There’s no denying it now; the UK is in the grip of recession. People are losing their jobs, companies are tightening their belts and consumer spending at one of the lowest ebbs it has ever been. However, as grim as everything seems on the economic front, the institution of marriage looks to be benefiting from the grim economy.

Many couples are trying anything to avoid the expense of divorce, which would ultimately lead to selling off any matrimonial home for less than it was bought for, and are even trying to make marriages work. In a bid to avoid the cost of divorce, couples are looking to counselling and marriage guidance in record numbers.

It’s a far cry from the recent ideology of getting divorced at the drop of a hat, which seems to have become commonplace on modern times.

Guidance and support charity Relate has seen increased requests for help in as many as 66% of their centres throughout the UK. In an ironic twist however, couples who are seeking counselling to save their marriage, and avoid the expense of divorce, are also finding it difficult to pay for their counselling in the first place.

A girl, aged just fourteen, has become the youngest girl ever to get divorced in Israel this week when she split from her seventeen year old husband. The Israeli girl, an Orthodox Jew, had her divorce confirmed by a rabbinical court, who confirmed that the couple’s marriage, which was only performed in front of friends, was indeed legally binding.

When the girl’s parents discovered that their fourteen year old daughter had married her boyfriend, and consummated the marriage, they insisted that she divorce. Both partners in the marriage were from very religious families.

It was heard that the young couple got married in front of their friends, and exchanged rings. The daughter did try to fight her parent’s wishes, insisting that she wanted to remain married. Now she has also claimed that she will marry her ‘husband’ again when she is of legal age.

The divorce proceedings were held in a religious court.

As a result of the divorce, the girl’s ID card will show that she was divorced when she is old enough to have one, at sixteen. The girl will also not be able to marry a man from a traditional Jewish priestly caste according to Jewish law due to her having been divorced.

It can take a long time to recover from a divorce, especially if it was a traumatic divorce and one party still has feelings for their former spouse. Hollywood actor Mickey Rourke is one person who struggled to come to terms with his divorce, when he split from his wife, Carre Otis.

Rourke’s divorce hit him so hard in fact that it took him almost ten years to get over his ex-wife, and has spent most of that time in the wilderness.

Rourke and Otis were married in June, 1996, but their marriage had problems from the start. Rourke was arrested in 1994 for abusing his wife, but the pair tried to work through their problems and stayed together. However they didn’t manage it for long, and their divorce was finalised in 1998.

Rourke says that the problems he has suffered over the last ten years have been due to his divorce, and his inability to move on. However, now Rourke is back to his best (with a nomination for the best actor Oscar for his role in the Wrestler) and looks to get in with his life.

Rourke commented this week:

I still love her. I love her in a different way but I waited for her for eight years (after the divorce) for her to come back. I’ve moved on now. It’s the first time I’ve been able to say that and mean it.

We all know that divorce can be expensive if things get very bitter between former partners, but what you might not have realised is that getting divorced can also be harmful to the earth. The message is clear, avoid getting divorced to save the planet.

This startling revelation has come from an Australian senator, who believes that married men are better for the earth than single men as single men are more wasteful. His belief is that getting divorced accelerates climate change, having a negative impact on the state of the planet.

The theory is that couples who separate need to live separate lives, with two properties, more electricity and a greater carbon footprint. According the senator Steve Fielding:

We understand that there is a social problem (with divorce), but now we’re seeing there is also environmental impact as well on the footprint.

This means that the earth is better off, and climate change will be helped, if couples stay together instead of getting divorced.

If you’re looking for reasons to save your marriage, perhaps saving the earth could be one of them?

There are many ways to tell your wife that you want a divorce, but traditionally doing it with a text or an email isn’t the best way to do it. However, in India it’s not only becoming a more common way of telling your wife that you want a divorce, but of actually making the divorce.

It seems that Muslim men are using text messages and emails more and more to tell their wives that they’re getting divorced, as simply notifying your wife that you want a divorce is sufficient to make it legal.

Sahiba Hussain conducted research into Marriage and divorce with Muslim women, and discovered that many men are using SMS and email systems to announce their divorce.

From 15 divorces that we looked at in 2008, eight were pronounced via SMS, e-mail and over the phone.

Five divorce declarations were given face to face but amongst these also, only in one case a witness present when the declaration was made.

The All-India Muslim Women Personal Law Board made a decree that forbid men from announcing their divorces by electronic means, however it doesn’t seem to have worked.

Father of two, Brian Philcox, drugged his two young children last June on Father’s Day, before killing them and himself in the backseat of his car in Wales. The two young children, seven-year-old Amy and three-year-old Owen, wouldn’t have known what was happening as their car filled with exhaust fumes, according to the coroner, and inquest heard this week.

The inquest ruled that the deaths of the two children were unlawful, and that Brian Philcox took his own life.

