Today Facebook launches its highly anticipated IPO.  So naturally we wanted to bring you a Facebook divorce story.

Laura Weisman reports in the San Francisco Chronicle that a woman in India has filed for divorce because her husband had not updated his relationship status on Facebook.  He was still listed as “single instead of “married”.  He says he was distracted with family and business and forgot to change it.

The couple had an arranged marriage just two months ago.  The judge has ordered the couple to undergo counseling over the next six months.

Apparently, there are several cases in India where spouses in arranged marriages have asked the court to divorce them on flimsy reasons, such as who makes the tea or failure to take an in-law’s phone call.

This infographic is courtesy of Saffery Champness, an independent top 20 firm of chartered accountants with nine offices across the UK and offices in Guernsey and Geneva.

Barbara and Michael married in 1970 after graduating from Boston College.  They moved to Columbia, Maryland, where Michael got a job as a mathematician for the Department of Defense.   They had two children.  Michael left his government job for a lucrative position in sales for a computer company.  The couple lived off their income and invested Michael’s bonuses.

After 12 years of marriage, however, the parties encountered marital difficulties, and separated.   They divorced in 1984.

One of the issues in their divorce involved the valuation of two of their investments, namely limited partnership interests in real estate ventures.  The managing partner testified that one of the investments was worth about $50,000 and the other was insolvent and owed more than it was worth.  The court valued Michael’s share of the first partnership at about $11,000 and the second partnership at a negative value of approximately $15,000.

This was erroneous the Court of Special Appeals ruled.  The trial court has to value each item of marital property separately and there is no provision in the statute for deducting a loss on a bad investment from other marital property.  Therefore, the court could not assign a negative value.  The lowest value marital property can have is zero.

Green v. Green, 64 Md. App. 122; 494 A.2d 721 (1985)

Guest Author’s Bio : The following article has been contributed by Sophie Kinsella, Columnist.

Divorce and debt problems go hand in hand and financial problems are the cause of many divorces. In many cases, men who go through a divorce are financially well off while women struggle with soaring debts and no one else to fall back on. If the woman wasn’t working or was financially dependent on her husband, a divorce can be economically devastating.  For many women, being separated or divorced is both challenging and stressful. The situation becomes worse when she is the caretaker for children.

If you are a single woman with a huge amount of debt, you should know about the debt relief options that are available to you.  Debt consolidation vs debt settlement – if this is the question in your mind, make sure you consider the pros and cons of each option and the costs that are associated with them.  While there are several professional debt relief options that you can take resort to, it is still better to be financially diligent and follow some steps on your own so that you may be able to save your dollars on the unnecessary fees. Here are some steps that you can take.

1.  Check your credit report thoroughly. The first step that you should take is to check your credit report thoroughly. Your husband may have handled the family finances before, but now that your marriage is ending, you need to take charge of every financial task. Order a free copy of your credit report in order to check where you stand financially. Check whether or not your credit report still carries debt that is owed actually by your spouse. Try to remove all such erroneous information so as to emerge creditworthy on your own.

2.  Establish a frugal budget and categorize your expenses. You should form a budget so that you can follow it throughout the month and thereby maintain a balance between what you earn and what you spend. You also have to categorize your expenses so that you can spend your dollars on your needs and wants. Always try to keep your luxury expenses after your needs so that you don’t have to repent later on.

3.  Negotiate with your lenders. You can negotiate with your lenders.  Tell them about the financial hardship that you’re going through. Don’t refrain from getting help from the creditors and the lenders as they can often help you with the best steps. Ask them to alter the interest rates and the terms of the loans so that you can more easily repay without falling back on all the other debt obligations.

4.  Save money and start making payments. Make sure you save at least 10% of what you earn so that you can build an emergency fund that can be used during an emergency. Soon as the creditors relax the terms and conditions on your debt accounts, make sure you start making the payments so that you can get out of the debt cycle as soon as possible.

