The wedding last year was smashing,
according to those who there - a fabulous band, the swish ambience of Toronto's Royal York,
the glamour of two wealthy families united by romance. Vows were said; the party ran
late.
But a fairy tale is all it was: By noon
the next day, the marriage was over - called off, guests heard later, at least partly
because of tensions that had arisen between the families. It was annulled as though
it had never happened.
This month, as happens every June,
couples are packing churches, synagogues and wedding halls with friends and family to
celebrate their unions. An unlucky few will soon realize they leaped without looking
closely enough. For a growing number of Canadians heading to the altar, the fleeting,
ill-fated marriage has become their first stumbling run at lasting love.
There are the rare wild stories, like
this one: A bashful young client arrived at the doorstep of Toronto lawyer Jacqueline
Peeters last year, confessing that as a California college student she had gone
off to Reno with friends and pulled a Britney Spears - getting drunk and waking up
married. The newlyweds promptly split, but two years later, back in Toronto, the young
woman had fallen in love for real, and needed to "tie up her loose end." She
never did find the groom; the divorce was declared legally in his absence.
But most short-lived trips up the aisle
don't have such calamitous Hollywood twists.
Instead, they lead to discreet
separations months later, which aren't recorded in divorce statistics until a year after
that, and the reasons are more pedestrian - an affair is uncovered, a visa was desired,
one side had wanted the party more than he or she really wanted the spouse.
The idea of exchanging vows without
covering your bases is given a heartbreaking twist in the new novel On Chesil Beach by
British author Ian McEwan. In the book, set in 1962, a young couple have a
misunderstanding on their wedding night and, to their later mutual regret, part ways. The root of the
problem - virginity - is an unlikely issue in 2007, but the context is the same: They
slid into marriage without ever clarifying their commitment.
In real life, once in, it's not so easy
to get out. Annulments are complicated. There's pressure to give it a go. It's easier to
wait out the year for a no-fuss divorce.
In Canada, the divorce rate has held
steady for seven years: If the current rate continues, 37 per cent of marriages that
began in 2003 will eventually end in divorce.
But breakups in the third year, already
the riskiest time, have continued to rise in the past 15 years, while other figures
have generally held steady or declined. The trend also has been identified in the
U.S. and Britain.
The question is why this is happening in
affluent, educated countries, when the majority of couples now live together
before they get married, and should therefore know precisely what they're getting? Even
with the marriage rate at its lowest since the Second World War, many couples report
feeling those old-fashioned pressures - to please their parents, to follow their
friends, to live up to cultural expectations.
But perhaps we've also become a bit too
blasé about the whole ring thing: A team of psychologists at the University of Denver
call it "the inertia marriage," a term for couples who drift, haphazardly, into
husband-and-wife territory.
"It's like they're in this tractor
beam from Star Wars," says Denver's Scott Stanley, "and they're thinking,
'Well, I can always escape from the Death Star later.' "
The inertia marriage
Anne, a speech pathologist living in
Northern Ontario, arrived at the Death Star long before she caught her husband cheating
three months after their wedding. She spoke on condition that her last name not be used
- frankly, she's still embarrassed that her marriage was over before its first
anniversary.
She should have known, she says, and deep
down, she did. Sitting in the pews at her church rehearsal on the eve of the
ceremony, she turned to her closest friends and asked, "Did you guys feel sick
before the wedding?"
But she didn't run. "I am going to
make this work," she told herself. "I am probably not marrying the right person, but that's
okay, we'll have an okay life."
By the honeymoon, she says, "I
thought, 'Oh my God, I've got a death sentence here.' "
Looking back, she can see what happened.
He followed her to another province, and when she bought a house, it made sense for him
to move in. They owned two dogs together. She was 33 years old, financially solvent,
all her best friends were getting married and having children, and her Roman Catholic
parents wanted a ring on her finger. "I just felt, 'Well, it's time to
get married now.' " There were qualities about her ex-husband, who was keen on a wedding, that
worried her, but she brushed them aside. She was being too fussy, she figured. The
problems were "right under my nose," she says now, "and I just plowed
through."
