Different European countries rarely agree on anything, but for the last three years a number of countries across Europe have been trying to tie up one rule for everyone; at least where divorce is concerned.

Twenty-seven European nations have been working for the last three years to attempt to make it simpler for couples who are from different countries in Europe to get divorced.

One plan, from the European Commission, was to ensure that couples from different nationalities could get divorced under the laws from the country in which they lived most recently. However, this was resisted by Sweden because they feared that Islamic law could be enforced in Sweden as a result of many of the new inhabitants that have come from Iran and Iraq. This would mean that residents in Sweden could face laws that were against Sweden’s proud traditions of upholding women’s rights.

Eight countries announced in July that they would push ahead with the new divorce rule, despite the objection from Sweden. The countries being Greece, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Spain, Slovenia and Luxembourg.

Whether this will work remains to be seen.

When Madonna and Guy Ritchie announced that they were getting divorced, the world’s media assumed there would be a bitter, long and public battle between the two over property and finances. It looks however as though that’s not going to happen as the couple were granted a quick divorce last week in the high court.

Without either Madonna or Ritchie being present, the couple’s eight-year marriage was terminated as they were granted a decree nisi. This means that the divorce will be finalised, with the decree absolute, in just six weeks assuming there are no disputes from either party.

It looked at one stage as though a huge battle over the couple’s extensive finances would commence when Madonna hired Paul McCartney’s divorce lawyer, Fiona Shackleton, but the low key divorce last week looks to have ended speculation of a dispute over money. According to reports, Guy Ritchie hasn’t made any claim to the American singer’s considerable fortune.

The decree nisi was granted after the couple had declared, in a sworn statement, that they had not lived together for six months. Madonna cited unreasonable behaviour as grounds for divorce.

He’s one of the richest men in the world, yet billionaire Bernie Ecclestone, the boss of the richest sport in the world, Formula One motorsport, may be about to head for the divorce courts. If he does, it could spark the biggest divorce case in history.

Bernie’s wife, the Amazonian Slavica Ecclestone, has moved out of the couple’s home in Chelsea and into a flat owned by her daughter’s boyfriend.

Bernie has a fortune estimated at £2.4 billion, made from TV deals for Formula One, and a lucrative bonds sale in 1999. However for tax reasons much of Bernie’s fortune has been transferred to his wife Slavica, meaning that any divorce case could get very messy if the couple can’t be amicable over a split.

The couple are a very unlikely pair, with ten inches and nearly thirty years between them. They met at the Italian Grand Prix in 1982 when Slavica was just twenty-four.

Bernie Ecclestone reportedly said about his wife moving out of their £10 million London home:

The reason she has moved out is because they are doing building work next door and it is impossible to live in the house. She can’t stand the noise. I don’t know if she wants a divorce or not. She has moved into an apartment, belonging to Petra’s boyfriend. We have people in the house taping the noise so we can go to the council to get something done about it.

The high profile divorce lawyers are no doubt standing by.

In the last two weeks, Britain saw its first ‘virtual divorce’ when Amy Taylor divorced her husband David Pollard when she caught him cheating on her with a woman in a video game called Second Life. The two had met in the game, then moved in with each other and got married, before David started seeing another woman, digitally, for extra marital relations.

Amy divorced her husband, only for him to get engaged with the woman he was seeing – despite having never ‘actually’ met her, and despite the fact that she’s from the USA.

Amy herself has found another man, but this time from the video game World of Warcraft.

Now divorce experts say that virtual relationships, marriages and eventually divorces will become more common in the UK.

According to Dr Aric Sigman, who spoke with Sky News Online:

I am sure this type of divorce is going to be an increasing phenomena, there’s no doubt about it.

It’s going to be a huge problem, especially when you consider what will happen when the Facebook generation grows up, because all they are doing is interacting with an image on screen.

It’s what they are not doing in real life that leads to these divorces. Britain is the most time-poor country in Europe, so when people are spending the few hours they have in a virtual world, it’s worrying.

With 15 million people already playing Second Life, and the level of addiction encountered with video games, the Internet is proving an environment for ‘safe’ relationships to blossom.

You probably wouldn’t associate Hollywood actor Will Smith with giving relationship advice, unless of course you’re referring to his performance in the movie ‘Hitch’, where he played a relationship expert. It seems ‘Big Willy’ is something of a relationship guru for real, as he’s been offering advice on relationships in a recent interview for the magazine ‘Essence’, which will go on sale in December.

Will Smith has been married for eleven years, to his wife Jada Pinkett, and the couple have three children. According to Will, in order to have a successful marriage you need to completely remove the option of divorce.

Will states:

The truth about life is that we’re all alone.

But when somebody loves you, that experience is shared. Love is the only real connective tissue that allows you to not live and die by yourself.

The secret is removing divorce as an option. Anyone who gives themselves that option will get a divorce.

Will says that in order to make a relationship work you need to constantly work at it, as he has done with his wife.

