It made me cry. It made me stay up late, reading on the edge of my seat. It made me acutely aware of the blessed freedoms that our fore fathers mothers fought for that we, as women in the modern world, take for granted everyday.

It reminded me of the tragedies people are facing around our world everyday while we bitch about the price of gas. It reminded me to be grateful for my life and to help those around me who are less fortunate.

It made me want to tell you to read A Thousand Splendid Suns. Read it and remember that, even though it is a novel, the nonfiction version exists today and women are suffering through it.

If you’re representing yourself and need to file divorce forms with the court and/or serve your spouse, One Legal is a godsend that lawyers use daily! One Legal is an online Court Services Business that files, serves and retrieves court forms nationwide. And, the process is as simple as 1-2-3. Here’s how it works:

1. You prepare and sign your documents in the comfort of your home or office
2. You fax or email the completed forms to One Legal with instructions for filing and serving
3. One Legal files the documents with the appropriate court, and/or serves your spouse, and provides you with court endorsed copies and a Proof of Service.

That’s it! It’s as easy as pie! And best of all, if you make a mistake, they’ll send you an email or call you with information about the corrections you’ll need to make and they’ll do it all over again until you get it right (of course, for a fee).

This is NOT a paid endorsement. I used the service yesterday and wanted to share this information with you!

Newsday.com has a short piece, “Breaking up still hard to do“, on the archaic “fault” divorce grounds still required in New York, which, surprisingly, says the women’s organization NOW believes “fault” divorce grounds give women the financial security they may need and should be maintained. Hmmm….I wonder if NOW has considered the fact that divorce suicide and murder rates are allegedly higher in “fault” states and the legislature can create viable alternatives for offering divorcing wives increased financial security, such as allowing no-fault divorces that authorize judges to impose financial penalties or accountability for philandering husbands who may have caused the divorce.

Last two weeks of casting for TLC’s new tv show - Real Simple don’t miss out on a once in a lifetime opportunity if you or someone you know can be a great candidate for our show, visit Real Simple TV or call 310.558.0898 x-221 for more information.

Are you a successful woman who loves her life, but sometimes feels overwhelmed by everything on your “to-do” list? A working professional who can manage an entire marketing team, but not your own personal calendar? A stay-at home mom who keeps the house running smoothly, but can never find time for you? If you’re looking for ways to spend less time doing what you HAVE to do and more time doing what you really WANT to do, TLC and Real Simple are looking for you.

Real Simple, the award-winning magazine read by millions of women every month, is teaming up with TLC, home to television’s most engaging and innovative docu-series and reality-based programming, for a brand new lifestyle makeover series. They’re looking for women with winning personalities who long to make their lives less complicated and even more rewarding.

TLC and Real Simple want to hear your story! Tell us about yourself, your life and the people in it (kids, husbands, boyfriends, bosses, in-laws, you name it!), your typical day, the things you have to get done, and the things you’d love to do one of these days. Most importantly, tell them why you’d like a Real Simple lifestyle makeover. Please email TLC and Real Simple at casting@bnent.com and tell them why you would be a great candidate for the show! In addition to telling them why they should choose you for a Real Simple lifestyle makeover, be sure to include the following: Your name, age, marital status, the city you reside in (you must live within the greater Los Angeles area). Do you rent or own your home? Also, send photos of yourself, photos of the areas in your life that need a makeover and photos of your supporter(s) (The people directly impacted by your inefficiencies: spouse, parent, sibling, best friend, co-worker etc…..)

I couldn’t help but share this video and story with you.

Earlier this week in Santiago, Chile, a 26 year old professional stripper danced on the poles of Santiago subway trains for nearly a week in an attempt to challenge “the prudishness of Chilean society”. She was arrested on Thursday.

According to Reuters, “She said she was protesting a lack of tolerance in Chile, one of Latin America’s most conservative societies where the first generation since the Pinochet dictatorship is reaching adulthood.”