After they split up, she wore her ring
for a long time, so people wouldn't know her marriage had failed so quickly.
Many people, especially the younger
generations, believe you can buy marriage insurance by sharing a roof before saying yes to a
proposal. But the research shows just the opposite: One of the highest risk factors
leading to a marriage that ends quickly may be shacking up before making long-term
plans.
"The more people buy things
together, the longer they live together, they get a dog together," Dr. Stanley says.
"All that stuff makes it harder to ... go in a different direction."
Hence the "inertia marriage."
Psychologists also call it the "availability heuristic" - the tendency for people to make decisions
based on what's available, rather than by a set list of compatible criteria. And
who's more available then the person already filling your Friday nights?
"They're thinking, 'I really like
you, but I'm not sure you're the one, so let's live together to try things out, and then I'll
really see what I think about your problem with alcohol or your nagging. I want to
get a better look.' "
But all they've done is make it harder to
get out.
And brides take note: Sliding into a
marriage is worse for women, who are more likely, Dr. Stanley says, to assume their partner
is committed when he's really biding his time. Wasted years in a short marriage
cuts into a woman's baby-making window. And she faces a greater stigma from being
divorced than most men.
Better make sure you have "the
define-the-relationship talk" before the lease is signed, Dr. Stanley advises.
Erin Travis, 28, would be the first to
admit she neglected to have "the talk" - right through to the "I do's." She
had reunited with her high-school sweetheart after university, and they had been living
together for two years when he proposed. Their
friends, who were all taking their walks
up the aisle, thought it was so romantic. She was having a magical wedding on a beach
in the Dominican Republic.
She had doubts early, she says. But they
had known each other forever, and everyone else was so happy, and then the dress was
bought and the resort was booked and she was on a plane headed south. They came home
to life as before, except for the rings on their fingers. Less than two years later,
the marriage was over.
"We just kind of got engaged, and
started planning a wedding and didn't really look down the road any further," she says
now.
They had moved in together because it was
practical. They never talked about children or where to live or what they wanted out
of life. It was as if the relationship had its own engine.
"I felt like I was on a freight
train, and I didn't jump off until I missed my spot."
A fancy wedding can make things more
difficult in its own right. "For me, it was easier to get a divorce than put the brake on my
wedding," Joanne Fessenden, a Toronto wedding planner, says of her first short-lived
marriage 10 years ago.
Getting married, she says, had seemed
natural after living with her boyfriend for almost two years. The rest happened in a
flurry.
She knew, walking down the aisle, that it
was wrong: On the videotape, when her new husband kisses her at the altar, she
stands in her Grace Kelly wedding dress and offers with a slight grimace: "Thank God,
that's over." (After, she didn't even recall saying it.) In 18 months, it really was over.
Michelle Valente, who owns
Vancouver-based Bellisimo Consultants, has watched couples enter, almost unwittingly, into marriage
as "the next logical step."
She has seen two that were annulled
almost upon returning from the honeymoon. One bride and groom, who had been together for
years, came back from Hawaii and said they had made a mistake; the minister, a family
friend, arranged an annulment.
"In reality, it wasn't where they
wanted to be. They were good friends, but they weren't in love," Ms. Valente says.
But everybody had expected them to marry, and they let themselves be convinced.
It could be worse
If such errors of judgment seem dire, a
few short-term marriages fall more into the territory of nightmares.
In March of 2006, for example, 350 guests
watched Holly Branco pledge her love and devotion to Louie Mallinos, after pulling
up to the church like a princess in her horse-drawn carriage. The dinner at the Crystal
Fountain in Markham, Ont., was a seven-course meal; the bride and groom danced to It's
a Beautiful Day by U2.
The only trouble was that Holly Branco
was actually Mandy Branco, wanted for a string of fraud charges.
After a series of increasingly suspicious
events - cellphones that he had never ordered arrived in the mail, he found a health
card linked to another name hidden in the house, and she changed the lock on the mailbox -
Mr. Mallinos called an unidentified number on his wife's phone, and the real Holly
Branco, Mandy's sister, answered.
