Slashdot Mirror
The Internet Has Transformed Modern Divorce
stern writes "The internet may be contributing to divorces (thanks, Facebook!) but it's also reducing the pain, especially the bitter fighting associated with joint custody. Calendars are now much easier to coordinate, and if one parent denies a court-ordered phone call to another, there's no way to hide the fact that the call didn't happen. Because of these and other technologies, divorce has changed radically in the last ten years. From the article: 'When [one divorcee] requested court-mandated parent counseling, the judge ordered the two to use an online tool called Our Family Wizard instead. Now, lawyers supervise e-mail exchanges between her and her ex, ensuring that each party responds to the other in a timely manner. All e-mails are time dated and tracked. Parents can create a shared expense log and receive automated notices and reminders about parental obligations.'"
The internet may be contributing to divorces (thanks, Facebook!)
Or you could instead say that its facilitating the catching of cheating rats.
Just saying, this was the most depressing thing I've read on Slashdot in awhile. I know it happens to couples, but I guess I was lucky my parents stuck it out.
...to pay more for lawyers and crap software.
...you really have to think of the children.
Anything else suggested in order to curb free speech to "protect" the children is stupid and whoever came up with those ideas should be hung by sunset.
There was some way for the internet to raise the child. Oh, I know! YouTube!
The internet may be contributing to reckless, dishonest relationships (thanks, Facebook)!
Divorce will never happen to me - I'm a nerd who posts on slashdot!
... has transformed many aspects of modern life, not just divorce. Surprised?
Yes! At the same time that lawyers and courts have discovered on-line calendars, many offices have adopted word processors instead of using IBM Selectrics!
Seriously, this is hardly news. What has changed in divorce is that most jurisdictions have abandoned most of the moralistic old garbage surrounding it, and now make it (reasonably) painless for intelligent adults to dissolve a marriage. Even when there are kids.
Not that there aren't still enough idiots out there to keep the lawyers busy.....
Three Squirrels
Divorce... with a computer AND on the internet. Quick, someone get a patent!
I'm a divorced parent myself, and I found myself at least partially agreeing with one of the people who commented on the original article on the NYT web site. He said he doesn't understand America's insistence on joint custody and co-parenting with these toxic relationships that end in messy divorces.
I can't speak for the accuracy of his claim that in "other cultures", it's usually a winner take all scenario where one parent walks away and disappears, and the other steps up to raise the kid. But I definitely think there are times when this really is the best outcome for the kid.
It seems like we've made an automatic assumption that it's universally best for the kid(s) to spend as much time as possible with both parents, and on the surface such a suggestion sounds plausible. But not all marriages end simply because both people were immature and foolishly got married too quickly. Many times, one parent has a drug or alcohol addiction and becomes unbearable to live with. Other times, like in my own situation, the other parent suffers from mental illness (and contrary to what you may hear - medications for such things as bipolar disorder don't ever fully bring some people back into reality).
Our court systems essentially force these unfit parents to pretend they're able and willing to parent anyway, and the kid(s) pay the price.
I'm not against the idea of using tools like texting or email, or even some sort of moderated message system, if it helps parents work through the details of sharing custody in cases where it's the situation they're both striving for anyway. But I literally had my ex-wife tell the attorneys she was perfectly happy to sign all of her parental rights away. Yet the Family Court judge declared such a thing unacceptable, and made us come up with a shared custody arrangement instead. Something really is wrong with a legal system that believes they made a "better choice" by doing this. My ex moved to the other side of the country with some younger guy and only came to visit our daughter a total of 2 times in 10 years since then. She has a very small child support obligation she practically never pays, which has built up over time to total up to close to $20,000 so far. Reality is, my current g/f and I are raising my daughter -- not my ex-wife. And it would be foolish to ask her to make any kind of important legal decision on my kid's behalf since she practically has no idea about who she is and her needs anyway.
I suppose I could fork out the money to go back to court and fight to get full custody, and at this point, they'd probably grant it based on a decade of evidence of how things went.... but it's VERY irritating on principle that this could have been settled from the beginning when SHE said she wanted no part of being a mom during the divorce proceedings.