The Chilean media has nicknamed her “La Diosa del Metro” or Subway Goddess and the stripper calls her performances “happy minutes”. (Love IT!)

Admittedly, after watching the video and getting a look at her barely there thong, one of my first thoughts was: “I sure hope she sanitized the poles before she wrapped her legs around them!!!” Is that prudish or just hygienic?? LOL.

Source: Reuters (Reporting by Pav Jordan; Editing by Anthony Boadle)

Here are a few divorce and relationship articles you may be interested in today:

Think Simple Now’s “How to Keep a Relationship” - This is a detailed, detailed post that looks at the many facets that contribute to, or hinder the success of a relationship.

U.S. News and World Report On Women’s “Why Divorcing Women Seek Revenge” - A discussion that seems to stem from Christie Brinkley’s very public divorce. I sure hope someone has written an article on why men seek revenge as well.

Newsday.com’s “It’s over: “Cook, Brinkley agree to divorce settlement” - No custody for Cook!

If you live in California and you are representing yourself in any family law matter, the California Courts: Self-Help Center has a wealth of information available online that you may access for FREE. Lawyers like myself use it almost daily to quickly review Local Family Court Rules, download fillable Divorce Forms, research California case law and do a slue of other divorce related legal tasks. If you don’t live in California, do a Google search for “[Insert your state] Courts Self Help” or contact your local family court and ask if they have a self help center at the courthouse. Or tune in next month after we’ve added links to every State Court Self Help Center we can find!

This article is not legal or financial advice. You should contact a lawyer, accountant and/or financial professional in your state to discuss the specifics or your case and applicable laws.

According to the ABA Law Journal, Boston solo practitioner Evan Fray-Witzer, filed a class action lawsuit against Metropolitan Antiques, a New Jersey company, that had purchased the lawyers’ fax numbers and sent them faxes advertising estate sales. “The suit claims the faxes violated the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act” and, get this, ended when the class, which was made up mostly of Massachusetts lawyers, negotiated a “$1.8 million settlement with an auctioneer that sent them unsolicited faxes.”

I know this isn’t divorce related and you may be asking why you might care about this story, so I’ll give you the reasons I found it noteworthy enough for a post this morning:

1. The class, which was made up mostly of Massachusetts lawyers, negotiated a “$1.8 million settlement with an auctioneer that sent them unsolicited faxes.” - Can you believe it??? $1.8million!!! How many faxes could the auctioneer possibly have sent to each plaintiff lawyer to justify a $1.8 million settlement (which likely, doesn’t include the legal fees the auctioneer paid to its attorneys)?
2. Each of the members of the class are each eligible to receive up to $1,500 under the settlement. For those of you who are not lawyers, this means that each person who signed up as a plaintiff in the case based on the fact that they had received unsolicited faxes from the auctioneer gets up to $1,500 each! And, most persons who join a class action need only sign a paper or two swearing that they qualify. So each class member will receive $1,500 for um…a bad fax and signing a paper or two!!
3. “As lead plaintiff, Fray-Witzer will receive $15,000.” Mr. Fray-Witzer, whom I assume initiated the class action lawsuit, must have been REALLY TICKED OFF by the faxes he received in order to take on a class action lawsuit, which can be a HUGE undertaking unless you’ve filed so many in your career and have the process so streamlined that the toughest part is coming up with ideas about who to sue and why.
4. And now for the kicker: “The lead lawyers in the case, Matthew McCue of Framingham and Edward Broderick of Boston, will share $600,000 in attorney fees.” So I ask, “who are the real winners here??” The class members or the lawyers who spent their days working on the case? For the sake of argument, as an environmentalist who hates to see paper wasted, I admit the results of the class action may have a positive effect on the environment by reducing some waste if you still use old fashioned, non-electronic fax machines (say De minimis, which “is a Latin expression meaning about minimal things”). And, if you hate solicitors or telemarketers, I bet a few will think twice before faxing unwanted advertisements to you. That makes the environment and some of us winners, but that said, I can’t get away from the fact that so much time and energy and money was spent (bad for the environment) and our federal court system used, to fight unwanted faxes!!! I also can’t help but wonder if the entire action was simply a money making scheme for the lawyers who filed and pursued the action. I certainly hope not, but given the subject matter of the suit, I can’t help but wonder. (Of course, if any of the lawyers who profited from this action cares to comment, I welcome their response!)