One not-so-beautiful day, Mr. Mallinos
watched his bride being led away in handcuffs.
Mandy Branco eventually pleaded guilty to
several counts of fraud and got 18 months in prison. They'd been married only three
months.
Karen, a 29-year-old researcher in
Toronto, cringes at the memory of her five-week marriage. She knew it was a bad idea from
the beginning. She also knew that her parents desperately wanted to see her married.
Her fiancé was good-looking, a doctor,
from the same cultural background - his bad temper was easy to overlook, no matter
how much he yelled and mistreated her. And, as accomplished as she was, she saw being
single as a failure.
"Nothing mattered more than getting
married," says Karen, who would not use her full name. "To me, that defined
success." Plus, her parents had spent piles of money on an engagement party, and 500 people were
coming to the wedding.
But it was a disaster: Her mother-in-law
moved in to their small apartment against her wishes. Her husband's rages got worse.
One night, after a particularly horrible fight turned physical, she felt she had no
choice: She called her sister in tears and left for good.
"I think I just thought that if I
worked really hard, and hoped really hard, it would turn out okay," she says. "But
if something feels wrong, it probably is wrong."
This year, she is getting married again -
this time without the pressure, and without the doubts.
Slow-down solutions
Except for the drunken college student,
none of these individuals entered into their marriages without a sincere hope and
intention that they would last.
Women such as Erin Travis and Anne, the
speech pathologist, are insulted by the idea of a "starter marriage," as if
they had been planning all along to get out and trade up.
"I didn't go in thinking of it as my
first kick at the can," Ms. Travis says. "You hear a lot about brides who are in it for the
wedding. That wasn't me. I was thinking about the marriage. That was the part keeping
me up at night."
Even while marriage is declining in our
culture, we cling to the romantic idea of soulmates: A 2003 survey found that 60
per cent of Americans - and 77 per cent of respondents in their early 20s - believe
everyone has a true love.
People often enter into marriage with
unrealistic expectation, says Cornelia Brentano, a psychology professor at Chapman
University in California and co-author of Divorce:
Causes and Consequences.
The ones who divorce within those first
few years, she says, usually realize almostimmediately that they made a mistake.
Mind you, even newlyweds who call its
quits can have second thoughts about their second thoughts.
Janis Nicolay, a Vancouver photographer,
remembers one couple who married in an elaborate party at Whistler, B.C., about
two years ago in the company of a large group of close friends. They never called for
their enlargements: They split up almost right away.
But Ms. Nicolay learned recently that
they are back together, and happily having a baby.
The question is how to prevent people
from "sliding versus deciding," as Dr. Stanley puts it. He suggests, for one thing, that
people need to carefully consider their decision to move in together - and
teenagers need to be educated about the factors that raise the risk of divorce.
In Texas, legislators passed a law last
month that waived the marriage-licence fee for couples who take a premarital class, and
doubled the fee for couples who don't.
"If that's the nanny state, then so
we are," Representative Warren Chisum, the Republican who introduced the bill, told
the Houston Chronicle. "We are very pro-family."
And those quick-turnaround marriages
might be prevented, Dr. Brentano suggests, if couples were forced to have a cooling-off
period before the wedding, like the waitingtime for divorce.
That's a hard sell: the government
controlling when you can marry. But if you divorce, Dr. Brentano counters, "the
government may be in your life for up to 20 years, until your children are grown."
In Germany, for instance, couples must
wait three months after acquiring a marriage licence before getting hitched; in
Ontario, the opposite is true - a marriage licence expires after three months.
For now, however, we are largely left to
our own devices on matters of the heart, so what kind of advice would those who now
wish they had said "I don't" offer?
"That nagging feeling," Erin
Travis says, "look into it."
Don't have a big wedding, says Joanne
Fessenden - strange words from a wedding planner.
Now happily married, she often counsels
her clients not to get swept up in the day.
When she went south a second time Ms.
Fessenden got married on the beach with only two strangers as witnesses.
"Because I am a wedding planner, I
know that's the way to go," she says.