I know alot of wow addicts who got divorced solely because when life got hard they played 12 hours a day rather than looking for a job or spending time iwth the disgruntled spouse. Internet addiction can be serious and a cause of divorce as well if you have a spouse who hates computer games (70%) and does not understand that the raid until 2am has to be done because people rely on you. This also just happens to co-inside the time set for sex by the S.O.
Sadly, I see it happening to men who feel abandonded as well. Myself included in that category.
http://saveie6.com/
This is the 21st Century. What's the point of getting married?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Divorce still stinks, and ruins people's lives, and their children's lives.
People ought to spend more time caring for their marriages and their spouses and less time finding an easier way to divorce, or how to coordinate their "who gets the kids" schedules with Google calendar.
easier to ignore their lies and find the actual truth.
The point is that you are proclaiming publicly a promise, and if you break your promise (your vows in this case) you and everyone -should- feel, and rightly so, that you do not have personal integrity, and your word should not be trusted. Complex societies are built on a web of trusts, and when we can no long trust each other, public order will crumble and we will abandon our complex civilization. This happens one person at a time. Children need good examples to follow, especially example of trusting relationships. So now, do you still wonder why children are ill-behaved, and we feel that society becomes more corrupt each day, with a sky-high divorce rate such as we have? And so it falls.
Sent from my ENIAC
so when is divource going to rapidly change to not be an inherently misandrist situation?
I'll be honest. I tried marriage once and it was a pretty miserable failure Lost everything of value I owned and truly had to start over from square one, right in what should have been the "prime of my life". On the flip side, I got a great kid out of it -- but trying to justify the marriage as "all worthwhile" for that reason amounts to little more than an attempt to rationalize things. (Marriage, after all, is no true requirement for getting someone pregnant and having a kid.)
Since that time, I met a great woman (who went through a tough marriage before, like I did) and now we live as a blended family. I insisted from the start that we shouldn't concern ourselves with a goal of legal marriage though. Rather, we held our own commitment ceremony and invited only the people we felt were our true friends and family members who could understand the decision without casting judgements....
We both wear rings and consider ourselves married, but there's something relieving (to me at least ... since I suppose I can't really speak for her) about knowing we didn't get suckered into paying the government for permission to marry by way of a license, It also prevents the Family Court system from stepping in and dictating who must share what with who, who gets to visit who on what terms, etc. -- should the worst happen and we break up on bad terms.
IMO, the idea of a couple making the commitment (in front of those you both care about) to live together as a "family unit" is a great thing. Families are the primary building blocks of our society. But LEGAL marriage is much more of a government construct... a way to determine taxation and exert authority over the populace. The biggest justification I can see, today, for legal marriage is the fear of a partner not having control over such things as making medical decisions for the other person, should they become incapacitated, or an employer's insurance plan refusing to cover a partner who isn't legally their "spouse". But those fighting for gay marriage rights are also indirectly fighting for reform in these areas, since the same complications and legal questions apply to them. I'm pretty confident these problems can be worked through and will be resolved as the years pass.
As I discovered first-hand, legal marriage can be a VERY foolish thing to undertake. No matter how much you love your partner, there's something incredibly stupid about setting yourself up so he/she can wipe you out financially on a whim, with no legal recourse. If your business partner did it, it would be declared theft or fraud and they'd be looking at years of imprisonment and hefty fines. When your marriage partner does it, the police and the courts look the other way, telling you "it was just as much hers as it was yours!", or "It was wrong, but we're not going to lift a finger to touch them because your divorce isn't even final yet and there's no telling what the judge will eventually rule about the property rights."
Too many people act like taking these risks just proves how much they love and trust their partner, and it's "supposed to be like that". But over 50% of these same people find out they were wrong about their promise to everyone that they'd stick with that person until death, too.
In most countries you will still be considered married or at least more than simple friends (since you have lived together for sometimes) , and your partner legally has most of the rights of a married woman.
