Category Archives: Divorce

Japan to allow divorced parents to share custody of children

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Change to civil code will bring Japan into line with other G7 countries, amid concerns existing law inflicts psychological harm on children

Divorced couples in Japan will for the first time be able to negotiate joint custody of their children after parliament voted this week for changes to laws permitting only sole custody.

Under Japan’s civil code, couples must decide which parent will take custody of their children when their marriage ends – a requirement that critics say causes children psychological harm and prevents the “left-behind” parent from playing a fuller role in their upbringing.

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Divorces delayed by cost of living crisis, research finds

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Financial pressures have led to postponement of 19% of divorces, involving 270,000 couples, Legal & General claims

The start of the new year is often boom time for divorce lawyers, but 2024 may be different as new research shows the cost of living crisis has delayed more than 270,000 couples from splitting.

Financial pressures delayed 19% of divorces, researchers at Legal & General found. The impact has been particularly pronounced since 2020, with income concerns, cost of living pressures and the price of divorce all cited as reasons to postpone the split.

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Women losing out as couples try to divorce ‘on the cheap’

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Financial security of women in England and Wales put at risk by failure to seek professional advice

Women are losing out on fair divorce settlements because couples are trying to divorce “on the cheap”.

Research has found that most couples have so few assets that the vast majority try to save money by sorting out key arrangements themselves, including agreeing housing, pensions and ongoing maintenance.

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UK among most liberal countries on divorce and abortion, survey reveals

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Global study shows significant shift in UK attitudes on matters such as casual sex and assisted dying

The UK has overtaken Canada, Germany and Australia to become one of the world’s most socially liberal nations towards divorce and abortion, the latest wave of a global study has revealed.

Significant increases in the last five years in people saying the practices are justifiable is mirrored by sharply increasing acceptance of homosexuality, casual sex and prostitution over the same period, the World Values Survey found.

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Sir Frederick Barclay relying on nephews to fund divorce battle, court hears

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Barclay has not yet paid any of the £100m due to Lady Hiroko Barclay and halved her monthly allowance

Sir Frederick Barclay, who along with his twin brother was once one of the UK’s richest men, is relying on his nephews to fund his divorce battle after being evicted from his luxury flat, a court has heard.

A high court hearing on Thursday heard that Barclay, 87, has not paid any of the £100m divorce order made almost a year ago and has halved the monthly allowance to his wife of 34 years, Lady Hiroko Barclay.

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Duchess of Argyll sex scandal retold in new BBC drama series

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Admirers of vilified aristocrat say they hope series will allow her to be ‘seen in a different light’

It took the judge more than three hours to read out his damning judgment at the end of one of the longest, most expensive and toxic divorce cases of the 20th century.

Margaret, the Duchess of Argyll, was, he declared with contempt, “a highly sexed woman” who was not “satisfied with normal relations and had started to indulge in disgusting sexual activities to gratify a debased sexual appetite”.

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Adele: 30 review – the defining voice of heartbreak returns

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(Columbia)
While the topic of her divorce is all-consuming, the singer seems to be pushing gently at the boundaries of what people expect of her

There is a sense in which 2021’s biggest single – 84.9m streams in a week on one platform alone; straight to No 1 in 25 countries; a song that received more first-week plays on US radio than any other song ever – wasn’t so much a comeback as an act of global reassurance. The world may recently have lurched from one unimaginable crisis to another, but Adele’s Easy on Me brought with it the message that at least one thing hasn’t changed: Adele Adkins is still heartbroken and belting it out over a gentle piano and tasteful orchestration.

Romantic despair became her global brand from the moment she stopped the show at the 2011 Brit awards with her tearful performance of Someone Like You. It catapulted her from the massed ranks of soul-influenced singers filling a gap created by Amy Winehouse’s inability to follow up Back to Black, to mind-boggling levels of success. There’s always the chance that millions of people might flock to an upbeat Adele album that depicts her full of the joys of spring, but clearly she wasn’t taking any chances last time around: for want of new unhappiness, 2015’s 25 returned to the same failed relationships that inspired its record-breaking predecessor 21. No matter – it sold 22m copies.

