Two Excellent Family Law Blogs by Massachusetts Mediators

I have not blogged here in nearly a year, and during that time, I have discovered a number of blogs by very smart people in my field who have been blogging rather prolifically and brilliantly about Massachusetts divorce and family law.  I've been reading their blogs instead of trying to write my own.  I'll just mention, for now, my two new favorites.  Not necessarily new, they are both fairly new to me.

The first is by a very smart mediator/collaborative lawyer, Rackham Karlsson, whose blog on his law firm website is already among the best family law blogs to be found.

The second is by two of Massachusetts' top family law attorneys, long-established in the field, Bill Levine and former Massachusetts Family Court Judge Chouteau Levine, who at their Divorce Mediation Blog write posts I simply wish I had written myself.

Visit them and read up!

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Best Divorce Blog Posts of 2012

Scott Morgan, principal of the Morgan Law Firm (Houston and Austin, Texas) and fellow family law blogger, has put me on his list of the Best Divorce Blog Posts of 2012.  Check out that link for some good reading. I made it to the list on account of my blogging about gay marriage issues.  Thanks for the props, Scott!

Voters in Maryland, Maine and Washington To Approve Gay Marriage

Well, it seems to have happened.  All three of the states - Maryland, Maine and Washington - where same-sex marriage ballot initiatives were voted on yesterday, appear to be creating the right of same-sex marriage.  They join six other states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa, and New York) for a new total of nine states, plus the District of Columbia, where gay and lesbian couples may now marry.

(The vote has not yet been officially announced in Washington state, but is expected to come soon.)

These new states will be the first to create marriage equality through a popular vote, rather than through judicial or legislative action.  Three states, including our own Massachusetts, as well as Connecticut and Iowa, have judicially-created gay marriage.  The other three states, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York, have legislatively-created gay marriage.

No doubt popular support for gay marriage equality is growing.  I continue to hope that family law scholar Joanna Grossman was right when, early this year, she optimistically foresaw, as her article title itself (following link) suggested, "the beginning of the end of the anti-same sex movement."  Indeed, another hopeful sign, from yesterday, was that Minnesota's voters rejected the ballot initiative there which called for a state constitutional amendment limiting marriage to the traditional, heterosexual marriage between a man and a woman.

I fear, however, that I may also be right in my own more pessimistic response that although progress is real, it is likely to continue to be rather slow.  (Here I am reminded of one of my favorite George Orwell quotes: "Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.") Just as there will be a few states moving in the direction of equality, I believe there will continue to be, for many years, a large majority of states where social conservatives stubbornly refuse to recognize gay marriage.  After all, we're still only up to 9 states plus D.C..  That leaves 41 states without gay marriage, many of which already have bans on gay marriages. And of course we are still living with the federal statute (the Defense of Marriage Act).

Stay tuned.   The U.S. Supreme Court will surely weigh in soon on at least some of the issues presented by the laws for and against gay marriage.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

An October Surprise for Mitt out of Mass. Divorce Court?

Tomorrow morning there may be some interesting drama in one of Boston's family courts where I regularly practice, the Norfolk Probate and Family Court, involving sealed testimony by Mitt Romney, apparently given in support of his friend, former Staples CEO Tom Stemberg, during his divorce.   The ex-wife, represented by celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, is reportedly here to tell the judge her client doesn't object to having the testimony unsealed.  

If this is just about Mitt's testimony that Tom Stemberg was a good father, we probably don't have much of a story.  On the other hand, if TMZ's reports are true that Mitt also falsely testified under oath that Staples was worth virtually nothing to aid his friend in misleading the court in order to reduce a payout to his exwife, then we may have a real story, an October surprise of sorts.

This may be the most excitement we have seen in the Norfolk Probate and Family Court since Bobby Brown's arrests here for contempt on child support arrears.   (I don't count the matter of the other Massachusetts Presidential candidate, John Kerry, who tried unsuccessfully, in 1995, to seal records here of his 1988 divorce to his first wife, as the facts of that case are rather boring.)