If you are getting divorced and you owe a huge amount of debt on your credit cards, try taking the steps outlined above.  Only when you can’t get out of debt on your own, should you opt for debt consolidation or a debt settlement.

I have a friend who collects “Life Is” quotes, you know, like “Life is a beach.”  HuffPostDivorce had the clever idea to ask for “Divorce Is” quotes from its readers.  Among the 139 quotes received were the following:

1.  “Divorce is hard on the body mind and soul.”

2.  “Divorce is a call to re-awaken your life.”

3.  “Divorce is too common. When you make things the norm…it is no surprise when they become the norm.”

4.  “Divorce is…preventable!!! Take the time to know who you are marrying @Kimkardashian.”

5.  “Divorce is…worth every tear cried and dollar spent.”

One of my favorites is: “Divorce is the exchange of one set of problems for another.”  Feel free to put your description of divorce in the comments.

Evangeline bought a house on Brandywine Street in D.C. in 1967 for $26,950.  In 1974 she married David and he moved into her house.  David paid the mortgage during the marriage until 1986.

At their divorce Evangline claimed the property was all hers under D.C. Code § 16-910(a) (1981), which provides that property acquired prior to the marriage is the sole and separate property of the spouse who originally owned it and must be assigned to that spouse upon divorce.

The trial court awarded David a 50% interest in the house.  Evangeline appealed and the DC Court of appeals reversed in part.  The statute it said prohibits the divorce judge from giving David a legal interest in the house.  The court could not transfer title to premarital property and therefore, it must remain in Evangeline’s name.  However, the judge could give David an equitable interest in the house.

The court then instructed the trial judge to determine a dollar amount of that interest, not a percentage, based on David’s contributions and appreciation during the marriage.   Yeldell v. Yeldell, 551 A.2d 832 (1988)

FindLaw.com reports that searches for “divorce” and related phrases such as “family law” and “child custody” jumped 50 percent – from just over 10,000 in December 2010 to nearly 16,000 in January 2011, and continued to surge through March.  “Divorce” has been the No. 1 searched term on FindLaw.com since February 2010.

FindLaw.com also analyzed divorce filings across the U.S. between 2008 and 2011 with Westlaw, the leading legal research database. The analysis revealed that divorces spike in January, continue to rise and peak in late March.

Reasons for the spike may be due to the stress of holidays, the prospect of spending another year in an unhappy marriage or the economic recovery.  Regardless of the reasons, it looks as though March is replacing January this year as the new Divorce Month.

Tareq Salahi has filed for divorce from Michaele Salahi, White House gate crasher and one of the Real Housewives of DC.

Tareq accuses Michaele of desertion and adultery with Journey guitarist Neal Schon.

In the Complaint, Tareq claims Schon sent Michaele a picture of a part of his body via email.

There is no lawyer’s name on the Complaint, but it appears to be drafted by someone who knows divorce law.  There is no mention of a prenuptial agreement.

Real world relationships are tough enough but MapleStory, a free online role playing game, has a divorce rate of 75%.

Andy Chalk writes at EscapistMagazine.com that it costs $25 real dollars to get married in MapleStory.

“I was young, naive, and thought I had met ‘the one.’ says 20 year old Tyler, and 19 year old Seth says “She was only out there to get free things off of me.”

On the bright side,MapleStory divorcees don’t pay alimony or child support and they don’t have to go to court.  I wonder if this will be good practice for  these people when they get married in real life.

This excerpt from an article by Jane Eaton Hamilton struck me as a particularly poignant description of the losses felt by people going through divorce:

“We had lost our wives and husbands. We had lost our best friends. We had lost sex. We had lost our children. We had lost our animals. We had lost our homes. We had lost our furniture. We had lost our gardens. Our incomes had severely plummeted. There were new therapists to pay, and lawyers to pay, and moving costs to pay. Some of us had to replace even the spices in our cupboards and the toilet brushes behind the bowls. We moved without screwdrivers, without our art, without our shampoo.”