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‘He lives freely, I live in fear’: the plight of India’s abandoned wives

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Activists highlight the poverty, stigma and abuse faced by women deserted by spouses living abroad

Kamala Reddy*, 33, a software engineer from Andhra Pradesh, married Vijay Kumar* in a traditional Hindu wedding in 2012. Kumar, who was working in the UK, was chosen by Reddy’s family. “But he didn’t take me to the UK after our marriage. He made excuses such as problems with the visa and so on,” says Reddy.

In 2016, Reddy became pregnant. Under pressure from the family, Kumar brought her to England. On arrival, she was shocked to discover Kumar’s secret. He had a British partner, two children and a stepchild. Neither Kumar’s nor Reddy’s families knew about the other family. Kumar threatened to leave Reddy if she told anyone.

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‘They came for my daughter’: Afghan single mothers face losing children under Taliban

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Life for single mothers in Afghanistan has always been marred by stigma and poverty. Now with the Taliban in control, what few protections they had have disappeared

The day after Mazar-i-Sharif, the provincial capital of Balkh province, fell to the Taliban on 14 August, gunmen came for Raihana’s* six-year-old daughter.

Widowed when her husband was murdered by Taliban forces in 2020, Raihana had been raising her child as a single mother. After her husband’s death she had fought her in-laws for custody of her daughter and won, thanks to the rights she had under Afghan civil law – which state that single women can keep their children if they can provide for them financially.

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‘Nowhere to go’: divorced Afghan women in peril as the Taliban close in

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As horror stories emerge from areas that have fallen to the Islamist militants, women living alone fear they have no route of escape

There’s an old saying in Afghanistan that encapsulates the country’s views on divorce: “A woman only leaves her father’s house in the white bridal clothes, and she can only return in the white shrouds.”

In this deeply conservative and patriarchal society, women who defy convention and seek divorce are often disowned by their families and shunned by Afghan society. Left alone, they have to fight for basic rights, such as renting an apartment, which require the involvement or guarantees of male relatives.

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Jehan Sadat obituary

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Champion of social justice and women’s rights in Egypt before and after the assassination of her husband, President Anwar Sadat

Jehan Sadat, who has died aged 88 of cancer, spent most of her life promoting social justice and women’s rights in Egypt. She continued to campaign decades after her husband, President Anwar Sadat, was assassinated, on 6 October 1981, by militants in the army avenging the imprisonment of fellow Islamists and condemning the 1978 Camp David accords that he had signed with Israel.

As a girl in Cairo, Jehan had explored the streets of her neighbourhood of Al-Manial, attributing her self-confidence to her supportive parents. She said that her fight against gender inequality started during her schooldays, when she was encouraged to focus on subjects such as sewing and cooking in preparation for marriage rather than the sciences that would lead to a university career. “I have always regretted that decision. I would never allow my daughters to close off their futures that way,” she wrote in her autobiography, A Woman of Egypt (1987).

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Russian billionaire settles with ex-wife five years after £450m payout ruling

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Farkhad Akhmedov had contested 2017 decision but has now reached an agreement over divorce

After almost five years of fighting a high court ruling that awarded the UK’s largest ever divorce payout, a Russian billionaire has reached a settlement with his ex-wife.

Farkhad Akhmedov and Tatiana Akhmedova have been embroiled in the most expensive family feud in history since a London high court judge awarded Akhmedova a £450m divorce payout in 2017.

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‘Unchain your wife’: the Orthodox women shining a light on ‘get’ refusal

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Orthodox Jewish men give their wives a ‘get’ as the couple is divorcing, which seals the divorce according to religious law

On Route 59 in Monsey, New York, an Orthodox Jewish enclave in upstate New York, there is a large billboard that says in big block letters: “Dovid Wasserman. Give your wife a get!”

A “get” is a document Orthodox Jewish men give their wives as the couple is divorcing; it seals the divorce according to religious law, meaning that the husband decides if and when the divorce is final. Without it, the woman cannot move on with her life.

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Melinda Gates could become world’s second-richest woman

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Lack of prenuptial agreement with Bill Gates could herald $73bn divorce settlement as fears focus on future of couple’s charity

Melinda Gates, a philanthropist and campaigner for female empowerment, could be about to become the world’s second-richest woman, with a fortune estimated at $73bn.