If TMZ's report about Mitt is accurate, and his testimony becomes unsealed, this could be significant news.  As we all know, from the most recent Clinton and Bush terms, a President's lying to Congress, the American people, and the United Nations about reasons for going to war is one thing.     But lying under oath before becoming President, in a deposition or trial, in a private civil case, such as a divorce or sex discrimination suit, is quite another.  It's absolutely unthinkable and disqualifies one from the very important job of lying about wars with absolute impunity and immunity.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Second Circuit Joins First in Striking DOMA

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York just became the second of the intermediate-level federal appeals courts (circuit courts) to find the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional.   The first was our First Circuit Court of Appeals here in Boston back in May of this year.   The Second Circuit decision, which found the federal statute to be an unconstitutional violation of equal protection under heightened scrutiny (the "intermediate level scrutiny" for "quasi-suspect" classifications), is the most likely case on gay marriage to reach the US Supreme Court.  

Two other same-sex marriage cases likely to reach the Supreme Court are the First Circuit decision in Boston also striking down DOMA, and the Ninth Circuit decision overturning California's ban on gay marriage out there. 

For a short explanation of this Second Circuit case, with some discussion of related federal court decisions, see David Kemp's The End of an Unjust Law: The Second Circuit Strikes Down DOMA and Sets the Stage for Supreme Court Review.  Also see the New York Times article for an overview.


For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Mommy Wars, Daddy Wars, and Having it All

From the time I heard Anne-Marie Slaughter's interview on NPR, back in late June, and found my Atlantic Magazine copy waiting for me in my office later the same day, there with the by now much-ballyhooed article, Why Women Still Can't Have It All, which she had just discussed with Terry Gross on air, I have been thinking quite a bit about the issues raised.

I thank her for her provocative contribution to the dialogue among the chattering classes on issues of gender roles, feminism, motherhood, and fatherhood.   I must say, however, that I reacted to her article much as I did to the seminal work of Betty Friedan upon my first encounter with it back in college: I appreciated its historical contribution, but its focus seemed too bourgeois for someone with my more radical sensibilities.

I have since enjoyed reading and learning from many of the varied reactions to that Atlantic Magazine article.  Two of my favorites, which I will pass on without comment, are The Daddy Wars, by Jessica Valenti, and Why Can't All Parents Have More, by KJ Dell'Antonia.

Too Big to Jail

Here's the amazon.com link to a great read I recently downloaded for my kindle: With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, by Glenn Greenwald.  You can read a sample chapter there for free.  A former litigator and now journalist with salon.com, Glenn Greenwald tells the recent story of how many of the biggest criminals on Wall Street are too powerful to be prosecuted.  

The book itself is the latest chapter in the ongoing class warfare saga of these United States, or what I like to call generally Justice for the Rich (one of my topics/labels for blog posts here).  Glenn Greenwald's book is mainly about the recent failure of our government to prosecute the biggest criminals on Wall Street, or the problem of - to use a title of one of the actual chapters of this book -  "Too Big To Jail."  That is to say, while big financial institutions are deemed "too big to fail," the leading banksters in charge of them are similarly just too big and powerful to be jailed. 

I heard Glenn Greenwald on NPR today, but the Democracy Now! interview, "Zero Accountability": Glenn Greenwald on Obama's Refusal to Prosecute Wall Street Crimes, is more informative.  Glenn is one of at least two Greenwalds active in the political and journalistic arena and in it for the right reasons, to seek truth and justice.  The other is Robert Greenwald, whose documentaries I have often mentioned here on my blog.  I wonder if these two Greenwalds are related.   In any case, I have no personal connections to either and get nothing for this plug other than the satisfaction of passing on a good read.

9th Circuit Panel's Strike-Down of Prop 8 Will Stand

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in California, decided on Tuesday not to have a rehearing, by a larger en banc panel of that court, on the Proposition 8 case earlier heard by its 3-judge panel, which struck down the voter-enacted ban on gay marriage on equal protection grounds.  That means that gay marriage proponents have won for now, and that Proposition 8 backers will be attempting to take this up to the US Supreme Court.

It is not certain the US Supreme Court will review that case, however.

It's more likely the Supreme Court will hear the First Circuit case from here in Boston that just found DOMA unconstitutional.  But it's also possible the Supreme Court will elect to hear both cases (see constitutional law expert Erwin Chemerinsky's comments in the excerpted article below).  We shall see.

Meantime, there will be no gay marriage yet in California, as despite this final word from the Ninth Circuit in its favor, the mandate will be stayed until final disposition of the appeal to the US Supreme Court.  Here's my excerpt from the excellent article from Law.com's The Recorder:

The order denying rehearing leaves in place the court's February 2-1 ruling striking down the ban on equal protection grounds. The majority, led by famously liberal Judge Stephen Reinhardt, said the voter-enacted initiative served no purpose other than "to lessen the status and human dignity" of gays. 

