Divorce for most families is a hard and very emotional time. The parents usually have differences that they are unable to resolve or hurt feelings towards one another regarding previous situations in their marriage. Children during this time feel like it is their fault or in some way want to change the status of the relationship of the two people in their lives that they hold dear.
While divorce is a hard process for the family, the couple should keep in mind that they are also parents. As a mother, the children should come first above any personal relationship with the father. The children are innocent and should be protected from experiencing adverse emotions, statements, and overall experiences.
A divorce finalizes the union between two people, however, does not deny the responsibility of being a good parent. When parents argue and say derogatory things about one another in front of the children this produces shame and low self-esteem in them, although most of the time children will suffer in silence.
We have seen far too many ugly divorces and nasty custody battles. We have seen it time and time again, parents fighting over their children, degrading each other in public to win the battle.
In Atlanta, Usher and his ex-wife Tameka Foster are currently in the spotlight with a tough custody battle. According to ex-wife Foster, Usher did not uphold his end of the bargain in their joint custody agreement. In addition to that, there appears to be a spiteful discourse between the two that has been showing up in the media recently.
Foster reported that Usher cut off her Saks Fifth Avenue credit card and denied custody for two weeks to their boys, that was previously arranged for her to receive. Usher reported that Foster spat and fought him in a rage of fury while returning their boys to her home with his girlfriend in the vehicle. According to Usher, Foster's actions took place in the presence of their children.
Being a responsible mother involves considering how something will effect the children. Remaining civil during a time of hardship shows discipline, intelligence, and honor. The children learn the most from watching the ways of the parents and how the parents handle their separation will directly influence their children's views on the male and female relationship and how they see themselves.
It can be very hard to let go of combative emotions. However, we can make the choice to rid ourselves of them, even if we need to ask for help. Counseling and peer groups are two ways to get assistance in dissolving these emotions to move forward in life. Odyssey Family Counseling Center offers family counseling services to the Atlanta area and is experienced in assisting families in surviving a divorce.
There are also meet-up groups for newly divorced and healed divorced individuals to offer guidance and support during such a rough phase in life. Opening your heart and mind will allow for the hurt emotions to heal, giving your children better parents. However, this process must start with you.
The children are our future and what they learn in their time of innocence will directly effect their actions as an adult. Caring mothers would not put their children at risk to be hurt by others. Yet, mothers must also consider themselves in this equation by their actions and words because the parent's dealings are what effect their children the most.
Source: www.examiner.com
Don’t sign those divorce papers without financial advice - Globe and Mail
As anyone who has been through a messy divorce can attest, with goodwill eroding faster than the lawyer bills are stacking up, you just want to get things over with. If that means giving up something you were feverishly holding on to, so be it.
But there are pitfalls to arbitrarily negotiating a deal to trade assets – a private pension for a family home, for example – or to abandon them, without recognizing the future financial implications of that decision, say lawyers, who are now recommending that clients seek advice from a financial planner before the mediation process.
“The law sets out what child support should be, how property and assets should be legally divided,” Ottawa family lawyer Adriana Doyle says. “But the majority of family cases have some component of financial and tax issues that can be complex, challenging and require advice outside of the legal profession. In these situations, the financial adviser is priceless.”
Keith Adams, 42, learned this lesson the hard way. He served his wife divorce papers in 2010. After negotiating privately over the properties and businesses they owned in Calgary, child support for their two teenage daughters and spousal support, the couple found themselves in mediation and arbitration.
“There was no light at the end of my tunnel, the lawyer bills were racking up,” Mr. Adams says. On the recommendation of a friend, he went to an independent financial adviser.
“She showed me a number of different options and explained how capital-gains taxes work on properties that are not the primary residence,” says Mr. Adams, who, as a stay-at-home dad for a number of years, was on the receiving end of spousal support. “She also went through various spousal support scenarios, and showed me the future values of RRSPs.”
Armed with information, Mr. Adams and his wife were able to come to a mutual agreement earlier this year.
“People have a lot more control over the final result when they negotiate the process themselves outside of court,” Ms. Doyle says. “The financial adviser can advise on how to roll over pensions to avoid tax repercussions and help couples understand how to plan for the future with their new income scenario.”
They can also help to level the playing field going into negotiations, says Blair Corkum, a chartered accountant and financial divorce specialist in Charlottetown.
“There is usually one person in the couple that has more education pertaining to finances and that’s the start of the imbalance,” says Mr. Corkum, who has been specializing in divorce financing since 1997. “And it’s a hugely emotional time for people, so they’re often negotiating property without being aware of how it will impact their financial future.”
