|
We've saved a few articles for those 'difficult times' that seems to crop
up for some of us in life. With dynastic
wealth though, we need to make sure the siblings do not divorce too many
times; and not in a generation that gives 'equal' rating to contribution of
the wife.
OTHER
ARTICLES ON DIVORCE
Marriages on the
rocks in London's financial district
Settlements sought before partners' salaries shrink
Workers in London's financial district
expect the credit crunch to lead to an increase in divorces, with spouses
seeking settlements before the full impact of the slowdown hits their
partners' salaries, according to a study by a law firm.
The survey of 100 traders, hedge-fund
managers and stockbrokers found 79 per cent believe marriages are more
likely to break down during an economic crisis.
A fifth of respondents know at least one
person served with divorce papers since the start of the credit crunch,
while one in 10 are worried their own spouse may already be seeking legal
advice.
The UK is skirting a recession as house
prices fall, banks roll back credit and oil costs increase.
Bank of England governor Mervyn King said
on June 26 the inflation rate may jump to 4 per cent, double the target, and
that the economy may contract.
Yesterday's study, by family lawyers
Mishcon de Reya, found that 54 per cent of City workers feel their job is
more vulnerable now than a year ago.
'The credit crunch shows the more
sinister side of human nature,' said Sandra Davis of Mishcon de Reya, which
handled the divorces of Diana, Princess of Wales, model Jerry Hall and
soccer player Thierry Henry. 'When there are problems in a relationship,
money papers over the cracks but when the money is gone the cracks are
visible.'
Only 4 per cent of people in the survey
said they have a pre-nuptial agreement in place and 5 per cent said they
regretted not having one. Such agreements are not binding under British law.
'There is now a real push for them to
become entrenched in mainstream law,' Ms Davis said. 'It recognises the
reality of the situation that marriage is a contract.'
The survey found that 60 per cent of
respondents have asked their spouse to cut back their spending and 19 per
cent said their partners refused to economise.
Nearly half believe financial workers are
more likely to reduce spending on extra-marital relationships.
Figures from the UK Office for National
Statistics show the divorce rate in England and Wales fell 7 per cent in
2006 to 132,562, the lowest rate since 1984.
- 2008 July 12 BLOOMBERG
Starlet's affair
may change South Korea's adultery law
A
sensational love affair involving a South Korean
starlet, her TV personality husband and her opera singer lover could lead
the country to change laws that can send adulterers to jail.
The lawyer for actress Ok So-ri brought a
petition to the Constitutional Court this week asking it to overturn the
current law that can land a person in jail for up to two years for having an
extramarital affair.
"The adultery law . . . has
degenerated into a means of revenge by the spouse, rather than a means of
saving a marriage," the petition said.
Ok and her husband Park Chul have been
staples of the local gossip sheets for months with both holding news
conferences where they exposed embarrassing details of a troubled marriage.
Ok has admitted to the affair.
Park filed a criminal adultery complaint
against his wife and she was indicted in January on suspicion of illegally
having an affair with the opera singer.
South Korea passed the adultery law in
1953 to protect women.
In its male-dominated society, women had
little recourse against a husband who had an affair. Back then if a wife
walked out of a marriage, she would often end up alone and penniless.
Today, it is rare for people to be jailed
but that has not stopped several thousand angry spouses from filing criminal
complaints each year.
Critics say the law is anachronistic,
with some saying a better compromise might be to allow spouses just to sue
for compensation in civil court.
"The situation is different now with
the elevation of women's status in society. It is an act of betrayal but it
shouldn't be considered a sexual crime," said Lee Hye-kyung of the
Minwoo women's rights group.
The number of divorces in South Korea has
almost doubled since 1995. In 2005, about 128,500 couples divorced in the
country of almost 49 million people.
Although women still face difficulty
finding high-paying jobs or achieving wage parity with men, more women have
been able to enter the labour force over the past decade and live
independently on their wages.
Referring to the current divorce law, the
petition said: "There has been no evidence of its contribution to
protecting women, and its validity is questionable with the elevation of
women's social and economic status."
