Obtaining or initializing a divorce when you’re in the service or married to a service member has its own unique set of challenges and obstacles. According to an issue of the American Bar newsletter, “there are unique rules that must be followed about dividing a military pension, serving papers on the service member, enforcing support, and getting a divorce.” To serve a summons and petition for divorce in most cases if your soon-to-be-ex spouse is in the military, you’ll follow standard civil procedure rules that correspond to your geographical jurisdiction. Yet if your spouse is …

As gas prices continue to rise and Americans try to shed the weight of our overweight reputation, bikers are becoming more and more common on the roads. Exercise is great, but many American roads are not designed with bike lanes and some places don’t have a sidewalk or the sidewalk is so crowded, bicyclists are forced to ride in the streets with automobiles. As bicyclists get pushed out onto the road, they must learn the rules of the road to keep themselves and everyone around them safe.The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration posted the bicycle rules of the road for all …

With the hundreds of car accident that take place every day, a substantial portion of these involve pedestrians and bikers who have no way to protect themselves against cars.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration offers many suggestions for bikers to keep them safe on hazardous roads.Perhaps one of the most important pieces of advice is to pay attention at all times.  Take note of anything that could cause you to lose control of your bike, such as a pothole or a pile of wet leaves.  Your sense of hearing is important as well, and you should not wear headphones while riding …

Through the first half of 2013, it has been wet and rainy in Illinois.  Up to the end of June, there has been a record setting 28.46 inches of rain.  To contrast, this is more than the precipitation the fell throughout the entire year of 2012.  While this is good news for the crops, it is not good news for commuters.Rain can make roads very treacherous to navigate, especially because people don't know how to drive safely in adverse weather.  While rain is not the leading cause of car accidents, it does have a variety of effects on the conditions of roads.  It increases the time …

You may hear of many more people staying in an unhappy marriage than divorcing and starting over. According to a new study by a UK law firm and reported by the Huffington Post, “the number-one reason unhappy spouses stay together is because they lack the courage to divorce.” Just about 20 percent of the 2,000 people surveyed in the study “said they felt trapped in their relationship but would not consider a divorce unless financial stability could be guaranteed.” Being financially solvent after a divorce is one of the most common concerns and reasons that people shy away from it—but…

The effect of divorce on children is not straightforward. There are plenty of studies that illustrate the negative effect divorce can have on a child, but some psychologists point to the benefits divorce can have on a child who has suffered through nasty fights between parents in a tense household. Regardless, according to Psychology Today, “a number of child psychiatric disorders can be triggered by divorce.” One of the most common of these is Separation Anxiety Disorder, which, according to Psychology Today, “is a clinical term that describes an extreme state of distress that’s …

It is important to know the laws of the road in your home state, but also the laws of any other state that you may travel to as well. Sometimes, however, it is hard to keep up on laws that are created after you have learned them a different way. That is most often the case for older drivers who took drivers’ education classes before cell phones were common or before cell phone had the capabilities that they now have.

On April 18th, a torrential rainstorm hit the city of Chicago hard.  Flooding throughout the city and suburbs created massive delays and even some accidents.  Governor Quinn was forced to declare a state of emergency due to the conditions of the roads.  But the scariest thing that occurred was when the ground collapsed in the 9600 block of South Houston.Early on that Thursday morning, Mirko Krivokuca was driving in his silver pickup on his way to work.  He barely made it a block before a giant sinkhole swallowed up his vehicle and one other car.  Less than an hour later a third car …

Hands-free options for texting and making phone calls while driving are a big trend in the auto industry right now.  However, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has recently found that these hands-free technologies still increase the driver’s mental distractions, thus slowing reaction times and disrupting brain function.  According to researchers, hands-free texting and calling can cause drivers to scan the road less and maybe even miss objects right in front of them, like stop lights or even pedestrians.The AAA Foundation study focused solely on the impact of mental distraction on …

According to the LA Times, Katy Perry is opening up about her divorce from Russell Brand. They met at the 2009 MTV Music Awards, married in 2010, and divorced just 14 months later. She states that the last time that she actually spoke with him was when he sent her a text message on December 31, 2011, saying that he wanted to divorce her. It seems that this disconnected method of leaving a spouse is not uncommon. There was a controversy earlier this year when Atlanta Housewives reality show star Portia Stewart learned that her husband, Kordell, had filed for divorce through Twitter.It seems …

The Journal of Consumer Affairs recently shared the results of a study connecting a history of divorce with children’s spending habits in adulthood. The study purports that for children who experienced divorce at young ages, they may seek comfort outside of the home, including purchasing items and shopping to fill a need. It has long been documented that going through a divorce can have significant impacts on the lives of all people involved, but this study is one of the first in its kind to see what kind of non-relationship effects might linger in a person’s life.Divorce was not the only…

A study presented at the American Sociological Association annual meeting concluded that men are more likely than women to turn to drinking after divorce. The study also found that, as a whole, married men appear to drink less than their single and divorced counterpart, but married women drink more than there divorced or widowed friends.The research team, led by Corinne Reczek, assistant professor in sociology at the University of Cincinnati, looked at data collected from surveys of a random sample of 5,000 Wisconsin high school graduates of the class of 1957. The original research team …

According to the executive director of divorce finance company BBL Churchill Group, the most important thing you can do to prepare for your divorce is to hire an attorney. Hiring the right attorney, according to Nicole Noonan, can truly make or break your case.Noonan says that the right attorney is not only about representing your interests, but about representing your style. This is an important component of the attorney selection process. Since your lawyer will know a lot of private information about you over the course of the divorce proceedings, it should be someone you are comfortable …

Gay marriage has been in the spotlight over the past several years, especially as the opportunities for more couples have expanded across states around the country. Many people in various industries and of numerous types of backgrounds have weighed in on the impacts of gay marriage, and one of the interesting facets of higher numbers of gay marriages is whether and how divorce will play a role.Some attorneys believe that the ruling regarding the Defense of Marriage Act will make the divorce process easier for same-sex couples, allowing the process to be more equitable for parties involved. As…

A single mother of five was killed when a suspect fleeing police slammed into her four-door Saturn, police told the Chicago Tribune. Marisol Mercado, 35, “was struck by a car at Pulaski Road and Chicago Avenue… just before midnight” on a Saturday in mid-July, according to the Tribune. “Police had been pursuing the driver because he was suspected of shooting a man in the leg about a mile away from the crash site.” Neither the suspect nor any others involved in the wreck suffered any injuries. According to her family, Mercado was a “smart, confident woman who valued education, …

While there aren’t many definitive statistics about bicycle usage in the U.S., with cities from Chicago to New York to Portland installing an increasing number of bike lanes and promoting bicycle shares and safety, it’s pretty clear that cycling, as a primary means of transportation, is on the rise. According to a National Survey of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Attitudes and Behaviors, reported by bicyclinginfo.org, “approximately 57 million people, 27.3 percent of the population age 16 or older, rode a bicycle at least once during the summer of 2002,” the latest year for which data is …