Harris County Divorce Law Blog

Yesterday, the well-known actor Michael Douglas was faced with a familiar scene. He was in court discussing the details of his divorce -- his divorce after a long-term marriage that was finalized in 2000. Since that divorce from Diandra Douglas, Michael Douglas has remarried and is currently married to actress Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The divorced couple is revisiting the details of their divorce settlement because Michael Douglas is revisiting his classic role from the movie "Wall Street." He is picking up his former role for the "Wall Street" sequel, and his ex-wife wants some of the profit that the movie will likely make when it is released next month.

Our last post began a discussion on our blog about the trend of couples living "un-divorced," according to a Politics Daily piece. Today, some marriages in the U.S. are left unbroken not because couples still love each other and want to grow old together, but because they are avoiding the threats they equate with divorce.

We previously went over some of the financial reasons why couples are avoiding divorce, but today we are adding to that discussion. Emotional and family reasons also prolong unhappy marriages when they could be ended in what does not have to be a complicated nor expensive divorce.

Family Matters

Many parents believe that staying married is what is best for their children, plus they do not want to put children through what they believe is going to be a hostile, divisive divorce process. Some couples, therefore, will live and parent together, but their relationships are not romantic nor necessarily exclusive. 

An all-star cast portrayed a family in the 2009 film "It's Complicated" that was navigating its way through being a family of divorce. An ex-husband, ex-wife, new wife and potential love interest all crossed each others' paths and made for lots of awkward moments and laughs.

But the term, "It's complicated," is becoming increasingly popular in use in order to define the state of U.S. marriages. A recent column in Politics Daily reflects on the growing rate of married couples whose marriages are best defined as avoiding divorce rather than living in love.

The decisions made in family law are often complex and difficult. You are deciding the future path of your family and likely creating your vision of what your life will be from scratch. That's not an easy task. But at least those decisions are somewhat in your control, and maybe you even initiated the divorce.

Now, imagine that you are a military service member. You are passionate about your obligation to serve your country. But, you are also a parent and equally devoted to caring for your child. When service members are deployed, issues regarding the future of their families often arise due to their absence.

In the past, Texas courts have heard child custody and visitation cases filed by parents who construe military deployment as "abandoning" children at home. That argument has led to some military parents paying an excessive price for serving their country. Their courageous jobs cost them their child custody rights.

As of 2009, however, Texas enacted Senate Bill 279, which aims to protect military parents' rights to their children and to having a say in the future of their families.

We have shared a blog post about Facebook and divorce before, and a recent story involves the popular social networking site's role in the path of an Ohio couple's relationship.

Lynn and John France were married five years ago in Italy -- or so they thought. When Lynn found pictures on Facebook of John marrying another woman, a complicated divorce and child custody dispute ensued that cast their union in dizzying a shade of doubt.

John France and his attorney have tried to prove that Lynn and John were never legally married. If that point could be proven, it would allow John's marriage to Mrs. France #2, Amanda France, to be considered valid.

Family law cases create the necessity for crucial, life-altering decisions to be made regarding the future of innocent children. Those decisions are often left to outside professionals when, for example, a couple cannot come to a child custody agreement and the court requires that a professional determine the suitability of each parent in a case involving domestic violence.

Child custody evaluators step in during those situations, and they are responsible for investigating each parent's disposition and likelihood of continuing domestic violence in the home after a divorce or separation.

A recent study turned the evaluating around on 23 child custody evaluators. The evaluators were not being judged based on whether they were violent; rather, the study aimed to discover how evaluators make their decisions in their work and whether they were effectively preventing children and spouses from being put in an abusive situation.

It is natural for some people to want to quickly get their divorces over with and move on with their new lives. While that can be a preferable way to approach divorce, a recent resource warns readers about the financial risks of not taking the time to fully consider the financial details of a family's divorce settlement.

Specifically, financial experts claim that most divorce settlements fail to take into account the future values of certain accounts and assets. That failure, a result of short-sightedness, can put certain parties of divorce in financial hardship that they are not prepared for.

It's one of the first pieces of information that the estimated 400 million Facebook users enter into their Facebook profiles: relationship status. But maybe it is important for more users to pay better attention to their "married" or "in a relationship" statuses when they log in to the social-networking site.

If Ken Savage's story is any sign of a relationship trend, then too many Facebookers are forgetting (or ignoring) that they are in relationships and using the site to find romance outside of their marriage. Savage is currently separated from his wife after having discovered that she reconnected and began an affair with an old boyfriend on Facebook.

This trend has been verified by divorce attorneys throughout the U.S. who report that they have seen a tremendous increase in the use of evidence from social-networking sites in divorce and other family law disputes, including child custody.