Only four of the court's 25 active members publicly backed rehearing the case before an 11-judge panel. Three of them issued a short yet blistering dissent. "Based on a two-judge majority's gross misapplication of Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), we have now declared that animus must have been the only conceivable motivation for a sovereign state to have remained committed to a definition of marriage that has existed for millennia," wrote Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain.  

"Even worse, we have overruled the will of 7 million California Proposition 8 voters based on a reading of Romer that would be unrecognizable to the justices who joined it, to those who dissented from it, and to the judges from sister circuits who have since interpreted it." Judges Carlos Bea and Jay Bybee joined him.  

Judge N. Randy Smith, who dissented in February, also wanted the case reheard. O'Scannlain's three-paragraph "dissental," as judges on the court call them, opens by pointing to the media "firestorm" President Obama created with his recent announcement supporting same-sex marriage. "Drawing less attention, however, were his comments that the Constitution left this matter to the states and that 'one of the things that [he]'d like to see is that [the] conversation continue in a respectful way,'" O'Scannlain wrote. "Today our court has silenced any such respectful conversation."  

Judge Stephen Reinhardt and Senior Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, who joined him in the panel majority, fired off a single-paragraph response. "We are puzzled by our dissenting colleagues' unusual reliance on the president's views regarding the Constitution, especially as the president did not discuss the narrow issue that we decided in our opinion," the two Democrat-appointees said. "We held only that under the particular circumstances relating to California's Proposition 8, that measure was invalid. In line with the rules governing judicial resolution of constitutional issues, we did not resolve the fundamental question that both sides asked us to: whether the Constitution prohibits the states from banning same-sex marriage." 

Indeed, Reinhardt's panel opinion, leaning heavily on Romer, was painstakingly tailored to California. "Because under California statutory law, same-sex couples had all the rights of opposite-sex couples, regardless of their marital status, all parties agree that Proposition 8 had one effect only," Reinhardt's panel opinion said. "It stripped same-sex couples of the ability they previously possessed to obtain from the state, or any other authorized party, an important right — the right to obtain and use the designation of 'marriage' to describe their relationship."  

O'Scannlain's short dissent didn't go into the merits, but called Smith's February dissenting opinion "excellent." All four dissenters are Republican appointees.  

The Ninth Circuit's denial of en banc review means Perry could very well be on a similar track for Supreme Court review as a Defense of Marriage Act challenge that was before the First Circuit. A three-judge panel of the Boston-based court last week rendered unconstitutional the provision of DOMA that denies federal benefits to same-sex couples.
Some think a DOMA challenge would be a more likely candidate for high court review since it's a challenge to a federal statute, not a state voter initiative, and since plaintiffs in the Prop 8 case are asking for a far more sweeping ruling — one declaring marriage a fundamental right.  

"I would not be surprised to see the Supreme Court take both and have them both briefed and argued (as it often has done)," UC-Irvine law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote in an email. He noted the court often takes cases on related topics and has them handled "in tandem," where they would be briefed on the same schedule, argued the same day and decided in separate opinions. On the other hand, he said, the Prop 8 opinion is narrow in that it's limited to a state that granted a right and then rescinded it whereas the DOMA case, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, strikes down a federal statute. 

"The court always is inclined to take a case where a federal law is struck down."
,,,,, 

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

The Latest on Gay Marriage - California, Washington and the Nation

Folks interested in gay marriage issues, particularly those living in California, are awaiting the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision, expected to be released today, which will reveal its three-judge panel's opinion on whether Proposition 8 (the ban by voters on gay marriage in the state of California) is constitutional, specifically whether the lower court's opinion against the Proposition will stand.  If the lower court's decision is affirmed, the supporters of the ban plan to appeal to the entire panel of the 9th Circuit and then to the US Supreme Court if necessary.  Check out the AP story, as appears at Boston.com.

And there is yet more news on the West Coast. Law prof Joanna Grossman has another interesting article, this one mainly about the gay marriage legislation just passed by the state senate in the state of Washington, and which is expected to be passed soon by the house and signed by the governor there, and which would make Washington the seventh state (after Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire and New York), along with the District of Columbia, where gay marriage has been created and legalized either by legislative or judicial action.