So, for those of you who are in the legal process of getting divorced or separated, the moral of this rant story is: keep an eye on your lawyer and his or her staff to make sure they aren’t creating and billing you for unnecessary work. Find a lawyer, like myself, whose primary objective in working with you is to do what is necessary to resolve your case while keeping as much of your wealth in YOUR pockets, not the lawyers.

ps. Please ignore any typographical or grammatical errors as my morning tirades are not proofed for such technicalities.

pps.Maybe I should rename these posts “a lawyer’s morning rant” - now that I have that out of my system, back to work!

For those who may have missed it, the main topic on Larry King Live last night was divorce. And not just any old divorce, but knock down, kick em in the *** celebrity divorce. Most notable were Christie Brinkley’s (hell hath no fury like a woman scorned) divorce from her 47 year old architect, philandering (with his 18 year old office assistant, whom he paid $300,000 to keep quiet), porn watching (while married) husband; and New York Yankee’s A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez)’s impending divorce, which was filed by his wife and includes claims of adultery (with Madonna) and emotional abandonment (two long standing divorce “fault” grounds in archaic New York).

After watching clips of Christie Brinkley approaching the courtroom on her third day of trial with a maniacal, seemingly painted-on smile, and shots of her husband (what’s his name?) Peter Cook, who was referring to his wife as “Miss Brinkley” and doesn’t want to agree that HE will help his children with their homework, seemed ridiculous. Then to make matters worse, Christie, who fought to keep these divorce proceedings public (most celebrities aggressively push for privacy (i.e. Britney Spears)), demurely tells a reporter that she had, and continues to hope that the child custody issues will be settled out of court and far from public eye. Call me jaded, suspicious or on to her, but I doubt Christie will yank the plug on this divorce debacle and her tirade to humiliate annihilate her husband’s reputation until she feels vindicated for his transgressions (putting it mildly). Anyone interested in hiring architect Peter Cook to design their home with lots of space for their teenage girls? (Yeah, I didn’t think so.)

That said, can you blame the gal? I mean after all, she is a “SUPER” model coping with the failure of her fourth marriage and publicly dealing with the fact that her husband, who had at least one, maybe two affairs, spent thousands on Internet porn DURING their marriage and (perhaps worst of all) set up web cams in their houses to broadcast himself masturbating! Ikes! (He’s lucky he isn’t married to Lorena Bobbit (remember the lady who cut off her husband’s willy and tossed it out the window?).

BUT, given the fact that she has young children (per Larry King, 10 and 12 years old), is it really appropriate to air your dirty laundry in the media for all the world to see, including your children, their friends, their friend’s parents, their teachers…? (Can you think of a more humiliating thing to do to a 12 year old?) And with today’s technology, is it wise to memorialize dad’s disgusting ways and mom’s retaliation in Wikipedia or elsewhere online? I mean she’s made her point - he’s a pig - but is it really any of our business, and wouldn’t the most self-respecting and honorable thing to do be to place her children’s interests at the forefront of this battle instead of her revenge? I don’t know, call me old fashioned, but I’m thinking she probably shouldn’t win “mother of the year” award and more importantly, I’m not sure either of them should have custody of their children. Grandma? Grandpa?

Update: Christie’s scandalous divorce trial has come to an END! The hard core media coverage must have motivated hubby to settle. The only downside: the adulterous, slime ball still gets $2.1 million.

Faith is belief in the unseen, the quietly held conviction that even though you can’t imagine how, at some time, in some place, in the right way, the thing you desire will indeed come to pass.

~Daphne Rose Kingma (Author of Coming Apart: Why Relationships End and How to Live Through the Ending of Yours)