I'm guessing that getting a prenuptial agreement never crossed your mind.
At the risk if sounding like a shill, if you are married and have that feeling that things are spinning away from you, you should read the Married Man Sex Life Primer. It totally helped me figure out how to save my marriage, and mostly because I could suddenly understand how things looked and felt to my wife.
Common Law Marriage
In Alabama you are considered married if you live together for more than 3 years.
or
You claim to be married, like checking into a motel as a married couple, or having your own wedding ceremony.
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
just change their relationship status on facebook to divorced and be done with it
Heck, I have karma to burn. Mod me troll, but as a homosexual, I'm flabbergasted about what part of "until death do we part" straight folks are missing about this whole deal.
Add in kids, and I really don't get it. I must be weird or something for not sleeping with everything I have a chance with and not cheating when I am sleeping with someone.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
List of topics not to take advice from the slashdot crowd on:
1) legal issues
2) parenting methods
And today's new item
3) anything related to marriage
Mental Illness is not a crime which is why it is invalid as an excuse to deny a child's access to that parent.
The only time it is justified to deny a childs access to a parent is when that parent is a risk to the child.
The game changing factor that the Internet brings to male-female relations is that for the first time, teenage boys and young men can get the unfiltered truth from married men. In the past all that a 22 year old fellow would hear was a sanitzed, church-approved version of how one should live life according to the Lemming Lifescript(tm) and get married.
Now, the truth about how women change after marriage is all over the Internet, and guys have taken note. Marriage rates are falling steadily, regardless of how the economy is or anything else. This is true I would say in both Northern Europe and the U.S., from what I have seen living in both places.
So the real benefit of the Internet is not helping divorces move smoothly, but in education and marriage prevention.
Wow. Children getting married need adult supervision of their divorce? Who would have thought?
In most places you are common law married after a period of time, but a "divorce" is still much simpler, and the courts get involved a lot less if it is a common law marriage. The longer you are together, the more the courts will interfere. If there are kids involved, in my jurisdiction, it doesn't matter if you are married or not, your obligations are the same to your kids.
Anarchists never rule
Bingo. For starters, maintain separate residences. I don't know how to keep the state away once kids are involved.
There's a large and growing contingent who manage polyamory fine and who get a lot out of it. Maintaining a single relationship can be hard. Maintaining multiple relationships is certainly harder. But not impossible. Don't go insulting these people, calling them sociopaths, when you don't know them or much about polyamory itself.
A good choice of wording, "seems", pointing out that this is just from your perspective. People need to realize that the cultural context they grow up in and live in is not the only way to live life, and that other cultural ways aren't necessarily wrong or stupid or sociopathic because they're different.
It takes a lot of emotional intelligence, self-esteem, and logistical sense to handle being in polyamorous relationships. It's not for everyone. But it's probably suitable for far more people than you think.
You'd do well to learn more about actual polyamory. Especially before commenting.
I have been online since long before Facebook or the phrase "Social Networking" existed, back in the dinosaur age of just plain IRC. A true geek yes indeed and I have seen it all. Divorce began to change in the 90's when "regular people" non geeks began to flood the net. It was quite common for a new couple to join an IRC channel all excited about their new computer and first time users. They would go on and on about how cool this is and take turns typing sitting next to each other enjoying the new world of "The World Wide Web". One could almost visualize them giggling and goofing off making fun of those that had been around for awhile, tainted and how different this new experience was. They may even say they will never be hooked online that a little time each week was more than enough.
At that point I would tell them disconnect your computer and save your life. Why? Because in a few short months those same happily married people would be online separately at all hours of the day and night and all of a sudden they were married to the most horrible beast on earth. Their nic would be in channel not idle yet no text on screen so where were they? In a private chat with some "hottie" or they thought, throwing away their marriage, all they worked for and headed for a downhill fall that would take years if ever to recover from.
Beginning in the 90's it was deemed that those little late night chats were considered cheating or an affair in a divorce court of law. At that time most people only "thought" they had deleted their indiscretions but geeks like myself were able to retrieve all the digital foreplay to be brought out in the court room. The difference now is more people are savvy and can hide their digital rendezvous by using various software/hardware that does a much better job at erasing the evidence.