That was true for Wendy Noble, when she was presented with divorce papers 14 years ago. A stay-at-home mother to four children for more than 20 years, Ms. Noble had been completely reliant on her husband’s income. Although she had always managed the household finances, she admits that she did not have a clue about the value of her husband’s work pension or share options.
“At that time in my life, I had no idea what a financial planner was,” she says. “My lawyer tried to help with the financial stuff, but all the while the bills were adding up. At some point, I just threw my hands up in the air.’ ”
In her mid-40s, Ms. Noble launched a professional career and started her own retirement savings.
“It wasn’t until a few years ago that I sat down with a financial planner,” she says. “Some of the advice confirmed what my gut had told me for years, but it also gave me an entirely new perspective on how to invest the money I had saved for my own retirement. I wish I’d known all this 14 years ago.”
Special to The Globe and Mail––––––
Where things get complicated
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Where things get complicated
Splitting assets during divorce can be relatively straightforward if the couple have no children. There are a few areas where things can get complicated in the absence of professional financial advice.
Splitting assets during divorce can be relatively straightforward if the couple have no children. There are a few areas where things can get complicated in the absence of professional financial advice.
Life insurance
Particularly for those who divorce later in life, policies that are not jointly owned can be cancelled or altered by one party. “The insurance company will only disclose policy information to the owner,” says Wendy Olson-Brodeur, a financial divorce specialist and divorce mediator in Calgary. “Part of the divorce agreement should ensure joint ownership of the policy. Otherwise, if the owner stops paying or removes the wife and children as beneficiaries, they may not know, and a person who’s older may find they are uninsurable.”
Private pensions and work options
While Canada Pension Plan benefits are split evenly under the law and are non-negotiable, private pensions and work options, such as shares, can be more complicated to value.
Real estate
Properties other than the principal residence are subject to capital gains when there is a sale.
Tax
In the case where one spouse pays a lump sum to the other as part of asset division, or where funds are being transferred from registered funds, a financial adviser can help to find appropriate tax shelters for the investments.
Budgeting
“People need to make sure their divorce settlement accounts for both present and future needs,” says Blair Corkum, a financial divorce specialist in Charlottetown.
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By the numbers
41 per cent: The number of marriages in Canada that end in divorce.
33 per cent: The proportion of divorce cases in family law courts.
21 per cent: The number of divorce cases that last more than two years. This figure has risen 6 per cent between 2006 and 2011.
Source: Statistics Canada
Source: www.theglobeandmail.com
London 2012 - New tickets Olympics released - Yahoo! Eurosport
London 2012 organisers are releasing a further batch of tickets for the previously sold-out Olympic opening and closing ceremony - but the cheapest available seat will be 995.
In addition they are releasing further contingency seats in athletics, swimming, football at Wembley, volleyball, table tennis and boxing, priced between 20 and 720.
Tickets will go on sale on a first come, first served basis on the London 2012 ticketing website from 11am this Friday.
Organisers Locog have also confirmed that eight million tickets have now been sold for both the Olympics and Paralympics - under two thirds of the total available.
Just over half a million non-football Olympic tickets are still available, while under 50 percent of the 2.5 million available inventory of Paralympic tickets remains unsold.
But the biggest concern for organisers will be the seemingly sluggish sale of football tickets.
After the recent draw at Wembley, 1.4 million seats went on general sale but only 150,000 have been shifted in the last month - leaving 1.25 million still available.
Last month organisers admitted that only 10,000 tickets had been shifted for the opening event of the Games, when, two days before the opening ceremony, Team GB's women footballers take on New Zealand at the 74,500 capacity Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
"With 50 days to go there are still plenty of ways to join in and be part of London 2012. We are at advanced stages of venue planning and these represent the final release of Ceremonies and other sport tickets," said Locog commercial director Chris Townsend.
"Over the next few weeks we will release further tickets for other Olympic sports and keep people informed when tickets are available.
"We are delighted with ticket sales to date, and have sold another one million tickets in the last four weeks, prioritising people who were unsuccessful last time around."
Ticketing breakdown for London 2012
Olympics: 7 million sold, 1.8m still available (including 1.25m football)
Paralympics: 1.25 million sold, 1.2m still available
Source: uk.eurosport.yahoo.com
London 2012: torchbearers picked by sponsors keep flame of commerce alive - The Guardian
Throughout their descriptions of the 70-day Olympic torch relay, the London 2012 organisers talked of having tracked down "8,000 truly inspirational people from across the UK". But while most of the torchbearers were picked through this process, some people – including one of the world's richest men – managed to get on the torch relay by another means: working for, or being affiliated with, one of the London 2012 sponsors.
