What's the worst that could happen in a divorce? ABC News has a fun and comprehensive story called "Divorce Wars" (7/20/06) documenting the crazy, hateful things people do to each other in divorces. It may be short on redeeming "social and political import" but as a divorce lawyer and critic I liked it a lot. Fun quotes from it:

Raoul Felder says: "the wife and daughter are going to end up with the entire proceeds of this house that is going to be worth much more because he blew it up."

"It's easy to forget divorce usually begins because at least one party thinks it will solve his or her problems. As writer Dorothy Dix once noted, 'Many people think divorce is a panacea for every ill. … They find out, when they try it, that the remedy is worse than the disease.'"

  ¶ 4:00 PM

  Family & Legal Scholars Criticize ALI's "Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution" Reconceiving the Family: Critique of the American Law Institute's Principles
of the Law of Family Dissolution

Available on amazon.com

Just released, July 17, 2006.

The American Law Institute's (ALI) "Principles of the Law of Family
Dissolution" is "arguably the most sweeping proposal for family law reform
attempted in the U.S. over the last quarter century." In "Reconceiving the
Family" a group of 27 top law scholars of left and right challenge and
critique various aspects; from ALI's call to eliminate every last vestige of
fault (or morality) from family law, to its call to treat cohabiting couples
the same as married couples to (in what the editor calls "unearned trust")
the attempt to transfer parental rights to so-called defacto parents. This
is a must read for anyone interested in policy, legal, or moral debates over
marriage and family law. It's a Cambridge University Press book and
expensive, but worth it.

(copied from SmartMarriages.com)  ¶ 9:00 AM