131–134 of 134 posts
Why is this on HN, and the top story no less? Gossip about celebrities is boring, even if the celebrity happens to be a famous geek. I'm not one to bitch about off-topic stories, but I'm genuinely curious why people find this story to be interesting.
As a warning to other entrepreneurs: you can either get married or make a company, but dammed is the poor fool who does both.
> What caught me by surprise, and forced me to seek emergency loans from friends, were the enormous legal fees I had to pay my ex-wife's divorce lawyers. In a California divorce, the wealthier spouse must pay both sides of the battle even if they are not the aggressor. > The legal and accounting bills for the divorce total four million dollars so far, which is an average of roughly $170,000 per month for the past 24…
There are even worse stories. My parents divorced two years ago. I was paying my mother's attorney bills because she had no money and hadn't had a job in 35 years. After the first bill from my mother's attorney, for $15,000, I asked the firm to cap expenses at $5,000. I explained that I was just a kid and didn't have $15k per month to spend. They agreed, in writing. Then they didn't invoice for 4 months, and at the e…
Her lawyer (an older, grandfatherly gentleman) treated her in an apparently very caring manner, repeatedly calling her at night to see if she was okay and discuss minor issues of the case, always managing to get her upset and then spend a couple of hours comforting her and giving her advice. Then she found out he was billing for that time, so she stopped answering his calls after five o'clock.
Her husband had a similar realization that the case had turned into them against the lawyers, so they agreed to simultaneously fire their lawyers and hire new ones. Then they went back to hurling neglect, abuse, and mental illness accusations at each other and fighting over custody. Years later, having lived in separate states for many years, they can barely stand to talk on the phone three or four times a year to coordinate on the daughter going to see his side of the family. But in the middle of a nasty divorce, they managed to agree about the lawyers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What can we do? Abandon the institution of marriage entirely. Nuke it from orbit, as it were. It's the only way to be sure. The legal end of it is a mere wealth-redistribution mechanism. The social end of it is made of community who loves to witness people getting into marriages, but they scatter during the demise. So what function does it perform? From my perspective, it only serves to weaken commitment by trying to…
Actually, yes. Many marriages are entered into by two parties with the agreement that one party will be the primary caretaker of the children (home-maker), which is a profession that is unpaid. The other party will work outside the home and provide money for the family. In that case, the years of work that the home-maker has put in should be recognized as valid work, and in the event of a break-up of the marriage, th…
That's a valid point, but do we need a one-size-fits-all approach, i.e. all marriages are the same contract? Arguably, we do not, so why not just let the parties directly involved decide what terms to have for their own marriage contracts (which might include inter alia some provision for cheap arbitration rather than expensive predatory lawyers if things break down).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Direct from the UK government's website: Most people think that, after they've been living with their partner for a couple of years, they become 'common law husband and wife' with the same rights as married couples. This is not the case. In fact, couples who live together have hardly any of the same rights as married couples or civil partners. There is no such thing as ‘common law marriage’. http://www.direct.gov.uk/…
British law != UK current law but those laws that in the distant past were direct descendents of UK law at the time. British law vs say Roman law. Because of the widespread nature of the British empire remnants of these laws (and remnants of the Empire, such as the Queen being formally the supreme being in Canada) are still found all over the world, even if a lot of those laws have been abolished in the UK itself.
I think you mean English common law. There's not such thing as "British law" as such, because Scotland has its own legal system (which incidently is partly based on Roman law).