DIVORCE

PERCEPTION VERSUS REALITY

In “Notes from Underground,” Fyodor Dostoevsky, perhaps the greatest novelist, certainly one of the greatest, launched a frontal assault on enlightened rationalism and the idea of progress. Intellectuals seek perfection through reason, reducing the world to nice, neat formulas. From Notes from Underground:

Perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in the incessant process of attaining, or, in other words, in life itself, and not particularly in the goal which of course must always be two times two makes four, that is a formula and after all, two times makes four is no longer life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death.

According to Dostoevsky trying to understand our feelings is not the same as feeling them, the former akin to dying while the latter is life unfolding. The human mind he says may be more irrational than rational and we deceive ourselves to think otherwise. Reason flows from our desires and is thus self serving and manipulative. Think of ...

Residence of son

Our client (for example, Ivanova) was legally married to her husband Ivanov. The marriage was registered by a registration 2000. The marriage was dissolved by the decision of the Moscowsky district court.

The parties have minor son who was born on 2001.

During the proceedings in the Moscowsky district court the parties concluded an amicable agreement Art. 2 of which is an essential condition. According to the mentioned Art. 2 “son shall reside with his mother”. The mentioned amicable agreement was signed by representatives of the parties, it was not appealed and it came into legal force. It means that the child shall follow his mother when the latter changes her place of residence.

On June 2008, Ivanova legally married U.S. citizen who permanently resides in U.S., where the family lawfully moved for permanent residence. Ex-spouses as well as their minor son are the citizens of the Russian Federation, they divorced and determined place of child's residence in the Russian court...

DIVORCE IS ALWAYS HARD

Divorce as an emotionally taxing event, has been depicted often in literature and film. Most will think of the 1989 film,“The War of the Roses” (based on book of same name by Warren Adler), in which an ongoing vitriolic battle between Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner turns self destructive. There is We Don't Live Here Anymore, a 2004 movie by John Curran, based on the short stories We Don't Live Here Anymore and Adultery by Andre Dubus (whose son is Andre Dubus III, House of Sand and Fog). There is Kramer vs. Kramer, the 1979 Academy Award winner with Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, based on the book by Avery Corman. My favorite divorce book and movie, however, is The Accidental Tourist, novel by Anne Tyler. Marriage can end with anger, greed or the need for revenge but for William Hurt (Macon Leary) and Kathleen Turner (Sarah), far more subdued than in The War of the Roses, marriage ends with profound sadness, in loneliness and alienation. The two who love each other, both need...

YOUR TAX RETURN

Every winter just following the New Year’s arrival, Americans revisit a dreaded and tedious process - gathering together tax information. The tax filing season, as tagged by tax professionals who from it earn a living, culminates for most with the filing of a tax return some time before April 15 and for some not until October 15.

It is appropriate that we occasionally reflect on the process and its product. The entire affair at times strikes me as bordering on the insane. Often, it feels wholly irrational to spend as much time as we do pondering and fretting about a largely misunderstood act, the filing of a tax return. Anton Chekov in his novel “Ward Number 6” ruminates on the definition of sanity and who gets to decide who is sane and who is not. Are we insane to subscribe our names to inscrutable documents; or, is the fear of being unfairly punished for one’s ignorance, merely paranoid? One might justifiably feel that the government is setting us up. By making the tax code...

Moratorium on adoptions from Russia

Let me clarify - yes, someone should look out for the child's best interests but that DOES NOT absolve one from responsibility of taking a child with all the baggage that it may have. If this woman is not charged with, at least, child abandonment and endangering the welfare of a child, then its just carte blanche for everyone to drop their ill or poorly behaved children - natural born or adopted - at the nearest hospital or police station with a "no thanks" post-it stuck to them....