More than 1,200 spaces were allocated to the International Olympic Committee, the British Olympics Association, and to staff working for Games sponsors – whose picks included company directors, Russian newspaper editors, and even an official at the US's Food and Drug Administration.
Help Me Investigate the Olympics, a crowdsourced news coverage site dedicated to London 2012, looked into torchbearer slots handed out by one particular sponsor, Adidas.
While, generally, slots had been given to junior or mid-level employees, Adidas had also selected Christos Angelides, the £900,000-a-year senior director at Next, which has a retail partnership with Adidas covering the Olympics. Other Adidas slots went to people in the marketing team who had worked on the company's sponsorship.
The group's findings, posted by Paul Bradshaw, also noted descriptions of staff's work performance in their nominating stories, mentioning that one torchbearer had "made a fantastic contribution to the Adidas group business". Another "breathes Adidas … Her positive attitude and 'money in [the] till' approach is legendary" and a third mentioned "achieving my sales targets in every market I have worked in".
A spokesman for Adidas said the firm was restricted by Locog rules and could only offer its torchbearer slots to employees or those in its network. He added that owing to the low average age of the company's staff, not many of their children were old enough to carry the torch.
Other sponsors struck further afield for their choices: among Coca-Cola's selections were the Las Vegas resident Dr Debra Toney, who among other roles sits on a committee of the US's Food and Drug Administration.
Coca-Cola also selected Evgeny Faktorovich, the deputy editor-in-chief of a Russian paper that "supports all social initiative held by Coca-Cola" and Vonta Vontobel, the president of the Brazilian Bottlers Association of Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola, as an official torchbearer partner, was able to allocate places to members of the public – it was responsible for allocating 1,350 slots.
"Over 90% of our allocation has gone to members of the public through our Future Flames campaign, which celebrates inspirational people by giving them the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to carry the Olympic flame," said a spokesman. "A small number of our allocation has been given to some of our employees through a nomination campaign, and to our campaign ambassadors who have helped to find our Future Flames. Our remaining places have been given to our partner organisations and their affiliates."
ArcelorMittal, another organisation supporting the Olympics, was given six torchbearer slots. Two of these went to the company's founder, Lakshmi Mittal, the world's 21st richest man according to Forbes magazine, and his son Aditya, the group's chief financial officer. Among the others, however, were the US technician Angel Alvarez, who donated his kidney to a fellow worker, and Polish employee Filip Kuzniak, who cycled 600km to raise money for a colleague's daughter.
Among 50 torchbearers selected by BP were Gillian James, a member of the company's North Sea leadership team, and Carl Halksworth, the creative director of Landor, BP's design agency partner for the Olympics. As BP sponsored a particular section of the route, near Aberdeen, the remainder of its picks were made up predominantly of "onshore and offshore BP staff, young relatives of staff, business partners, and nominees from local schools, universities and charities".
The electricity giant EDF, meanwhile, included the group's former director of HR and communications among the 71 staff members chosen to carry the torch on the company's behalf.
A London 2012 spokesman said: "Staging the Olympic Games is a huge undertaking and we couldn't do it without the support from our commercial partners. The rights packages for some partners include a small number of torchbearer places that had to be filled through internal campaigns.
"The same torchbearer selection criteria applied across the whole relay – ie personal bests and/or contribution to the community."
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
London's ugliest buildings: your choices - Daily Telegraph
The Queen Elizabeth conference centre offends my eyes and the Shell building on the South Bank is equally brutal.
Martin Bartlett, by email
I know most of the buildings featured: it appears that you have chosen the some of the largest projects in recent history? In terms of the Blue Fin, you should go and have a look at what used to be there. And UCL Hospital? Surely Guys Hospital should be there instead?
Martin Garthwaite, by email
The One New Change shopping centre in the City would be my choice for inclusion in London’s ugliest buildings. Not for nothing is it referred to as “the turd”.
Bob Thompson, by email
Most modern buildings are just meaningless, incongruous, dysfunctional shapes, which date with amazing rapidity. If it’s not going to look good still in 500 years; don’t build it.
John Armstrong, by email
The Shard without a doubt is one of the ugliest buildings in London. The first view I had of this monstrosity was crossing the Thames when coming from Gatwick Airport. To me it looked like a giant prophylactic.
Why do all these buildings have to stick out like a sore thumb? Isn't it about time there were height restrictions? There should also be rules about modern "architecture" (if that is what they want to call it) complementing the surroundings in which they are being built.
S Cook, by email
I would add Portcullis House. Dark brown is seldom a good colour for a building and this is no exception.
Robert Cook, by email
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
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