In her divorce petition filed on Monday at King County superior court in Seattle, Washington, Melinda Gates stated that her marriage to multibillionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, one of the richest men on the planet, had “irretrievably broken” and called on the courts to divide up the couple’s combined $146bn (£105bn) fortune

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Oligarch’s son told to pay mother £75m after world’s biggest divorce case

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Court rules that Temur Akhmedov had worked with his father to help him avoid £453m settlement

The son of an oligarch caught up in the world’s largest divorce case has been told to pay £75m to his mother after a judge at the high court in London found he was “a dishonest individual who will do anything to assist his father”.

Temur Akhmedov was found to have worked together with his father, the billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov, to hide hundreds of millions of pounds of assets – including several mansions, a superyacht, a helicopter and an extensive art collection – in order to avoid paying a £453m divorce settlement.

“Temur has learned well from his father’s past conduct and has done and said all he could to prevent his mother receiving a penny of the matrimonial assets,” the judge, Gwynneth Knowles, said in a ruling on Wednesday. She ruled that he should pay his mother more than £75m.

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Laura Veirs on surviving her divorce: ‘My life is strangely awesome’

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After her 20-year relationship ended, the US songwriter refused to believe that she would emerge stronger. Yet against the odds, she experienced a creative and feminist rebirth

In 2018, as her marriage fell apart, Laura Veirs cried and biked all over Portland. “I called myself the crying cyclist,” she says. It was a new, impetuous hobby taken up after years of putting her desires on hold. When some friends asked her to join them on a 100-mile ride, she immediately kitted up and began training: 50 miles, 60 miles, weeping down her Spandex. “That got me through the divorce, honestly,” she says. Another friend wondered whether the optical act of navigation mimicked eye-movement therapy, which is thought to weaken the effect of trauma. “I was surprised by how much it helped get the grieving out.”

The theory – balancing intellect and intuition – hit Veirs in her sweet spot. She is the daughter of academics; a former geology student and a career songwriter beloved for her moving, naturalistic vocabulary. Her voice has a sturdy, earnest clarity: on the superb 2016 collaborative album case/lang/veirs, her freshness contrasted the fiery Neko Case and earthy kd lang.

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Oligarch’s wife brings son into high-stakes divorce case

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Tatiana Akhmedova wants high court to have access to son’s papers in her fight for £453m – but he says her claim is unlawful

It is proving to be a very modern divorce. Armies of lawyers and advisers; hundreds of millions of pounds at stake; priceless art; a superyacht; a key lieutenant switching sides; the son dragged into the proceedings by his mother. No wonder some involved have likened it to The War of the Roses, the dark Hollywood comedy about a feuding couple starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas.

But now attempts to secure the assets awarded following Britain’s biggest, bitterest marital breakup may hinge on how the high court views an arcane financial practice dating back to feudal times.

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Why do Dubai’s princesses keep trying to run away? – podcast

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Ola Salem discusses the divorce case of Princess Haya, who fled to London. Why do royal women keep trying to escape the emirate? Plus John Marsden on the growing trend of toxic parenting

Over the summer, Princess Haya, the estranged wife of the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, asked an English court for a forced marriage protection order relating to their children and a non-molestation order after the breakdown of their marriage.

The Guardian reporter Haroon Siddique describes the court scene to Rachel Humphreys, while the journalist Ola Salem discusses previous attempts by two other princesses to flee the Dubai royal family, and looks at why this case is so significant for women in the emirate.

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Amazon’s Jeff Bezos pays out $38bn in divorce settlement

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Ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos will become world’s fourth-richest woman but has promised to give away half of award

The world’s biggest divorce settlement will be made official this week as Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos hands over a 4% stake in the online shopping giant to his soon-to-be ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos.

A judge is expected to sign legal papers transferring the Amazon shares – worth $38bn (£29bn) – into MacKenzie Bezos’s name. It is by some distance the largest divorce settlement in history the previous record was $2.5bn paid to Jocelyn Wildenstein when she divorced art dealer Alec Wildenstein in 1999.

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