Columbus Family Law Blog

If you are on Facebook or another social networking website, you probably have hundreds of 'friends' who can see your every move on the site and your profile, photos and posts. Normally, Facebook is a great way to share good news and celebrate happy life events, such as a wedding or the birth of a child. But what happens if the news you need to share is not quite as joyous?

For example, how do you announce to your Facebook network that you and your spouse are getting a divorce? For some, it is as easy as switching their relationship status from 'married' to 'single' with no further explanation. But for others, it may be easier and ultimately more beneficial to send an email or post an update with a few details of your split.

According to a recent study, women who win the Academy Award for Best Actress have a more than 60 percent chance of their marriages ending sooner than women who are nominated for the award but do not win. If you have tuned in to the Oscars in the past 10 years, you have seen this exemplified by the Best Actress wins of Sandra Bullock, Kate Winslet and Hilary Swank, and their divorce filings just a few months later.

But additional research indicates that it is not just celebrities who are prone to the so-called "Oscar Love Curse." In fact, it may even affect you. Researchers believe that a wife's success, whether it be winning an Academy Award or simply earning more money than her husband, can lead to an upset in a marriage's traditional gender roles. This, in turn, can lead to resentment, unhappiness, infidelity and divorce.

When two Ohio parents divorce, they usually have a great deal of concern about helping their children handle the split and adjust to their new family situation, and rightly so. A divorce is a big adjustment for children, and it can be a life-altering event if not handled properly. But what happens to infants when their parents divorce?

According to Armin Brott, the author of several books on fatherhood, babies may not understand the events that are happening around them, but they can definitely pick up on the emotions. To say it a different way, infants may not be affected by the actual divorce, but they are very easily affected by the behavior that often goes along with a split.

Although the following case did not take place in Ohio, it provides an interesting look at a potential family law issue that could easily affect many families here in Columbus. For more than a year, a divorced couple in New Jersey has been battling over their children's last names. Last week, an appellate court overturned an earlier court order allowing the children's mother to change their last names, ruling that the parents' agreement of joint legal custody prohibited one parent from making such a unilateral decision.

The parents were divorced in late 2010. In their divorce ruling, the court ordered joint legal custody of the children and designated the mother as the children's "parent of primary residence," although the father also had visitation rights. Following the divorce, the mother reportedly tried to alter the children's last name on school records and health insurance information.