In Washington, this legislative action is unique, as Grossman points out, in that "it will be the first time, since the beginning of the modern same-sex marriage controversy, that a state legislature has reversed itself, moving from a statutory ban on same-sex marriage to a statutory authorization" and it will have all happened in a very short time. For more about these recent developments in Washington, and for a brief summary of the developments in the recent, nine-year-long history of gay marriage in the United States, see her online article, The Beginning of the End of the Anti-Same-Sex-Marriage Movement .

Grossman's optimism, in believing as she does that "same-sex marriage is an inevitable, eventual reality" is understandable, given this and other recent developments. She explains how the Washington state legislature did a rather quick about-face in favor of gay marriage, and sees that as a sign that views around the country are changing quickly and that "even deeply entrenched opposition may dissipate sooner than we thought." She notes that same-sex marriage bills are working their way through legislatures in other states, including those of New Jersey and Maryland.

I once shared her optimism, but now I have my doubts. Any suggestion that the six, soon-to-be-seven, states, plus the District of Columbia, will quickly grow in number to include most or all of the other 44 (soon-to-be-43) states where gay marriage has not been legalized, is wildly optimistic. It is far too easy for those of us who live in New England and New York (home to all but one of the current same-sex marriage states) to be out of touch with what is going on in the more conservative regions of the South and the Midwest, and indeed the vast expanse of the country. I tend to think we are going to continue to have, for the foreseeable future, a vast majority of states that are, as they have been, consistently and obstinately unfriendly to same-sex marriage, while a very small number of new states warm to the idea.

Gay couples are a very small minority of households, even in Massachusetts. In the more conservative states, where the religious right or at least conservative social values hold sway, the small minority of gay couples and their liberal and libertarian supporters are likely to continue to be drowned out by the louder, and stronger, voices of the more socially conservative majority. If you've read this far, you might find interesting as I did these numerous charts showing the demographics of same-sex couples in the US, derived from the latest (2010) US Census.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

New Probate and Family Court Rules

Revised rules for the Probate and Family Court of Massachusetts will go into effect January 2, 2012.  The new rules can be found on the website for the Massachusetts Trial Court Law Libraries, as reported today in their blog:

• New Supplemental Rules of the Probate Court, which will replace the General Rules of the Probate Court and current Supplemental Rules of the Probate Court on January 2, 2012 
• Amended Uniform Practices of the Probate and Family Court, effective January 2, 2012 
• Amended Rules of Civil Procedure,  effective January 2, 2012  

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Father Absence Affects Sons More than Daughters?

A new working paper  recently discussed in the Freakonomics blog, and which looks at the relationship between the absence of fathers from the home and juvenile delinquency, suggests that the presence of fathers, while beneficial for both sons and daughters, may be much more beneficial for sons than daughters.  The working paper finds, among other things, that "adolescent boys engage in more delinquent behavior if there is no father figure in their lives.  However, adolescent girls' behavior is largely independent of the presence (or absence) of their fathers."  

Of course, we should always view claims of findings from such social "science" reports with a healthy dose of skepticism.  A commenter on the Freakonomics blog named Todd makes the good point that this new study may be missing some important factors, especially as previous biological evidence shows father absence early in life may affect daughters by dramatically altering the age at which they get their first period. I would add that longitudinal studies in the United States and New Zealand have previously shown that father absence is strongly correlated with a higher risk for daughters of early sexual activity and teenage pregnancy.

However differently father absence may affect daughters versus sons, what is clear is that father presence has positive effects and father absence has negative effects - that is the common denominator of all studies to date, including this latest one.  And while that may seem self-evident to most of us, it is not uniformly understood or believed due to the sad pervasiveness of men bashing in certain circles.

Father absence and its effects on children - both sons and daughters - should concern us all, as we have gone from a nation, here in the US, with 8 percent of children living in mother-only homes in 1960 to one with fully 23 percent living in such homes in 2010, according to the US Census bureau.  I hope more such studies will be done, and that more of us will pay attention to them and the issues they raise.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Divorce: Hair Loss, Weight Gain, Binge Drinking

We hardly need any more reasons to convince us that divorce is to be avoided if possible.  But some recent studies indicate that following divorce women are more likely to lose hair (hat tip to Family Lore) and men are more likely to gain weight.   What about the kids, you ask?  Well, after their parents split, kids are more likely to become binge drinkers by the time they reach 16.

