Divorce

FROM WHERE TAWANNA Iverson stands, her soon-to-be ex, former 76ers superstar Allen Iverson, may have had too much "practice" outside their bedroom. The Mrs. filed court papers earlier this month in Atlanta asking Iverson to ID each galpal he's hooked up with since the start of their 2001 marriage, as well as to give their numbers to the court. The Answer must "give the name and telephone number of every person other than your spouse whom you have had sexual relations and/or intimate physical contact from the date of the marriage to the date of trial," according to papers filed March 7 in Fulton County Family Court.

IDON'T support the ban on divorce that Sen. Fumo made even in jest because I'm the product of parents who stayed together for the kids. I don't see the correlation between forcing children to grow up in loveless, disrespectful, sometimes violent homes and how that will keep them out of poverty. Adults do need to take responsibility for their actions, and I understand the point of trying to create a stable family, but I still don't agree. I left home at 18 because I couldn't stand my parents' self-absorption with their marital issues and all the fighting.

Eddie Fisher was the first Philly teen idol, a little kid with a big tenor voice who got the first of the mega-buck celebrity endorsements - a million-dollar contract pushing Coca-Cola. But this son of hardscrabble South Philadelphia is best remembered for the actresses, showgirls and socialites who beat a path to his dressing room door, and for his three celebrity wives: Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor and Connie Stevens. LAS VEGAS - Eddie Fisher, Philadelphia's prince of song, spent 12 minutes in divorcing ex-wife Debbie Reynolds.

Gwen Florio is a former Inquirer staff writer who lives in Missoula, Mont. Breaking up just got a whole lot harder on your wallet to do. You already know who's to blame. The same guy who ruined things for golfers. Used to be a million-dollar purse was what separated the major golf tournaments from, say, the Philadelphia Open. Then along came Tiger, creating his own weather as it were, payouts growing as his fame grew, his fame growing as his salary grew, all of it adding up to $100 million-plus annually for him and leaving everybody else in the rough.

Most Dodgers fans, even those rare but hearty Angelenos who manage to sit through an entire nine innings, probably never imagined they'd have to endure another split as painful as the team's 1950s breakup with Brooklyn. But that's exactly what's happening now in L.A., where the legendary team's owners are in the midst of a divorce as ugly as Jonathan Broxton's ERA against the Phillies. The bitter split between Frank and Jamie McCourt is a big reason why the 2010 Dodgers have disappointed.

WE AMERICANS aren't very good at being hard on ourselves. A glance at the cover of popular (mostly women's) magazines would lead you to believe that the average person is wracked with guilt about (1) sub-par job performance, (2) less-than-stellar parenting skills, (3) inadequacy in intimate relationships and (4) poor body image. The casual observer would be forced to conclude that we hardy descendants of immigrant stock are dissatisfied with failure and willing to make sacrifices in the name of an honorable (but ambiguous)

Allen Iverson 's wife, Tawanna , has filed for divorce - again - from the former Sixers messiah, days after A.I., 36, announced he wanted to return to the NBA. Filed in Fulton County, Ga., Superior Court, Tawanna's petition says the two have been separated for some time and describes their marriage as "irretrievably broken. " That's the same term she used the first time she filed for divorce on March 2, 2010. She later withdrew that petition. Iverson's lawyer, Jonathan Levine , confirmed to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Tawanna had filed for divorce but declined further comment.

Allen Iverson's wife has filed for divorce for the second time in 15 months, according to a report by TMZ yesterday. Tawanna Iverson, who reconsidered after filing for divorce last year, refiled on Monday in Fulton County, Ga., saying her 10-year marriage is "irretrievably broken. " According to the report, Tawanna Iverson is seeking sole custody of the couple's five children. She's also asking for child support, alimony payments and her share of the couple's assets. The 36-year-old Iverson - who played 11-plus seasons with the Sixers - signed a 2-year, $4 million contract last October with the Turkish club Besiktas.

Over the last 30 years I have participated in the breakup of more marriages than I care to remember. I'm a divorce lawyer by profession - I wrote the divorce law for the state of Illinois - but I am a romantic at heart, so I suffer pangs of sympathy for both parties during the dissolution process. In fact, I make a strenuous effort to reconcile them before they take that final step, and I can tell you that it's become more difficult in the last 10 years. Since 1960, about 40 million people have been divorced.