2008 February 1 REUTERS
Avoiding Divorce Court
Divorcing couples are increasingly seeking alternative
ways to split up, rather than going to court. Here are four options:
| Tactic |
What It
Is |
Cons |
| Arbitration |
Couples
choose a third party who makes decisions about contested issues. The
process is generally faster, less costly and more private than court
proceedings. |
Decision
is generally binding and hard to appeal. Few states allow binding
arbitration on child custody or support. |
| Mediation |
Couples
hire a middleman who helps them negotiate a settlement. Ideal for
custody issues because it's less contentious than court proceedings. |
Mediators'
qualifications vary widely. And the technique is tough if one spouse
is richer or more powerful. |
| Collaborative Divorce |
Spouses
sign a contract with their lawyers agreeing not to litigate. The
couple, along with their lawyers, then seek to negotiate a
settlement. |
If the
couple can't reach an agreement, they must find new lawyers and
start the process again. |
| Parenting
Coordinators |
A
parenting coordinator tries to help the couple agree, but if they
can't, the coordinator makes the call. Meant for already-divorced
couples who are still fighting over issues related to kids. |
The role
and qualifications of the coordinators range widely. |
Source: American Academy of
Matrimonial Lawyers; WSJ
research 28 Oct 2004
Middle-class Chinese women fear disgrace of divorce
Survey finds even successful business women hesitate
to go it alone under pressure of public and parental ridicule
BEIJING - Fear of disgrace and reproach from family convince many
middle-class women in China to stay in unhappy marriages, even when the
couple is living apart or the woman knows her husband is having an affair, a
study has found.
The survey, conducted through counsellors in east Nanjing city, found
that fear of losing face was a key factor in even some successful
businesswomen remaining in failed marriages, the Xinhua news agency said
yesterday.
The Chinese place importance on how others see them and this explains the
reluctance to divorce, said experts.
Most of the women were urban white collar workers in cities, the survey
found. They appeared content with their relationship in front of family
members, yet felt lonely, as their marriages were only 'shells', the report
said.
It cited the example of a 32-year-old woman surnamed Liu, who has a
daughter, six, and works as chief finance officer at a company. Her husband
is a marketing manager in a real estate firm. They earn a good income and
own an apartment and a car.
However, Ms Liu said she and her husband have little communication as he
comes home late every night. Perhaps feeling guilty for having an affair, Ms
Liu's husband treats their child and her parents very well, she said.
He has not yet suggested getting a divorce, and she does not intend to
either. She used to consider splitting up, but eventually chose to tolerate
him under parental pressure.
Another woman, a 29-year-old surnamed Li, is in a good financial
situation and does not have a child. She has had nothing to talk about with
her husband since shortly after they got married. Now they live in different
flats.
The reason she does not want a divorce is she fears she will fail to find
a more suitable man for marriage.
Divorced women are looked down upon as used products in China, and have
difficulty re-marrying, but in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai,
such attitudes are changing.
Sociologists, however, say staying in marriages does not preclude women
from having affairs, sometimes for years.
The divorce rate in China, which was 1.91 per thousand in 1998, has been
rising at an annual 0.01 per cent, but internationally this is much lower
compared to developed countries. -- AFP
20 March 2004 Singapore
Straits Times
SOCIAL TRENDS: THE MYSTERY OF THE
SHORT-TERM WEDDING
Till
next month do us part
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
Generation Ex :
Divorce is a Privilege
Till death do us part? Nah. It's till
cheating sex do us part. Sexual fidelity is the sine qua non of marriage.
But is it all bad when an extramarital
affair happens?
As a gentleman I know helpfully explained
over his pinot noir in a downtown Toronto bar, "Sex is the life force,
Sarah."
Indeed. And an extramarital affair is a
huge life-changing event, nothing short of transformational - if, that is,
you don't hide in deep guilt and denial from why you did it.
I am not a professional psychologist,
although I have had what I like to call a little shrinkification. (At least
therapy is no longer taboo.)
So I will say this: Once you have endured
divorce and the painful examination of why you stayed for as long as you
did, what the pathology of the relationship was and what you need to repair
in yourself, you see the world and people with a sort of emotional X-ray
vision. You see what lies beneath.
Most affairs illuminate a truth, one you
may not have been ready to see.
Okay, let me go first.
In my marriage of almost 18 years, which
ended in divorce 4˝ years ago, I, like many, had plenty of opportunities to
have affairs. Once, when I was in my late twenties and travelling on
business to Sydney, Australia, a colleague, who was also married, boldly
propositioned me. Never once in the Toronto office had he made a pass at me.
But now he was exercising what he called "the out-of-hemisphere
rule." He called my hotel room in the late evening to ask if he could
come up and see me, not some time, but right then.
I said no. I was happily married at the
time. But many years later, when my husband and I were in trial separation,
still technically married and mulling over whether we could work it out, an
affair did happen. I didn't seek it out, but I didn't stop it, either.
It didn't last long. He provided comfort
and tenderness, something I badly needed, but more importantly, the affair
gave me clarity. I knew that if I could make that emotional transgression,
my marriage was over, and it spared me further ambivalence.
Ambivalence, for anyone who is divorced
or thinking about it, is an affliction that can last a long, long time
before the decision to call it quits.