Could be worse, I guess.  It could have been found that after divorce, women are more likely to gain weight and men are more likely to lose hair.  After all, we know women really hate to gain weight, and men really hate to lose their hair.  But you know, since men as they age are much more likely to lose hair than women anyway, and as women are more likely to have already gained weight during the marriage, there's not really any good news here for those of us who get married and divorced.

I do promise, however, to report any good news when I see it.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Alimony Reform Bill Signed Into Law

It's official!  Around 4 PM yesterday, Governor Deval Patrick signed into law the alimony reform bill.  (See my discussion of this in my last post where I link to previous blogs on alimony reform).  The new law goes into effect March 1, 2012.  Go ahead and peruse the complete text of the new law, or check out the well-written summary of the new law provided by Francine Gardikas of Burns & Levinson at their law firm's family law blog, Massachusetts Divorce Law Monitor.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

How Not To Serve Court Papers (especially on a Red Sox pitcher)

From The Docket, the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly blog, David Frank brings us this interesting story behind the Red Sox loss yesterday to the Orioles:   a civil process server showed up at Fenway Park and served child support papers on Red Sox starting pitcher Erik Bedard a few hours before the pitcher was scheduled to take the mound.  

Don't the Red Sox have enough problems right now?  And get this - to add insult to injury, the process server was wearing a Yankees shirt!

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

A Couple More Massachusetts Blogs for Your Blogroll

In the nearly two years I have been absent from the blogosphere (from November of 2009 until today), I have noticed a number of good Massachusetts legal blogs that either weren't around before, or just hadn't caught my attention yet. There are in particular two I would suggest that you check out, and add to your blogroll as well:

1) Scaling the Summit: A Family Law Blog. This blog is primarily the work of Justin Kelsey and his associate Jonathan Eaton and is published by their law firm, Kelsey & Trask in Framingham. Much thought and analysis has gone into this blog, and there is very helpful information about recent, and pending, legislation in the area of alimony reform (which is about to become law at last) and proposed custody law reform.

2) Massachusetts Elder Law Blog. This is an excellent blog I have recently enjoyed reading by elder law attorney Sasha Golden of the Golden Law Center, a practice devoted to elder law and disability planning in Needham.


For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Is Family Law a Masterful Scam? A Criminal Enterprise?

I thought I would reprint my response to a comment on my last post, which was on the issue of alimony reform, as I believe it deserves its own post here. Over the years, I have found some people to be so angry and bitter, after going through difficult experiences in the family law system, that they lose all sense of reality and become paranoid. I have thought about this again recently after reading my colleague, family law blogger Sam Hasler's post Paranoia and Divorce, which links to yet another very thoughtful post by British blogger Marilyn Stowe, Divorce is an emotional rollercoaster – but are you paranoid?

I have heard, read, and otherwise witnessed a surprising number of comments from prospective clients, litigants, and others, who seem truly to believe that the family law system is a corrupt, criminal enterprise. The comment below is a representative sample of that misguided belief. Following that is my response to the anonymous comment.

Anonymous said...
Reprint of blog on Boston Business Journal website in response to Lisa Van der Pool's article 9/18/09
"BBA BACKS BILL TO CAP ALIMONY" Take note. Senate bill 1616 seeks to do one thing and one thing only. That is, to keep the power to control your life, determine your future, and keep you under the jurisdiction of the courts until they feel they are done with you. Family law is a masterful scam not unlike TV wrestling. The lawyers and judges put on a great act in their pretend roles. But, the truth is they all belong to the same organization and they will never act on their own to stifle their own power to run the scam. Any legislator who doesn't act to stop it is an accessory to organized judicial crime. The Bar by seeking to give judges the power to determine alimony duration, knows that 1616 will rely on the honor of "his honor" who in the past has proven that he has no honor in the family court ring. They are all winking at each other because they know how easy it has been to pull the wool over the public's eye in the past. But when it comes to family law, "the emperor has no clothes".

Steven Ballard said...
Anonymous- most posts like yours I do not allow here. Since you make an ad hominem attack on all lawyers and judges in the family law system, rather than upon any single individual, I have allowed it to be published here, but only because it is representative of the response of so many who - though justified in being outraged - go over the top in their paranoia.

While there are very real biases and vested interests, family law is not a masterful scam or a criminal enterprise. People who are divorcing and fighting each other need to take responsibility for their own mistakes rather than simply blaming their lawyers and the system, and subscribing to inane, ridiculous conspiracy theories about lawyers and judges who are supposedly getting rich at their clients' expense.

