support payments but posts pictures of expensive vacations or purchases, this can be used against him or her in court.

Even when a spouse is blocked from seeing his estranged wife’s social media, he can still often see what her friends are posting. If she goes on an expensive vacation with a mutual friend and that friend makes a post about the trip, the spouse can use this evidence to prove that his wife isn’t being honest in her finances.

Ben Carrasco, a divorce attorney in Austin, Texas, reports once using a LinkedIn profile to show the existence of a side business (another source of income) that a party had not disclosed in discovery. This information helped his client secure more child support than she would have otherwise received. “It’s amazing the wealth of information now at our fingertips in a divorce case” says Mr. Carrasco. “What would have once taken weeks of research to discover, if at all, can now be found in the click of a mouse”.

Dating Sites
Creating a profile on an online dating site before a divorce is finalized is foolish. Not only does it show evidence of potential cheating, but most people present themselves differently in an online profile than they do in person. If someone is caught saying something different on a dating site than is said in court, it can lead to problems in the divorce case.

Child Custody
Social media reveals what people are doing, where they’re doing it, and when it’s happening. If a mother is working through a child custody case, but posts pictures that show she was drunk when she should have been watching the children, a judge may rule that the children will not be properly cared for by her.

If one party is supposed to be searching for a job, but posts pictures and status updates that reveal he’s playing video games all day, the judge may rule harshly on alimony and child support decisions.

How to Prevent Negative Effects From Social Media
The best thing to do to avoid social media ruining any portion of a divorce case is to simply stop using it. Many people may be tempted to actually delete their accounts and scrub their online lives. However, once litigation has begun, social media becomes evidence. Deleting accounts is actually a destruction of evidence and can cause a lawyer to be sanctioned.

Full Article – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-morrow/a-look-at-how-social-medi_b_10633940.html

Mississippi Fails To Add Domestic Violence As A Legal Reason For Divorce

Melissa Jeltsen Senior Reporter, The Huffington Post

Advocates say the state’s antiquated divorce laws can make it harder for victims to leave abusive spouses.

A bill that would have added domestic violence as a legal grounds for divorce died in the Mississippi state Senate last week.

In Mississippi, a person can get a divorce if their spouse is a habitual drunk, commits adultery, has an incurable mental illness or is naturally impotent.

But if their spouse beats them? That would make things more complicated. As it currently stands, domestic violence is not among the 12 legal grounds for divorce in the state.

A recent effort to rectify that died in the Mississippi state Senate last week.

The bill would have made domestic violence the 13th legal justification for divorce, as long as it was “established by clear and convincing evidence, where the perpetrator commits upon a spouse one of the following: attempting to cause, or purposely or knowingly causing, bodily injury to the spouse; or attempting by physical menace to put the spouse in fear of imminent serious bodily harm.”

Wendy Mahoney, executive director of the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said she was disappointed that the bill failed, and characterized the state’s current divorce laws as antiquated.

“In this day and age, we were just trying to get some language that would be more fitting about what transpires in situations of domestic violence,” she said.

The coalition pushed for the bill after many domestic violence survivors reported that their greatest need was assistance with legal services, particularly divorce.

“Basically, we wanted to make this process easier for individuals, being that they are already dealing with so many issues — child custody, rebuilding their lives and so on,” Mahoney said.

William Wright, a divorce lawyer who has been practicing law for 42 years, said it’s harder to get a divorce in Mississippi than in most other states.

Under state law, if both members of the couple agree to divorce, they can claim “irreconcilable differences” and don’t need to provide a legal reason, he said.

But if one spouse doesn’t want the divorce, the process is often stymied. The person seeking the divorce must settle on unfavorable terms or claim one of the 12 grounds allowed by state law, and the court will decide whether to grant it.

“What you have down here is that the one who doesn’t want the divorce just holds out for a good deal,” he said. “One party holds the other party hostage.”

Wright said domestic violence victims trying to divorce abusive partners typically allege “habitual cruel and inhuman treatment,” which is among the current legal grounds for divorce.

But that can be hard to prove unless the abuse was physical and ongoing, he said. Subtle types of abuse, like emotional, verbal and economic, are much more difficult to demonstrate.

Stacey Sarver, legal director of WomensLaw, said that while it’s common for states to include cruel and inhuman treatment or extreme cruelty as a grounds for divorce, most don’t require proof that the abuse was ongoing or “habitual.”

“It seems in Mississippi, one incident is not enough,” she said. “That is not commonly found in the statutes of other states.”

Mahoney said she hopes the bill will pass in the next legislative session.

“We will have more support next year, and I think we will be better positioned to make sure it passes,” she said.

Sourced From – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mississippi-domestic-violence-divorce_us_571f7969e4b01a5ebde34227