It was believed that Brian took the decision to kill himself and his children after he became depressed through the divorce from his wife, and the children’s mother, Lyn.

Brian picked the children up on Father’s Day, and they greeted him with home-made Father’s Day cards. The children’s mother, thirty-eight-year-old Lyn McAuliffe, described her ex-husband as:

Cold blooded, pre-meditated killer

I will never forgive him for taking the beautiful lives of Amy and Owen.

When Brian failed to return the children on time, he sent a text message to his wife stating:

There is nothing I can do. It is out of my control. I am sorry.

Lyn McAuliffe believed he was referring to his car, and that he was unable to bring the children back due to car trouble.

John Gittins, the coroner at the inquest, stated:

When he took Amy and Owen from you, I am sure that his intention was that they would be lost to you for ever.

But he failed because their lives are imprinted on your heart. They will endure and be part of your for every single moment of the rest of your life.

Kuwait has the second highest divorce rate in the world

Those who thought the divorce rate in the UK was high might be surprised to know that Kuwait has the second highest divorce rate in the world. Kuwait is second only to the not so surprising USA, which has the highest divorce rate in the world.

Dr Khadija Al-Mahmed, representing the Family Security Society in Kuwait, revealed the divorce rates in Kuwait. She said that the Family Security Society has been set up to help women and children deal with divorce.

She explained:

We approached several authorities without causing any media uproar in the country. Many children are victims of broken homes. I am still confused whether our problems lie in the constitutional provisions or the implementation of the law.

Dr Kazem Abul added that couples who have gone through divorce should do their level best to keep in touch for the sake of the family unit:

There is a global study on the best methods that parents can use to help their children handle the repercussions of divorce. It includes ways to prevent the negative consequences of divorce on the academic performance of the children. We should curb the alarming increase in the number of divorce cases in our society as well as take care of divorcees.

Unlike celebrity divorcees of the recent past, such as Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, Madonna and her British film director husband Guy Ritchie have remained largely quiet about their divorce. Both have continued with their lives and seemingly have kept the ‘details’ secret from the press. However, that seems to be about to change as the details of the divorce are set to become public in March, due to the New York Supreme Court.

Next month the court is set to rule on the custody arrangements the couple have proposed with regards to their children, and the court is made open to the public to attend.

In the court hearing it is believed that the terms of custody Madonna has insisted upon with regards to her ex-husband and his children will be made public. Among her terms, it has been suggested, are rules that state the children must attend a synagogue and eat kosher food.

Madonna has also insisted that Guy Ritchie gets faster Internet access in his home in Wiltshire so that he can speak to his children via the net.

A deal on custody has already been agreed in England, but now the US courts must agree the terms.

With the recession biting into people’s available finances, divorcees are also being hit hard when it comes to their financial settlements. Some of the biggest divorce lawyers in London say they’re being approached by clients looking to renegotiate their divorce settlements amid cries of financial ruin.

London divorce lawyer David Allison states:

These husbands are simply saying, ‘I cannot afford to pay this level of maintenance. And we’re seeing increasing numbers of those.

Another divorce lawyer, Suzanne Kingston, states that it’s advisable for couples going through divorce to negotiate with each as much as possible before they get to court, and that high earners aren’t the only ones facing these problems. When someone is looking to reduce their payments in a financial settlement, they will also need to prove that their lifestyle has changed to warrant the reduced spend.

Where a family’s spending needs to be adjusted because of the loss of bonuses or jobs, a court is likely to expect that both parties should both bear some of that reduction in lifestyle.

The UK isn’t alone in this trend of renegotiating divorce settlements long after the divorce has been finalised, as Raoul Felder (based in New York) states:

We have cases where people have just divorced and they’re seeking modifications downwards.

We’ve actually seen some cases where they’ve come in, said they hate each other, but can’t afford a divorce. We see the same big money divorces, but the big money is not the big money it used to be. There’s nobody as rich as they once were, except bankruptcy lawyers.

The world is in the middle of a global recession, with the UK being particularly hard hit. The recession is affecting businesses, families, the housing market, indeed every aspect of life in the country. One aspect that is also being affected by the credit crunch and global recession is the divorce industry.

Divorce rates may not necessarily be hit by the recession, but the deals struck during divorce settlements are certainly very different. The days of couples dividing their assets, selling their home and splitting the equity are gone, mainly due to the fact that few couples going through divorce have any equity in their homes anymore.

Sara Carroll and her ex-husband still live together in North London, and they’re not alone in the country. The couple were married for 22 years, but even so their home in a fashionable part of London isn’t desirable enough to get them the equity they need to start afresh, so they have to live together under the same roof.

Just at the point the settlement was agreed, and we put it on the market, was when the credit crunch started. So we’re waiting.

While this means couples are forced to stay together, it also means that divorce settlements could be brought back to the divorce lawyers months, even years, after the divorce is complete.