And as for Louie Mallinos, he wryly
proposes this first-date precaution: "Ask for two pieces of photo ID when you meet someone
new." - 2007
September 6 The Globe and Mail.
Experts say parting hard on children
Despite mounting research on the negative impact of divorce, few parents
seem inclined to stay in a bad relationship for the sake of their children.
Although some people resort to sleeping in different beds and endure
unsatisfying relationships in order to provide a stable family life, they
are still in the minority, experts say.
A growing body of research shows divorce is traumatic and can increase
children's chances of dropping out of school and lessen their likelihood of
attending a leading university -- or any university at all. Many children of
divorce also suffer from depression and anxiety, are more prone to fighting
and violence and can have serious relationship problems.
But Robert Glossop, executive director of programs at the Vanier
Institute of the Family, points out the research shows in most cases things
work out fine for the children in the long run, despite the increased risk
of academic and social problems.
In prior decades "there was a more prevalent belief in days gone by
that you stay together for the sake of the family," said Barrie Evans,
a psychologist at Madame Vanier Children's Services in London, Ont., who
counsels children who have been through divorce.
He and others feel that belief may no longer prevail.
"We expect marriages to be all-satisfying and we enter with naive
assumptions about what marriage entails," Mr. Glossop said. His
institute monitors family trends.
"They are expectations that are sometimes dashed in the course of
day-to-day marital life. I think, increasingly, we live in a culture of
expressive individualism, in which our own choices and desires drive us and
our decisions. It is all about me. People are less likely to subordinate
individual interests for a larger good."
He says many parents rationalize their decision to end a marriage,
something that has become easier as divorce has gained wider acceptance.
"They say, 'Look, I am not happy in this relationship; certainly it
is not doing my kids any good at all to see me or my spouse unhappy so it is
better to just split up and get on with our lives.' "
Close to four out of every 10 marriages will end in divorce, according to
the latest Statistics Canada research. The rates have stabilized over the
past several years but grew five-fold between 1968 and 1995, largely because
divorces have become easier to obtain under legislative reform. In 2000,
there were more than 70,000 divorces across the country.
"Given the dramatic increase in divorce since the 1960s, the obvious
answer is that there is no evidence that parents are more likely to stay
together for the sake of children than in the past," Mr. Glossop said.
"There has been research that asked if people should stay together
for their children and, somewhat surprisingly, younger married Canadians
said they thought they should. But we have to remember those are younger
Canadians who had not yet gotten to the point in the marriage where [things
can break down.]
Recent studies have shown the negative impact on children can be
minimized with post-divorce counselling. In some provinces, including
Alberta, and in various states in the United States parents are required to
attend classes to help ease the transition for children. As well, children
who maintain a close relationship with their parents tend to be better
adjusted, research shows.
Most will survive the experience. However, we know from a fairly
broad body of knowledge that many children will experience long-term
negative consequences," Mr. Glossop said. "Yes, in the end it
might be better for children to be out of a conflict-ridden relationship or
home. At the same time, it is probably true that if kids could vote, divorce
would probably be illegal.
Tragically they still love both of their parents -- it is just that
their parents do not love each other. It is a pretty dramatic life
experience for these kids to go through. The research has dispelled the
naiveté that we had perhaps 25 years ago that kids are simply adaptable and
can get over everything.
Anthony Lucifero, a marriage counsellor in Toronto, said he believes
there is some change in attitudes. "I think there is a movement going
on, even with the courts, where they are promoting the best interests of the
children. I notice in my own practice that more and more of the parents do
stay together. Women in particular are more likely to put up with things
like infidelity, gambling, addiction for the sake of the children.
However, Anne-Marie Ambert, a sociology professor at York University in
Toronto who specializes in family affairs, estimates as few as 10% of
parents may stay together for the sake of children. She said there has not
been a dramatic shift over the past 50 years.
In her latest study, titled Divorce: Facts, Causes and Consequences, she
outlines the data showing adult children of divorce are more likely to have
a child out of wedlock, have lower test scores in school and be unemployed.