Question: Ever since my husband left me five years ago, it seems I attract women friends in the process of divorce who want me to give them emotional support. However, I'm not good at it. First, it brings flashbacks of the most painful time in my life. Second, I know there are two sides to every story. My former best friend, who divorced her husband for not being emotional enough, did not appreciate my saying that I thought he loved her, and he was steady, and this was painful for him. Now another friend, whose marriage I admired because her husband was very communicative and loving, is acting in a way that's heading straight for the judge.

Does Lamar Odom blame his wife for ruining a potentially great NBA career? Does Lamar, effectively booted by the Dallas Mavericks, think Khloé Kardashian loves her career as one of the principals in The Kardashian Un-Reality Industry more than her marriage? Does he want to leave her? These questions haunt us at night. Khloé, too, by the sounds of it. The embattled reality star, who this week announced she and Lamar are temporarily benching their reality show, Khloé & Lamar, tells People mag there are bumps in her marriage.

DEAR ABBY: I have been married for 19 years, but I cannot stay faithful. I've had a few affairs, visit "massage parlors" and feel my wife deserves better. I want to walk away from our marriage. We have kids who will be affected, and it will hurt us financially. I haven't told my wife, but I believe she knows because we haven't been intimate in months. We discussed divorce, but that was before the kids. - Living a Lie in the Mid-Atlantic DEAR LIVING A LIE: It would have been better for you to have divorced before you had children.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Lawyers for a lesbian couple told Maryland's highest court that the state routinely grants divorces for couples who married in other states, and same-sex divorces should be no different. The case the judges heard Friday involves two women who married in California, but were denied a divorce in 2010 by a Maryland judge. The judge said the women's marriage was not valid under Maryland law, so he would not grant a divorce. Maryland does not currently allow same-sex weddings, but lawyers for the women told the seven-member court that it would be unprecedented for the state not to recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere and, therefore, to deny gay couples divorces.

The Iverson divorce - a strange, postmodern form of emotional musical chairs - has taken another strange zig. TMZ says Allen Iverson wants to stop - abort, annul, abrogate - divorce proceedings, sputtering on since March 2010, when estranged wife Tawanna first filed papers. In court documents cited by TMZ, the former Sixers megastar requests the court to chuck Tawanna's divorce petition because he and Tawanna revived their union between November 2011 and February 2012, proving that their marriage is not "irretrievably broken," as Tawanna claimed in 2010.

FROM WHERE TAWANNA Iverson stands, her soon-to-be ex, former 76ers superstar Allen Iverson, may have had too much "practice" outside their bedroom. The Mrs. filed court papers earlier this month in Atlanta asking Iverson to ID each galpal he's hooked up with since the start of their 2001 marriage, as well as to give their numbers to the court. The Answer must "give the name and telephone number of every person other than your spouse whom you have had sexual relations and/or intimate physical contact from the date of the marriage to the date of trial," according to papers filed March 7 in Fulton County Family Court.

LOS ANGELES - They still fight like cats and dogs in divorce court. But more and more they are fighting about cats and dogs. Custody cases involving pets are on the rise across the country. In a 2006 survey by the 1,600-member American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, a quarter of respondents said pet custody cases had increased noticeably since 2001. The academy is due for another survey, but there is no doubt such cases have grown steadily since then, said Ken Altshuler of Portland, Maine, a divorce lawyer and AAML president.

LOS ANGELES - They still fight like cats and dogs in divorce court. But more and more they are fighting about cats and dogs. Custody cases involving pets are on the rise across the country. In a 2006 survey by the 1,600-member American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, a quarter of respondents said pet- custody cases had increased noticeably since 2001. Breakups in same-sex marriages, civil unions and domestic partnerships are among reasons pet-custody fights have become more common, attorneys said.

Kathleen Edwards has always been a forthright and precise songwriter, creating folk-rock songs with concrete stories and clear emotions. But the personal details embedded in her fourth album, the new Voyageur, threaten to obscure the songs themselves. It's a breakup album, catalyzed by Edwards' divorce from collaborator Colin Cripps, and she produced it with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, her new boyfriend. "Part of me can't help but wonder if there was not a press release or some kind of existing information that said I was married and now I'm not, or that this person is now my boyfriend, there would be a different interpretation of some of these songs," she says from her Toronto home on the eve of a tour that brings her to the World Cafe Live on Wednesday.