Japan has a policy of ignoring U.S. court orders when it comes to family matters, which has left a number of parents childless after a Japanese parent takes the child from the American parent. In some cases, the country will even arrest parents who attempt to take back their children on their own.
While the U.S. has been clashing with Japan on this issue for years, America has decided to turn up the heat recently, with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell warning, “The situation has to be resolved in order to ensure that the U.S.-Japan relations continue on such a positive course.”
Japan is the only country of seven major industrial nations that has so far refused to sign the Hague Convention treaty that would ban child abductions involving other countries. While many have tried to defend the nation by explaining that its culture does not litigate divorce in the same manner that the U.S. does, many, including San Francisco family lawyers, say this is not an acceptable reason to ignore the problem.
To read more on the issue, see the article in the Washington Post. Image via futureatlas.com [Flickr].
Despite her original statements claiming that she had planned to give Tiger a chance and try to work things out, Elin Nordegren has officially announced her plans to leave her famous husband. News about Tigers afairs with up to nine women has been circulating the globe over the last week, and while the Swedish model claims she knew that he had been unfaithful, she also believed he had stopped cheating on her.
Days before filing for divorce, Shaquille O’Neal’s wife, Va’shaundya, moved to California, which is known for having much more generous divorce settlement laws than Florida. Shaq’s attorney has filed paperwork to bring the proceedings back to Florida, based on the fact that this was where the couple lived up until the divorce.
When the gay marriage ban of Proposition 8 was passed in 2007, many proponents of the bill claimed to not have a problem with gay people, but with the protection of traditional marriages. As a response to these arguments, Sacramento satirist John Marcotte is pushing a tongue-in-cheek ballot initiative to ban divorce. Marcotte’s proposition urges traditional marriage advocates to practice what they preach: