DIVORCE HEADQUARTERS NEWSLETTER       Issue #20,     February 2002 Know someone else going through the process? If you think they could benefit from this newsletter feel free to pass it on in it's entirety to them. Here's what kids have to say about marriage: HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY? No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you're stuck with.     - Kirsten, age 10 A follow up on last month's "How much is enough".... If you recall last month we reported on the 36 year old California woman who was seeking monthly child support of $320,000 (yes, that's per month!) from the 84 year old father of their 3 year old child. The father had agreed to $50,000 per month. The couple was married for only one month. In court papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last month the man states that DNA test done in November 2000 had excluded the man as the father of the girl. In addition, the girl's mother had been informed of the test results months ago, court papers said. The man, who has grown attached to the little girl, intended to continue to provide for her but asked the court to limit that amount to the $50,000 a month he currently pays. Don't forget to mention DivorceHQ.com when contacting the divorce professionals listed on the site. In this Issue: Divorce and Remarriage Mediator Neutrality -- How is it possible?     Rachel Fishman Green, Esq. Divorce Humor 1. Divorce and Remarriage According to a press release by the US Census Bureau even though the divorce rate is up so are second marriages. Here's what else they had to say: Roughly half of first marriages for people younger than 45 end in divorce. First marriages that end in divorce typically last about 8 years. In the fall of 1996, 92 out of 1,000 never-married men age 25 to 44 with bachelor's degrees got married within that past year, compared with 59 out of 1,000 men of the same age with just high school degrees. 11 percent of men born between 1925 and 1934 were married at least twice by age 40, compared with 22 percent of men born between 1945 and 1954. There was a similar increase among women. For all of the "older" women out there take heart. It appears that increasingly men are marrying older women. About 38 percent of women in their first marriage who married between 1945 and 1964 were the same age as or older than their husbands, compared with 48 percent of women who tied the knot between 1970 and 1989. The following is an excerpt from an article submitted by one of our professional members. For full text of all articles visit http://Divorcehq.com/articles.html 2. Mediator Neutrality -- How is it possible?     by Rachel Fishman Green, Esq. How could a mediator be neutral about your situation when you are getting divorced? Surely one of you is right and the other is wrong! If you know in your bones - and all of your friends agree - that you are right, you may think that mediation would not make sense for you, because you don't want to compromise. A bell immediately went off in my head. This situation sounded very familiar to me. I asked the fourth mom if her divorce was mediated. She said yes. I was reminded again by a real-life situation of the benefits of mediation. First of all - let me reassure you that you won't agree to anything in mediation that you don't want to agree to! But something happens in mediation that changes people's goals and outlook. I don't ask my clients to agree with each other - just to make an honest effort to understand each other. And to accomplish that, it turns out that mediator neutrality is one of the most valuable and powerful tools I have If I really understand how you are feeling, what this experience has done to you, what this means for you, the challenges that you are facing as you try to restructure your life - then I can help your spouse understand these things. And I can also make sure that the agreement that we put together takes care of you and your needs. The theory underlying our adversarial legal system, is that each person will hire a bright, skilled warrior who will see the situation completely from the perspective of the client, and then present the strongest case possible to the judge. The judge will get the best information from each side, but will be neutral. The judge will see the situation from above and will render a decision which metes out justice and wisdom. Sadly, because of our over-loaded and burdened court system, most judges do not have the time to get to know the people behind the case-load. People who go through the court system often end up feeling that they did not have their story heard by the judge, and that they were not given a chance to speak. For the full the version of Ms. Green's article including including a case that shows how mediator neutrality can help you settle your divorce fairly and in a non-adversarial setting go to: www.divorcehq.com/articles/neutrality.html ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rachel Fishman Green, Esq. is an attorney with more than 7 years of experience as a divorce mediator and more than 10 years of experience as an attorney. She runs reSolutions - ReSolutions - Mediation & Legal Services in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Rachel has helped divorcing couples resolve conflicts concerning all aspects of divorce, including division of homes, time with the children, dividing small businesses, fair distribution of pension assets, child support, division of health and child care expenses for children, tax aspects of divorce, how to bring new girlfriends/boyfriends into children's lives. Call her at 718-965-9236 or or Visit Web Site 3. HUMOR Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.        - Albert Einstein