One U.S. study of about 10,000 young people, published last year, found
the psychological damage from divorce faded after about three years but the
children continued to suffer academically.
Another U.S. report, published in 1996, found children from one-parent
families are only half as likely to go to leading universities as those in
two-parent families, even after researchers factored in income and the
parents' education.
- Julie Smyth National
Post 9 Jan 2003
Ex-beauty queen in battle No. 2 over
marital assets
Fight with ex-hubby comes after court win against
former father-in-law's firm
Former beauty queen Jenny Wong Ser Wan, 56, is
facing the last hurdle in her divorce proceedings, which began back in 1999.
After taking her former father-in-law's company to
court in August, she will be fighting with her former husband, Mr Raymond Ng
Cheong Ling, 53, in the Family Court for her share of the matrimonial assets
on Wednesday.
Mr Ng's father is Mr Ng Bok Beng, 86, the
philanthropist who donated $5 million to the Nanyang Technological
University this year.
The court has already upheld Madam Wong's claim
that her former husband had sold shares and a house to his father's company
at greatly undervalued prices to 'dissipate the matrimonial assets'.
Said Madam Wong in an exclusive interview with The
Straits Times: 'I knew the marriage was doomed when I found out within
months of marrying him that he had been womanising.'
Madam Wong had met Mr Ng in 1973, two years after
she won the Miss Singapore Universe title. She was sent to Miami, United
States to represent Singapore in the Miss Universe beauty pageant.
She was about 25 and working as a property agent,
while Mr Ng was an undergraduate. They had first met when he was a volunteer
at a Lions Club function.
Madam Wong came from a wealthy family. Her father,
the late Wong Yuen Shee, owned several hotels in Singapore in the 1970s.
And despite more eligible suitors who came to pick
her up in Mercedes-Benzes and Aston Martins, she chose to marry Mr Ng in
1976.
'He came from a very conservative family and I
thought he might be a more stable person,' said Madam Wong.
But things changed quickly, and before long, their
quarrels got so bad that their eldest son, Ezine, now 28, had to be sent
overseas to study when he was about 10.
'He was psychologically affected by our quarrels
and had to be put on medication and counselling,' she said.
Around this time, in 1995, she also heard from her
tai-tai friends that her former husband was seen behaving intimately with
other women, something she said he later admitted.
In her affidavits, Madam Wong also alleged that he
spat at her, punched her and used a pillow to smother her. She said he also
dragged her down the stairs.
She filed police reports concerning his alleged
attacks on her and took out a domestic exclusion order as well as a personal
protection order on him.
Mr Ng also lodged a police report in 1994,
alleging that she slapped him and threatened to cut off his genitals with a
pair of scissors.
In 1996, she took out a maintenance summons
against him for $15,000 a month because he stopped maintaining the family.
The mortgage on their Cluny Hill house was not
paid, and he cancelled all her credit cards. He also stopped giving a
monthly allowance to his son in the US.
A year later, he agreed to give her their three
houses in Canada, his shares in Lei Garden worth about $2.6 million and a
cash settlement of $2.5 million in return for her withdrawing the
maintenance order summons.
She said he also agreed to stop seeing the other
woman.
But Mr Ng did not fulfil the agreement.
Tired of his ways, she filed for divorce in 1999.
In 2000, she took out a Mareva Injunction - which
prohibits the disposal of assets worldwide - against him.
His shares in Je Taime Jewellery Design, a company
belonging to Madam Wong's sister, were also frozen. Mr Ng became bankrupt in
2002.
The Straits Times tried to contact Mr Ng for
comment through his lawyer, Miss Loh Wai Mooi, but to no avail.
Said Madam Wong: 'I am not a gold digger. I just
want to ensure that my children and I are provided for.
'In fact, I supported him financially. When we got
married, I sold my Tanglin apartment so that he had capital to start his
first business, as he desperately wanted to stop working for his father.'
The couple have three children. Their youngest son
is 18, and is now serving national service, while their daughter, 25, is
studying in a local university.
Madam Wong has given evidence in court, and eldest
son Ezine will also be expected to do so via videoconferencing in the
upcoming trial.
