Texas Divorce and Prenuptial Agreement BLOG

Businessman Francois-Henri Pinault is the founder and CEO of PPR, a French company specializing in luxury retail goods. He has been married to actress Salma Hayek since 2009, with whom he has a 3-year-olld daughter. Before their marriage, however, Pinault dated supermodel Linda Evangelista who once quipped that she does not wake up “for less than $10,000 a day.” They had a son together, and now Evangelista is seeking over half a million a year in child support. Evangelista is seeking $46,000 a month in child support in a New York City court, claiming that she needs the money to pay for nannies, drivers and security guards for the 4-year-old boy. Her lawyer argued in court that Pinault has not paid any money at all to either her or the couple’s son. Nannies are a necessity, she told the judge, given her work schedule. She said that she sometimes works 16 hours a day. She said, “I have to hit the gym. I have beauty appointments. I have to work toward my next job and maintaining my image, just like an athlete.” The couple’s lifestyle is an important factor for the judge to consider when granting child support. $46,000 a…
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The ruin that Ponzi scheme fraudster Bernie Madoff brought to his investors extended to his family. The constant media attention on Bernie shamed the family and led to his 46-year-old son Mark’s suicide in December of 2010. Now Bernie’s wife Ruth is finally deciding to dissolve ties with her husband and pursue a divorce. Bernie and Ruth fell in love with each other in high school and have been married for 52 years. The long time they were together was not enough to overcome Bernie’s criminal activity, although Ruth did initially support Bernie. Back in 2008 after his arrest, sources say that the couple’s two sons told their mother to cut ties with her husband or risk not seeing them anymore. Ruth sided with Bernie and has not spoken with her remaining son Andrew since 2008. Given the lawsuits and criminal sentence weighing on Bernie, Ruth will probably not get much, if anything, in her divorce. Since Bernie’s arrest, Ruth has been living in a Florida apartment, using her maiden name, dying her hair and living on substantially less than what she became accustomed to while married to Bernie. A prenup at the start of Bernie and Ruth’s marriage would…
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Other countries’ takes on marriage and divorce always make for an interesting comparison with marriage and divorce in the United States. China recently went so far as to eliminate the ability for women to receive any portion of their husband’s house if he had it before marriage. And its reasoning for taking this step – excessive materialism. The Chinese government became too concerned that women were marrying exclusively for money. Marrying a man with a high income and a house are requirements for many Chinese women who have a phrase for those “risky” marriages that come without a house – “naked marriages.” China’s Supreme Court stepped in and ruled that whoever buys the family house keeps it after the divorce. It felt that it had to make such a change to the country’s family laws in the face of soaring divorce rates, which have increased every year for the past seven. As severe as China’s new divorce law may seem, it is not all that different from divorce rules in the United States and, more specifically, in a community property state like Texas. If a spouse had bought a house before marriage and kept it in his or her name,…
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We have discussed the changing demographics and statistics behind divorce in recent decades. Divorce rates in general have been on the decline. One study looked at how children of the 1970s and 1980s – times when divorce rates were at their highest – may be more careful about entering into marriage than their parents. Now a different study is looking at another recent trend – the high rates of unwed couples that are having children. 41 percent of all births now occur to unwed mothers with many of those mothers living with their babies’ fathers, even though the couple is not married. The groups involved in the study looked at the impact that these cohabiting couples had on their children and concluded that these environments negatively affected children. The study does come from the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values, two groups with a strong marriage and family life platform, but are their conclusions troubling? The study cites the instability that comes with such family households, where fathers may not always be around or where there may be multiple fathers for different children. The lead psychologist said that children of cohabitating couples are more likely to show…
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