Sugar Daddies and Divorce

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Nancy Van Tine

Hi there,

As someone who has been a divorce lawyer for 33 years I consider myself pretty surprise-proof; however, I just heard about  a series of emails where a husband was contracting on line for a "Sugar Baby."  He wanted to meet a young woman he could spend money on.  You can imagine what the quid pro quo was.  If you are conducting personal business of this sort on your home computer, I would suggest that you have a password no one in your family knows and that you not leave the screen open for your family to see.

I frankly thought  the "Sugar Daddy" thing seemed a lot like prostitution, under the "if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck"  theory.  But, apparently this can be argued to fall in a grey area where the sexual congress piece is not the most important one.

I am not sure if this is a result of the popularity of "Mad Men" or just a new way to sell an old profession, but once I got over having the giggles, I was a bit horrified.

Best,

Nancy

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Religious Divorces

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Nancy Van Tine

Hi there,

It's a lousy, rainy day in Boston (don't you hate rainy Mondays), so I decided to deal with an acrimonious, non-legal issue that can cause real problems.

Catholics and Orthodox Jews both have a requirement that the believer obtain a religious divorce before he or she can remarry in their faith.

The Catholic divorce is actually an annulment.  In other words, the individual must show the tribunal which handles annulments that the marriage was not a marriage from the beginning, due to a basic failure of the parties to have a true religious commitment.  This can, as you might imagine, cause a great deal of consternation both to the former spouse and the children.  Although the Church says that the children are legitimate (of course they are!) there can be a real feeling of abandonment and betrayal of the actual years of the marriage.

In the Jewish religion, the religious divorce is called a Get.  Only the husband can give the wife a Get and if he refuses then she can't get remarried in her faith.  Often, the commitment to obtain a Get is set forth in the civil divorce agreement.  Oddly enough, there are often fights post-divorce to enforce that requirement.  It all can become very nasty.

Best,

Nancy

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