Those who are in the legal system -especially including those within the most profitable, big law firms, firms which in fact do not even have family law sections, even as loss leaders, because they would be insufficiently lucrative -find comments such as yours to be laughable.

It's sad many people are so bitter that they actually believe this kind of conspiratorial crap. Many hate lawyers and judges so much that they can't even think straight, or examine basic facts.

One of those facts is that there are many very good people who work as divorce and family law practitioners and judges. Most of them in fact work very hard in a very difficult profession, dealing with very difficult people in contentious cases, and many of them also perform important pro bono work and public service in their communities, while generally earning modest incomes relative to others in the legal profession.

Change the law, improve the system, yes. But in your own individual cases, you should always take a good hard look in the mirror before assessing blame for problems in your own home.

-------------------------
For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Child Support Blues

If you think you have the child support blues, because of frustration in trying to receive or to pay child support, here's a real story for you. A minimum-wage-earning 29-year-old man in Knoxville, Tennessee, is already the father of 21 children with 11 different mothers. On second thought, I also should have mentioned frustration of the taxpayers, as they will in their own way undoubtedly be sharing the child support blues in this case as well.

Here's daddy on youtube:



Although this story appeared in the Huffington Post last month, I give my hat tip to Family Lore and Divorce Discourse, where I first found this interesting story in the blogosphere today.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Baseball Brings Down the Divorce Rate?

As recently reported by Nolo’s Divorce, Custody & Family Law Blog, cities that have acquired professional baseball teams have subsequently seen their divorce rates fall at faster rates than other cities that have wanted but did not get baseball teams. Nolo's blog points to last month's Business Week article which discussed the interesting study on this from the University of Denver's Center for Marital and Family Studies. Although I'm very skeptical - as I usually am with such social "science" studies - I am also a baseball fan, and as such, I really want to believe that baseball might actually bring down the divorce rate.

Many complain their spouses spend too much time watching that big game. But you know, perhaps we would have more marital disharmony if we didn't have that big game to watch.

Massachusetts in particular, and New England in general, have in many recent years boasted the lowest divorce rates in the nation. As Boston and New England have also had more than their fair share of winning sports teams in the last several years, maybe we need a wider study to test the broader hypothesis that spectator sports in general may be helpful in bringing the divorce rate down.

Usually far different reasons are suggested for such lower rates of divorce in New England than other regions of the country, such as the Southeast. For more on such comparisons between and among states, start with these two articles: To Avoid Divorce, Move to Massachusetts from the New York Times, and Blue Over You. Why Red States Have Higher Divorce Rates.

Who knows? While we await the answer to such questions, I say take me out to the ballgame, and Go Red Sox!


For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Corri Fetman, of Sleazy Divorce Ad Fame, Sues Playboy

Thanks to John Bolch at the blog Family Lore, for the news that former divorce attorney, turned Playboy columnist, Corri Fetman, is no longer writing the "Lawyer of Love" column for the magazine, and is instead suing the magazine for sexual harassment, claiming over $4.5 million in damages for "gender violence" and emotional distress. You may recall that she became famous, and got her position at Playboy, after posing in sexy, provocative photos for a tasteless billboard ad for her Chicago law firm, as I have discussed here previously.


For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Iowa's Highest Court Institutes Gay Marriage; Vermont's Legislature Is Well On the Way to the Same Goal; New York Grants First Same-Sex Divorce

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Wow, there have been quite a few developments on the gay marriage front - today, yesterday, and this past week. As Vermont moves closer to becoming, possibly, the first state to create gay marriage by legislative enactment, now that its House has joined the Senate in passing a bill that would permit gay and lesbian couples to marry there, Iowa today has become the next state to do it judicially, as have Massachusetts and Connecticut before it (and also, for a time, California, although that was short-lived): Iowa gay marriage ban ruled unconstitutional - msnbc.com.

From the website of the Iowa Judicial Branch, you can find the summary/press release describing the decision, and the full decision as well.

Also, New York has now made good on its earlier promise to recognize gay and lesbian marriages performed in other states by accepting jurisdiction and granting divorces to such couples if and when they move to New York. The first such divorce was granted in New York this week. See Same Sex Divorce-Granted! - New York Divorce and Family Law Blog.


For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.