Personal finance expert Jean Chatzky, host of RLTV’s “Cash Call,” dedicated Tuesday’s episode of her half-hour call-in show to divorce over 50. She talked to The Huffington Post about how women in particular can avoid the financial fall-out that may accompany a marriage’s demise — as well as the biggest mistake that she says women often make during divorce.

Couples over 50 are divorcing at a higher rate than ever. What’s different about divorcing later in life today?
I think what we’re seeing is a shift overall in how devastating divorce has to be. There used to be a perception that if you’re a woman and you get divorced, that was sort of a death sentence financially. Now, because of the trajectory of women in terms of their earning power, it’s not such a death sentence. [Over the past three-four years], women’s income has gone up about 2.9 percent. Now, it’s not as much of an increase as we’ve seen in men, but it’s not like it’s fallen off a cliff either.

Read More: The Huffington Post

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., April 19, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — While U.S. troops are fighting for our freedom, they’re losing the fight for their families. The divorce rate among military couples has increased 42 percent since the Afghanistan-Iraq wars began in 2001.* Thousands of couples have endured multiple deployments resulting in years of separation. Research reveals that plans to pursue divorce or separation increase with each subsequent month a service member is deployed.**

Nonprofits FamilyLife and Military Ministry, along with the Grammy-nominated bands MercyMe and Newsboys, have joined forces to fight for the marriages of the troops fighting for our freedom with The Art of Marriage Ops campaign.

“We believe that marriage is the most important commitment a couple can make,” said FamilyLife President Dennis Rainey. “When this bond is threatened by divorce, we know it often takes outside forces to keep love alive.”

Feminists like to point to statistics that supposedly show that divorced women experience a fall in their standard of living as proof that wives are reluctantly initiating divorces to get out of marriages to ill-behaving husbands. There are two problems with this highly misleading statistic (assuming the stat is true in the sense it is being used):

1. The presumption that women are thinking through the long-term and less tangible financial consequences of divorce when the short-term and more tangible incentives are all in the woman’s favor.

A woman who knows she will get half, the house, and custody with child support thinks she will hit the jackpot in the event of divorce, because those rewards are immediate and tangible. She won’t be as likely to think through the prospect of diminished career potential or sexual market value. Incentives matter in human behavior, and front-loaded incentives matter more than downstream disincentives.

Read More: Heartiste 

While disputes are almost always inevitable when a marriage comes to an end, Queensland University of Technology family law expert Donna Cooper says an abundance of research showing the negative effect family conflict can have on children is finally sinking in with separating parents.

“There’s always been a lot of research saying that arguing, conflict, isn’t good for the children – in the last few years it has exploded,” Ms Cooper said.

“The main thing we’ve noticed in family law is that people are listening.”

Adolescent psychologist Dr Darryl Cross said reassuring children that they did not cause a break-up might seem a straightforward recommendation, but was often forgotten.

Read More: News.com.au

In one way or another, March Madness has a firm hold on just about everyone at this point – at least in our neck of the woods. In no way is this more apparent than in the “game” of of trying to pick the winners (and losers) of the 67 games of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. We know people who have submitted brackets in four or five NCAA pools in hopes of winning a pot of money. Or at least in hopes of being proven right; not really sure which it is anymore.

What captures our attention most about this madness is the hope somewhere along the way of an upset – a bracket buster. You know, when a “Cinderella” team seemingly comes out of nowhere to upset a much higher ranked team for a chance to make it to the Big Dance. Making it all the more fun – and risky: A No. 1 seed has never been upset by a No. 16 seed in tournament history. Before last weekend, the No. 15 seed had only beaten a No. 2 seed four times; there were two No. 2 seeds beaten by No. 15 seeds last weekend.

Read More: KyForward

Ever wonder how successful businesses get started? Do they start with a structured business plan and stick to it or do they evolve over time? BusinessNewsDaily asks small businesses to take us behind the scenes and reveal the truth about the struggles of starting and running a small business.

This week’s Behind the Business Planfeatures Divorce Detox, a treatment center and wellness program designed to help people deal with the emotional, financial, and physical impacts of separation and divorce. Clients learn to shift perspectives, share with others similarly situated, address major life/family questions, learn skills for building lives without their exes, and discover how to date without repeating the same mistakes again.  Company founders and divorce recovery experts Andra Brosh and Allison

Read More: Business News Daily

Divorce researchers agree that gray divorce is on the rise. But the question of what the precise numbers are, and what’s driving them, isn’t black and white.

‘m divorced, as is 50 percent of the population. While going through my divorce, I read voraciously and swapped stories with other divorcees in an attempt to find insight into the pain that I couldn’t make sense of. Post-divorce, some women were brokenhearted, some celebrated their newfound freedom and some were happily remarried. But in all of my experiences, I never found someone who shared my perspective on divorce: Although I was the one who decided to leave, I still found myself completely devastated and filled with regret — my entire world turned upside-down.

While it sounds nonsensical to have made the decision to leave and then feel upset, I know now that many women find themselves in this situation. I assume that often it isn’t discussed because of a fear of how others will react. Friends and family cannot fathom why you would leave a successful marriage for a new life of insecurity, loneliness and struggle, but I did. Here’s my story.

Hollywood may have come up with The Seven Year Itch, but the movie title does point to a potent force tearing many marriages apart.

Just how potent can be seen in some eye-opening figures: People married for between five and nine years comprised the largest group of divorcing couples in the past two decades.

Of the couples who ended their marriages in 2010, 30.4 per cent fell into this category, but at least the figure was down from the 36 per cent in 1990.

Read More: The Sunday Times