Ezine, who suffers from schizophrenia, told The
Straits Times in a phone interview from Florida in the US: 'I am a little
fearful of taking the witness stand because I may be misunderstood for my
condition... it's not something acceptable in Asian cultures.'
Mr Ng, who sent an independent psychiatrist to
assess his son's mental condition, will be challenging a claim for Ezine's
medical expenses in court. - 1 November
2004 SINGAPORE
STRAITS TIMES
MEGABUCKS
MARITAL SPAT
Millionaire's ex-wife will have to return...
His parrot
his telescope
3 sapphires
(SINGAPORE) Give the
macaw back to your ex-husband, the judge ordered Madam Bettina Chew
yesterday.
He also told the
42-year-old Singaporean to return her ex-husband's US$3,500 (S$6,230)
computer-controlled telescope, three sapphire gemstones worth US$95,000 and
the documentation related to his art collection.
Multi-millionaire
business consultant Michael David Selby had hauled Madam Chew to court over
these, and a few other things, that he said were rightfully his as part of
their divorce settlement.
Judicial Commissioner Lee
Seiu Kin ruled in favour of most of Mr Selby's claims.
He ordered Madam Chew to
hand over the company kits to the three British Virgin Islands-incorporated
companies that she used to be the director of. Those companies had been set
up to hold the couple's matrimonial assets.
He ordered her to pay
about S$19,000 that she racked up on a supplementary American Express credit
card just before the divorce on June 15 last year.
The judge also told Madam
Chew to produce a list of the wines she kept from her ex-husband's
substantial collection and either hand some back, or pay damages, if their
value exceeded the 25 per cent due to her.
Mr Selby claimed that the
614 bottles of wine he received from his ex-wife were cheaper wines stored
in the guest bungalow adjoining their house off Holland Road.
All of the expensive
wines, including 48 to 60 bottles of the rare and costly Chateau D'Yquem,
were kept in the main house.
As for the talking
hyacinth macaw, the JC found that it rightfully belonged to Mr Selby.
He noted that, in the
beginning, there were two macaws.
Madam Chew had said she
had bought them from a bird shop here as family pets, but Mr Selby said he
imported them as juveniles from the US and that he had reared and trained
them.
At the JC's suggestion,
Madam Chew had given one of them - a military macaw - back to her ex-husband
during the trial.
He said that if she could
not produce the other one, which had been given away, she would have to pay
her ex-husband US$10,000 in damages.
What Mr Selby will not
get are: two Khmer sculptures worth about US$200,000, a Han Dynasty bronze
horse and cart valued at about US$100,000, and five pre-Han Dynasty bronze
bells worth about US$100,000.
He also will not get a
1952 Gibson guitar worth US$4,000 because the judge was not satisfied that
his ex-wife had taken it.
When the couple split
after a 12-year marriage, Madam Chew got US$30 million, the 2,323-sq m
Coronation Road West bungalow which is worth about S$12 million, and an
apartment in London.
She now lives in a prime
district apartment with their children - an 11-year-old daughter and a
six-year-old son.
Mr Selby, who has two
daughters aged 18 and 20 from a previous marriage, now lives in Bangkok.
The judge noted that the
total value of Mr Selby's latest claim - US$422,500 - paled in comparison to
the more than US$60 million in cash, securities and other investments held
in two bank accounts.
After a 10-day hearing
which ended last Saturday, JC Lee found that neither Mr Selby nor Madam Chew
had been completely frank and truthful in their evidence.
'This is hardly
surprising, as many people who are caught up in such a situation would be
moved to massage the truth to embellish their case,' he said.
'Having said that, I
would add that I am driven to conclude that Chew's evidence has been most
unreliable.'
However, JC Lee also
found that Mr Selby had been prone to exaggeration in some areas.
Mr Joseph Fok Shiu Kong
and Mr Morris Yow appeared for Mr Selby.
Mr Philip Fong, Ms
Foo Siew Fong and Ms Chang Man Phing acted for Madam Chew.
- Singapore
Straits Times
11 October 2002