That's why I call it the "clarity
affair." It's not why you're leaving your marriage: it tells you
that you already have. A friend of mine experienced the same thing. "It
made my decision about my marriage black and white."
She ended hers without revealing the
affair, which was also short-lived, to her husband.
Stephen Grant, a high-profile divorce
lawyer in Toronto's McCarthy Tétrault law firm, believes that both women
and men often use affairs as a springboard. But he thinks that men are less
likely to examine the reasons underneath the action.
"Men, to the extent that they are
conscious of why they do things, think, 'I'm unhappy,' and infidelity is a
response to their own bewilderment about the sense of loss in their
marriage."
There's an adage at work here: Women
leave their marriages for themselves, men leave for other women. "Guys,
as opposed to women, typically aren't prepared to let go of one trapeze
until another one is within reach," Mr. Grant says to explain the male
need to have a safe (and soft) landing. Whether they stay with the new
trapeze is another matter. The point is, they need it to get to the other
side.
The affair is a substitute for courage.
But if affairs can be a force for social change, they can also be really
good marital glue.
"I'm not making light of it,"
says Anne Bercht, 45, author of a 2004 book, My Husband's Affair Became the
Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me, that landed her on Oprah and other
television talk shows. "It's devastating. But pain is really an
opportunity for personal growth. You don't develop character as a person in
the good times," she says from her home in Abbotsford, B.C.
"Once an affair happens, nobody can
turn back the clock and undo what has been done.
But you're left with a choice: to become
better or to allow bitterness to wreck the rest of your life." She and
her husband, Brian, who had the affair and confessed it to her, were able to
repair the damage, but not without a lot of work. Together they examined how
their behaviour in their marriage had contributed to the problem. "We
have much greater openness and honesty between us," she says, adding
that they now run marriage therapy courses and a website, http://www.passionatelife.ca.
Affairs as marital glue can work in other
ways, too, according to a woman I spoke to who uses a website that
facilitates adulterous affairs between married people. Her husband of many
years ignores her. The affairs she has engaged in (several over the years)
are never in the hope that she can leave her marriage for another man. She
claims there are different kinds of love a person can experience - a sort of
fraternal- like affection for a husband of many years and then the sexual
passion with a new partner.
My take? I get the thrill of sex with a
new person, that life-force thing, and how valued that can make you feel.
But I think the human heart longs for a big, complete love, the one where,
to quote literary critic Terry Eagleton, "each realizes himself or
herself through the other."
I would venture that what lies beneath
this woman's behaviour is her reluctance to leave the security of her
marriage. Divorce is not just frightening, it's expensive.
Put simply, divorce is a privilege. It's
like a car: lots of people may need one and want one, but not everybody can
afford one. - Sarah
Hampson THE
GLOBE & MAIL 26 April 2007
WAS HIS...
 
And this is possibly how it ends...
Divorced?
So here's a loan to start again
Japan's first
divorce loan caters to those who fell head over heels in love only to find
themselves up to their necks in debt.
Named "Re" for those restarting
their lives, the loan helps divorcees cover the cost of compensation and
legal payments and offers a lower interest rate than credit cards loans, on
which Japan's growing number of divorce-seekers have depended.
"It's not that we are recommending
divorces," said Yoshimi Aoki, spokesman for Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank, which
offers the loan.
"But we want people to feel more
comfortable in visiting banks to consult on these issues."
While Japan's divorce rate is still low
in comparison with the United States and Europe, failed marriages have been
on the rise in recent years.
Last year, there were two divorce cases
for every 1,000 people, up from 1.7 cases in 1996.
The divorce rate in the United States was
3.6 per 1,000 total population in 2005, while in Russia it was 5.5 and 2.8
in Britain in 2003.
In Japan, divorcees found responsible for
failure of their marriage on average have to pay 4 million yen (HK$270,000)
to former partners.
With the new loan, divorcees can borrow
up to 5 million yen. - 2007 October
2 REUTERS
GENERATION
EX
How could the wife not know?
Of course the beleaguered wife, Rosemarie Fritzl,
didn't know a thing. She had an extreme case of spousal denial.
Her husband, Josef Fritzl, 73, confessed to
Austrian police this week that he had kept their daughter, Elisabeth, now
42, in a bunker beneath the family home since 1984. He had fathered seven
children with her. Rosemarie was reportedly unaware of her husband's
incestuous activities. For 24 years, he kept his secret underground - in
more ways than one.
Criminal psychologists point out that full-blown
psychopathic behaviour, which is rare and probably involved in the Austrian
case, describes someone who is skilled at deception and
compartmentalization. He or she maintains dual realities: seemingly normal
in one life, criminal and evil in another. This explains why it's not
uncommon to hear stories about wives of serial killers, for example, who say
they had no idea what their partners were doing.