The internet has not transformed divorce it has transformed people and made just about anything and everything one could want virtually happen with instant gratification. The problem is most of it is only fantasy, it is a virtual life with very little actual time spent in the real world. Some times too much information is not a good thing. How many people hold on conversations without texting or email? The number one reason people like to "chat" digitally is because when they are bored they stop responding without any second thought as to the person they were communicating with. Oh a phone call is coming in, Caller ID reveals its someone you do not want to talk to so you hit the "FU" button and if you have a second to press a pre programmed text, "busy will get back to you soon" which most never do.
I ask myself how many generations will it take before the "basic primal urges" no longer exist in humans? That is what keeps men and women or any combination of who is hot for who in a sexual mode and nothing is sacred anymore. I think divorce will become a thing of the past somewhere down the line because there will be no reason to get married. Populating the planet hasn't required an actual physical act of sex in a long time. So when I read the headline of this article I had to chuckle and think to myself we are in a far much grave situation than the transformation of divorce.
Go into a crowded public place and take a look around you will view a sea of people smartphones in hand passing each other like nobody else is in the same general area as they carry on their digital communication with all too many times their "hottie". In reality if they took a minute to look around themselves they may find there are a lot of REAL "hotties" right next to them and the "hottie" they are sneaking around with is really nothing but what they have built up in their mind living in their virtual world of lies.
My goal is to learn at least one new thing before going to sleep and to wake up after each sleep cycle.
By the way, not marrying will be more dangerous perhaps. A prenuptial agreement is the safest.
I think that a lot of people get married with misguided notions of what it means to be married, with no clue how to make a marriage last, and with equally little clue regarding what causes marriages to fail. Based on your comments, I'm just going to go ahead and include you in that group. Here's why:
For one thing, "until death do we part" is a religious ideal, not a part of secular marriage. Anyway, it's unrealistic to expect that people who marry young, before they even know their adult selves, are going to be able to choose a life partner with any reliability. The statistics back me up on this, by the way. People who marry young are much more likely to divorce. And is that really so bad? If two people have an "oops" marriage, shouldn't they just admit their mistake and go find more appropriate partners? Would you rather they wait until one spouse dies (or possibly kills the other one?)
Secondly, sexual infidelity is not the most common cause of divorce by a long shot, so your preaching on cheating is wrongheaded. Financial problems are the #1 cause, followed by poor communication. Next, you have the end of the marriage's sexual relationship, and only after that you have infidelity. I really wish that more people would engage in premarital education/counseling because good communication and good financial habits can be taught and learned very easily.
Lastly, part of the fight for same-sex marriage is the fight for same-sex divorce. This is every bit as important. State-controlled divorce strives to achieve a situation where one departing spouse isn't left destitute, and that the children's needs are met. Before anyone jumps down my throat, I realize that certain jurisdictions and certain courts and certain judges are more fair than others. Some people get royally screwed in divorce, and it's unfair. But the intent is to try to ensure that everyone is provided for.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
http://www.petris.org/Docs/OccupationalTransformation.pdf
Given your typical slashdot story has ~100,000 readers that click through the story links, and ~400,000 who don't, for a page viewership of ~500,000 per story discussion, then any given story is likely being seen by ~305 mental health professionals.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
PS: I didn't include a vote up/down on the other diagnostic symptoms, due to lack of information in the posting, not due to their absence in the individual making the posting. I also gave them the benefit of the doubt by classing them APD rather than psychotic, which would no doubt skew the APD numbers higher, but since it's the less dire mental illness, I think that it's fair to say there's a problem, and now it's just due to lack of information that we don't know how bad of one.
Are you sure about this?
I was told, repeatedly, by attorneys during my divorce that prenuptials really don't hold much water in the Family Court system. You can put whatever you like in one, but the courts will still veto much of one if the judge handling the divorce case holds a different opinion of how assets should be distributed, etc.