That Divorce

How to connect fully with Spirit by letting go of Ego and inviting love, compassion, and forgiveness into your heart… In the late 90s, Patricia Ann Russell and her soon-to-be ex-husband mailed 400 invitations for their Divorce Ceremony to family, friends, and acquaintances. Over 100 of them came, including their three teenage children, caterers, photographers, a DJ, and their in-laws. Especially important for Patricia was that her father, who had not visited her from their native Bahamas since she’d moved away 25 years earlier—and where he’d originally walked her down the aisle—came to take her back. In a world that’s accustomed to bitter and angry divorces, Patricia’s father had never imagined two people with great respect and love for each other going their separate ways with a ceremony. The idea is a new one, and revolutionary in its simplicity and healing power. In spite of Patricia’s best intentions to move forward, however, she struggled mightily after her divorce. The departure of her daughters for college, the gravity of her father’s advanced prostate cancer, and mounting financial stress compounded her loneliness and desperation. One night while lying in bed, exhausted from crying, praying, cursing, and screaming to God for help, Patricia heard a voice say, “Who would you rather take on your journey? Fear and Grief, or Love and Joy?” Too tired to respond, the question was difficult to ignore. And yet the answer was obvious. Patricia’s dark night of the soul was the turning point where her faith was restored and she began to understand and accept her divorce as a symbolic act of divorcing her own Ego, a prelude to its final submission to a higher authority, the spiritual Self. Until now, no other book has provided an integrated approach that enables the divorced to navigate the emotional quagmires, regardless of time. The Divorce Ceremony helps people to acknowledge their pain but not wallow in it; to understand spiritually what they’re going through; and to help them step into their greatness.

The enactment of the Divorce Reform Act 1969 was a landmark moment in family law. Coming into force in 1971, it had a significant impact on legal practice and was followed by a dramatic increase in divorce rates, reflecting changes in social attitudes. This new interdisciplinary collection explores the background to the 1969 Act and its influence on law and society. Bringing together scholars from law, sociology, history, demography, and film and literature, it reflects on the changes to divorce law and practice over the past 50 years, and the changing impact of divorce on different people in society, particularly women. As such, it offers a 'biography' of this important piece of legislation, moving from its conception and birth, through its reception and development, to its imminent demise. Looking to the future, and to the new law introduced by the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020, this collection suggests ways for evaluating what makes a 'good' divorce law. This brilliant collection gives insight not only into this crucial piece of legislation, but also into a key period of societal change.

The eighteen essays in this volume cover a wide range of material and reevaluate women's studies and Middle Eastern studies, Muslim women and the Shari'a courts, the Ottoman household, Dhimmi communities, children and family law, morality, and violence.

Divorce is at once a widespread reality and a painful decision, so it is no surprise that this landmark study of its long-term effects should both spark debate and find a large audience. In this compelling, thought-provoking book, Judith Wallerstein explains that, while children do learn to cope with divorce, it in fact takes its greatest toll in adulthood, when the sons and daughters of divorced parents embark on romantic relationships of their own. Wallerstein sensitively illustrates how children of divorce often feel that their relationships are doomed, seek to avoid conflict, and fear commitment. Failure in their loving relationships often seems to them preordained, even when things are going smoothly. As Wallerstein checks in on the adults she first encountered as youngsters more than twenty-five years ago, she finds that their experiences mesh with those of the millions of other children of divorce, who will find themselves on every page. With more than 100,000 copies in print, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce spent three weeks on the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Denver Post bestseller lists. The book was also featured on two episodes of Oprah as well as on the front cover of Time and the New York Times Book Review.

The first was to create a theory to support the practice of divorce mediation. This was born of my belief that the early proponents of divorce mediation had failed to sit down and ask the basic questions that the founders of any new field should pose. The result was that they concluded that if the problem was that divorcing couples had turned to adversarial divorce proceedings, the solution was to provide them with a nonadversarial one, or at least a less adversarial one. As a result, though they considered divorce mediation to represent a repudiation of adversarial divorce proceedings, they unwittingly accepted and incorporated into their thinking, and therefore into their practices, the answers given to those questions by our adversarial legal system and, with it, literally all the assumptions and all the values that informed and gave support to them. Worse, they unwittingly adopted and were then held captive by the picture of the world of divorce subscribed to by our adversarial legal system.

This informative book, written in lively language, analyzes extensive material from in-depth studies of divorce professionals and their clients and uses vivid real-life examples to describe what facilitates or blocks successful settlements.

This Handbook presents up-to-date scholarship on the causes and predictors, processes, and consequences of divorce and relationship dissolution. Featuring contributions from multiple disciplines, this Handbook reviews relationship termination, including variations depending on legal status, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation. The Handbook focuses on the often-neglected processes involved as the relationship unfolds, such as infidelity, hurt, and remarriage. It also covers the legal and policy aspects, the demographics, and the historical aspects of divorce. Intended for researchers, practitioners, counselors, clinicians, and advanced students in psychology, sociology, family studies, communication, and nursing, the book serves as a text in courses on divorce, marriage and the family, and close relationships.