"I was in shock," said Judith Mawson
Ridgway, former wife of the supposedly mild-mannered truck painter Gary
Ridgway, who pleaded guilty in 2003 to killing 48 Seattle-area women, more
than any other serial killer in U.S. history. "He made me feel like a
newlywed everyday," she told a local television station, smiling
meekly, in an interview six years after the discovery.
Psychopaths aside, if ordinary couples are honest
they'll agree that there's a more garden-variety version of spousal denial
or marriage blinkers.
We all often choose not to see certain truths - in
our children, in our friends and especially in our spouses. Wedding vows
should include, "With this ring I suspend my disbelief in you."
Did Silda Spitzer never once suspect the behaviour
of her husband, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer? He was making
arrangements to have trysts with prostitutes for several years. Wouldn't she
have known? Or, did she notice some odd behaviour and rationalize it away
somehow?
Certainly, many ex-spouses will say, once their
marriage is kaput and especially when some uncomfortable truth has been
subsequently exposed, they intuited something was a bit off about their
partner's conduct but didn't act on it at the time.
I know people who discovered, post-divorce, that
their spouses were involved in dubious business activities, for example, or
had affairs while they were married. Only when free of the marriage, and in
retrospect, do they realize that if they had been thinking right at the time
they would have questioned certain behaviours.
It's not just that love is blind; it's that once
married, you become tied up in wanting - and needing, for a variety of
reasons - to believe the best of your spouse.
"We can all become prisoners of hope, and it
can become very convincing in spite of what might be laid out in front of
us," says Stephen Madigan, a Vancouver marriage and couples counsellor.
Divorce finally lifts the veil.
I say that because I often joke that the ritual
procession in the Western wedding ceremony should be altered in one
significant way. Tradition dictates that the bride sails down the aisle on
the arm of her father, with a veil covering her face. At the altar, once the
vows have been exchanged and the couple have been declared married, the
groom lifts the veil to kiss her. Then, the newlyweds parade in front of the
congregation, who can clearly see their beaming faces.
It should be the reverse. The bride should wear
the veil after she has become a wife. Once a couple are married, it becomes
paramount for the participants to believe that everything is fine, really,
just fine, thank you.
One reason may be the emotional investment and the
public declaration that come with marriage. You are telling your community
of friends and family that this is the person you want to spend the rest of
your life with. You spent months planning the event. Perhaps your parents
forked over big dough for your reception. Members of the congregation cried
with joy. God was watching, too. Your mother sighed with relief. And the
wedding dress was the same price as a new fridge.
If you start doubting the person you married - and
paying attention to why your intuitive alarm bells are going off - it's a
bit like admitting that the house you just bought with all your savings is
riddled with dry rot and can't be fixed. You are supposed to have kicked the
tires, checked the foundations. Wasn't that what all that time dating and
maybe even living together was about?
Status is involved in keeping the blinkers on,
too. No one wants to admit, "I am married to a controlling, difficult
and mean-spirited man, who probably has affairs with prostitutes because he
never wants sex with me." You want to say, "I am married to the
governor of New York."
"There's a whole history of influence when it
comes to the institution of marriage," observes Dr. Madigan. "We
are continually filled up with the idea that to be married is a good thing,
but that to question marriage is not a good thing."
He also points out that while there is plenty of
cultural encouragement to marry, there is little support once you are in a
marriage. "People are really on their own when it comes to figuring out
the relational politics of being married to someone, and it's a
taken-for-granted expectation that we should know what to do."
You're isolated inside the marriage. Hoping that
things will improve is easier than trying to investigate signs of trouble.
When children come along, the need to make the
marriage work grows, despite doubts that may have mounted. "Women,
especially, need to believe the best of their spouses," says Caryn
Miller, a Toronto psychotherapist who works with individuals and couples.
"In many families, their livelihoods depend on men."
The inability to recognize trouble signs is often
a matter of marital acclimatization. It could be that those nasty
psychopaths gradually manipulate and deceive the people in their intimate
orbit. Their partners get used to the dysfunctional environment gradually,
one degree at a time, like a mouse in a pan of water that slowly reaches the
boiling point.
In marriages with average people, this also
happens at some level. Remember that song from My Fair Lady?
"I've grown accustomed to her face ... her smiles, her frowns, her ups,
her downs, are second nature to me now, like breathing out and breathing
in."
Couples get used to each other. You learn to live
with all the other's warts - good, bad, big, small. It's only when you're
out in the fresh air of ex-hood that you see your former partner for who he
or she truly is. - 2008 May
1 GLOBE
& MAIL
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