Former Prime Minister of Thailand, and former owner of Manchester City, Thaksin Shinawatra, has quietly divorced his wife according to reports. Both Thaksin and his wife Potjaman have received jail sentences in Thailand.

Many experts believe however that Thaksin’s move to divorce his wife isn’t led by a marital breakdown, but instead motivated by financial reasons; in order to protect his sizable fortune from being dispersed.

Shinawatra had his UK visa terminated by the Home Office a few weeks ago, not long after his sale of Manchester City to the Abu Dhabi United Group went through. Shinawatra was also convicted of corruption in Thailand, and his divorce went through at the consulate in Hong Kong.

Shinawatra’s spokesman, Phongthep Thepkanjana, confirmed that Thaksin and Potjaman had divorced, but stated that the divorce would affect the legal wrangling over Thaksin’s personal fortune that had been seized by the Thai government.

Many persons are owners of those assets, and those assets have been frozen. If you check with the list of the assets, those assets belong to more than ten people.

He did refuse to comment on the whereabouts of either Thaksin or Potjaman, and also wouldn’t comment on whether either of them would try to re-enter the UK.

The proposals announced by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith that have called for more work on keeping families together, and ways to make it harder for couples to divorce, have also called for and end to the public celebrity divorce case in London.

This is after many celebrities have flocked to London to take part in their public, and often bitter, divorce cases. The plans Iain Duncan Smith has put together also call for restrictions on the financial awards that court judges are able to give out, and the control they have on granting custody and access to children.

This move by the Tories follows the recent high profile cases such as Heather Mills’ £24.3 million award from her divorce with former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, and the public custody wrangle between Guy Ritchie and Madonna that has seen Ritchie hiring the country’s best children’s lawyer.

The problem with the legal system as it stands, claims Iain Duncan Smith, is that the divorce courts are too adversarial, meaning that children and finances are being used as pawns by warring divorce lawyers. Iain Duncan Smith stated:

There is so much leeway around what a judge will decide on. That allows huge territory for the legal profession to have a field day.

You don’t normally associate divorce lawyers with match makers, but law form Pannone recently played cupid to many of its divorce customers, in an attempt to find divorcee love.

120 divorce clients of the legal form were invited to meet up in a matchmaking ‘date’ of sorts in a bar in Manchester. The dating forum wasn’t just to find love for the clients, Pannone also wanted to showcase their other services.

The unlikely group date took place in a Manchester bar called Panacea, a bar that describes itself as:

A unique setting for any occasion, where day melds seamlessly into night.

Whether any matches were made isn’t sure, as the results were completely confidential, but if anyone did find romance from the event, you can be sure that they kept a card for Pannone just in case!

The family law section at Pannone was a growth area at the beginning of the year, which made a hefty contribution to the legal firm’s six year turnover of £27 million.

The recently announced split between British film director Guy Ritchie and pop queen Madonna may seem bad news for them, but for one person, the divorce has proved good news. Guy Ritchie’s father, John, is pleased with the news that his son is to divorce Madonna, according to film news website imdb.com.

Madonna and Guy are currently in the middle of a divorce, and both have lined up heavyweight divorce lawyers to fight their corner. The news of the split wouldn’t please most parents, but Guy’s father has a different outlook on the news. When asked about his son’s divorce John stated:

He has been in a very good mood.

I wasn’t upset that they parted. I am very pleased for Guy that it is all over.

According to the news report, John believes that his son will be successful in preventing Madonna taking the couple’s children back to the United States to live. The couple are currently locked in a bitter custody battle over their two children, Rocco and David, and Madonna’s son Lourdes who she had with a previous relationship.

Carol Williams sued her divorce lawyers over her huge £1.4 million divorce settlement, claiming that the money she received wasn’t enough. However she has lost her case against her lawyers, and has been branded a liar in court. As a result she’s lost almost all of the money that she won in her divorce settlement.

The judge ruled that Williams was an unreliable witness and had attempted to hide her affair from a singing teacher during her divorce case.

She has reportedly lost most of her payout on legal fees totalling £400,000, and on ill-advised property investments, succumbing to the current financial crisis in the housing market.

Carol Williams accepted the payout from her husband John in 2000, and was awarded £1.4 million. Three months after she accepted the money the House of Lords ruled that wives could receive larger payouts from their husband’s wealth, prompting Carol Williams to sue her divorce lawyers for poor advice. She says they should have warned her of the impending ruling. However they claim that she wanted a quick settlement and favoured the £1.4 million settlement offer.

Judge Justice Field stated:

Regrettably, I am obliged to record that I found Mrs Williams to be a profoundly unreliable witness.

Her evidence was self-serving, evasive and, on occasion, knowingly untruthful.

The evidence is overwhelming that Mrs Williams was determined to have a clean break from her husband who had controlled and humiliated her over many years.

In her eyes, her husband was ruthless and she knew that if she postponed the negotiations he would be furious and likely to fight her every inch of the way, a prospect she was very anxious to avoid.

Carol Williams invested £1.1 million from her settlement into buy-to-let properties; however they have all now been repossessed.