(CNN) 17 April 2008:

An 8-year-old girl in Yemen was able to get a divorce from her husband, who is four times her age. The girl has also been removed from her father, who forced the marriage. What makes the story so unusual is that the girl took the unusual action of seeking out a judge on her own and filing for divorce on her own.

The judge terminated the marriage on the basis that the girl has not even reached puberty.

Her parents testified that they did not help her after she told them she was being beaten by her husband.

(FINANCIAL POST) 9 February 2008:

Some say that economists are the people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Thus, when they try to calculate the value of love we might expect them to get very confused, for we know that the value of the love of a good woman is beyond rubies.

However, by studying accident statistics it has been possible to see the value that people place on their spouses from a financial standpoint. Looking at accidents in which either the driver or the front seat passenger died, if that passenger was the spouse of the driver then the driver was more than 4 times more likely to be the person who died than when the passenger was unrelated. The assumption is that when an accident happens a driver is more likely to put themselves at risk in order to protect their spouse.

That driving your spouse incites suicide is an alternative explanation, one thought rather less likely. After all, we do have those divorce laws.

(BRISBANE TIMES) 24 June 2007:

Researchers in Australia have found that for men, working longer hours can actually strengthen their marriage. Those who worked more than 50 hours a week did not have an increased risk of divorce, while those who work less than 35 did.

For women, however, those who worked more than 50 hours a week did have a higher risk of divorce.

The researchers were far too polite to explain it this way, but it really does look like it’s possible to have a man cluttering up the house for too many hours each week while, for the men, there’s a definite value in having someone back in the house taking care of it while they work outside it.

Not very modern when you think about it.

(THE DAILY TELEGRAPH) 25 April 2007:

Intriguing research into how to keep your husband from straying has been published by the University of New Mexico. The more children a marriage produces the less likely he is to stray.

There are two views as to why men do in fact conduct affairs or change partners. One is simply that variety is interesting while the other is that men invest less in physical terms in having children.

The new research rather turns both on their head. The more children there are in a relationship the less men are likely to stray from it. It isn’t just that with many children there isn’t time to stray, but that with many mouths to feed men become more paternal and comitted to the relationship.

Intriguing indeed, as the rise in divorce in recent decades closely tracks the fall in family size.

(REUTERS) 23 April 2007:

The good news on divorce is that those triggered in the UK by emotional or physical abuse have fallen from 12% of the total divorces to only 4% in the year from 2005 to 2006.

The bad news is that those in which the hiring of a personal investigator to prove infidelity occured rose to 49% of divorce cases, up from 18% the year before.

This could be evidence of a profound social change over the tolerance of adultery, or it could simply be that private investigators are getting cheaper, better, or more acceptable.

The true lesson may be that for those who wish to reduce the divorce rate (for whatever reason) the answer is simple. Just ban private investigators.

(REUTERS) 9 March 2007:

A German man decided to settle his imminent divorce by chainsawing a family home in two and making off with his half in a forklift truck.

“The man said he was just taking his due,” said a police spokesman. “But I don’t think his wife was too pleased.”

After finishing the job, the man picked up his half with the forklift truck and drove to his brother’s house where he has since been staying.

(REUTERS) 29 January 2007:

A Saudi couple have been forced to divorce against their will by a top court because of arcane tribal customs which allowed the woman’s family to seek a split, the pair’s lawyer said on Sunday.

Abdul-Rahman Al-Lahem said the court had upheld a ruling from a lower court and backed the divorce on the basis of the man’s family background.

“The appeals court in Riyadh has supported the divorce because of ‘inappropriate lineage’,” he said in a statement.

The family of the Saudi woman, called Fatima, began legal action in 2005, saying her husband was not of sufficiently prestigious tribal stock to marry her, and had lied about his tribal background.

(REUTERS) 29 September 2006:

Economists have this odd habit of insisting that people’s behavior must be regarded as a reaction to the incentives they face. Change incentives and you will change people’s behavior, but perhaps not in quite the way you expected or in a way you would want.

Officials in Dandong in China needed to cut the number of teachers they employed. Fair enough, and thinking themselves enlightened they decided that single parents (whether from divorce or death of a partner) should keep their jobs while others lose theirs. The result? More teachers got divorced in a week than the number of divorces the whole town had had the previous year.

As economists keep saying, incentives matter, even in marriage.

(REUTERS) 5 June 2006:

It used to be that the major battle in a divorce was over the children and money. As more married couples opt not to have children, then surely divorce should be becoming less stressful? Apparently not, as a recent case in Spain shows. Without children to fight over when love goes sour, people will find something else to snarl about. The family pets for example. So much so that one man actually went to court to fight for visitation rights to the dog. Well, it was a Golden Retriever which is a good excuse. He lost though, the court saying that pets should not be treated like children in a divorce case.

Another way of looking at it is that they’ll have to find something else to argue about.