The seemingly fairytale romance between Dennis Janik and his wife, Susan, started with their dream to move to Costa Rica to start an animal sanctuary. It ended in a tale of divorce and legal entanglements that have all but squashed their ambitions to help animals in Central America.

They were young and in love, dedicated to wildlife conservation. In pursuit of those goals, they found Costa Rica, where they worked to create a breeding facility and rescue center for endangered species. The couple had acquired Zoo Ave, a non-profit with those exact goals. They worked long, hard hours in pursuit of their vision.

Now, they are divorced, and Dennis Janik is pursued by what he considers the constant threat of legal persecution, according to the Dallas Morning News. He hasn’t seen the animals that he worked to protect in more than a year, and he would not even talk to the Morning News on the telephone, for fear that it would give away his location.

His anxiety began when his wife accused him of domestic violence and relentless psychological violence.

In Costa Rica, domestic abuse laws leave little room for debate when an accusation has been made, and often a spouse must leave the home where the alleged abuse took place. The country’s laws are the result of legislation passed to confront its rising domestic abuse rates. Women were in need of legal support as they faced continued abuse.

As a result, now a spouse can report physical abuse, attacks to property and emotional abuse to a judge, and the alleged offending spouse can be removed from the house for six months.

After the accusations, Costa Rican police arrived at the couple’s door and “pulled him out,” according to the Dallas Morning News. Susan called the police on the claim that Dennis had denied her sleep, ridiculed her continuously and hit her. Dennis denies these allegations.

Susan, who now lives in Plano, Texas, with her family, declined to comment, but her lawyer told the newspaper that Dennis “is not a victim, he’s an abuser.”

What followed the initial accusation was a long and convoluted divorce case that has gone on for two years, and which Dennis Janik claims has left him hiding out in a safe house and rendered him bankrupt.

Garland Baker, a Costa Rican judicial consultant who opposes the domestic abuse laws, is of the opinion that Dennis Janik allowed himself to be manipulated by the legal system. “Women have taken the law and completely abused it,” he said. “It’s become very one-sided. For whatever reason, they decide they want their spouse out of the house, they go complain, and he is out.”

The accused abuser gets a hearing while the restraining order keeps them from returning home, but according to Baker the court most often sides with the accuser.

Susan Janik’s lawyer, Guiza Pinchanski, argued that the laws protect women in most cases, and that abuses of the law were an exception.

While the courts dropped the domestic violence charges against Dennis, there is still a criminal charge on the books for coercion, as well as alimony payments. The courts have rejected his appeals.

Dennis Janik is worried for the fate of Zoo Ave, a well-respected animal preserve and sanctuary. His family is worried he may end up in Costa Rican jail.

Copyright © 2010 TotalDivorce, LLC. (as licensee). All rights reserved.

Before the advent and spread of social media web sites like Facebook, a lawyer investigating a divorce case would probably use the traditional methods: private investigation and subpoenas.

Now, though, a lawyer starts his or her investigation online, with a check on Facebook for any incriminating evidence, according to an article from CNN.

More and more, divorce attorneys are adapting to the dynamic world of social media, and learning how to track their clients and their cases online. In divorce cases, photos, profile information, comments and status updates can all provide information and evidence that lawyers can use to build their cases.

According to a survey of lawyers by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, more than 80 percent of attorneys saw a rise in the cases that took advantage of social media for evidence.

Photos of people hugging and kissing can reveal an affair or infidelity, which is just the sort of information that a divorce lawyer can use while building a case. Lawyers have also said that social media leads to more opportunities for unfaithful spouses to cheat, because it is easier to reconnect with old flames. And often in these modern times, where there are relationships and get-togethers, there are photos. And often those photos make it online.

CNN spoke with Ken Altshuler, a divorce lawyer in Maine, who uses such tactics in his own divorce cases. In one such instance, a female client recently came to Altshuler asking for help divorcing her husband, who she claimed was an alcoholic who had started to drink again. The husband denied the allegation, and there was no way for either side to resolve it, creating a stalemate of her word against his.

That is, of course, until a friend of the female client discovered a photo on Facebook that showed the husband drinking a beer at a party. Altshuler showed the photos to the judge in the divorce case, and the wife won.

“Facebook is a great source of evidence,” said Altshuler. “It’s absolutely solid evidence because he’s the author of it. How do you deny that you put that on?”

Facebook is currently the online hub where most lawyer activity occurs surrounding divorce cases. And as Facebook reduces the severity of default privacy settings, the opportunities to collect evidence rise. Facebook, though, has acknowledged recently that privacy settings should be more easily managed, so perhaps this will lead to a decrease in the harvest of helpful images for divorce lawyers.

“It’s becoming all but impossible to protect your information unless you spend hours and hours figuring it out,” said divorce attorney Lee Rosen, who himself admitted to using Facebook in a recent case. Rosen had seen a suspicious Facebook status message on a husband’s profile. The husband had been accused of cheating, and the message was from a female co-worker. That lead took Rosen where he needed his investigation to go. He said that about 25 percent of his cases use social media.

Giovanni Masucci is a digital investigator who works for a social media search service. He said that about half of cases using social media expose some kind of cheating.

“For example, someone may be cheating, but they are married,” Masucci said. “If their status on the web page says single, that’s a major red flag.”

Copyright © 2010 TotalDivorce, LLC. (as licensee). All rights reserved.

Divorce has a way of heightening emotional stress. Often people in the midst of divorce act as a result of their passions, rather than reason. And in a few situations, the result of stress and anger is extreme violence.

Two of these stories have emerged from across the U.S. this week. One story out of Chicago ended in tragedy, as an estranged husband ended his own life and those of family members.

In another story out of Atlanta, a husband and stepfather is still on the run after a mother and daughter were found slain.

The story out of Chicago began when the estranged husband, who was upset about a potential divorce, told the children at his wife’s home to go upstairs before doing the unthinkable: he shot his wife and a friend of hers in the kitchen, then moved to the bedroom and shot himself.

The three deaths came in the late evening. The husband had gone down into the basement of his estranged wife’s house and told the group of children, all under 12 years old, spending time there to go upstairs. They did not witness the shootings.

The gunman did not live at the house. He was angry, apparently, over the break-up with his wife and the divorce that was to follow. It was unclear if the wife and her friend, who was male, were in a romantic relationship. They each suffered a gunshot wound to the head, while the husband suffered a gunshot wound to the chest and to the head, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

The three remain unidentified. The gunman had no history of domestic violence, and he didn’t appear to have left a note. The incident occurred on Chicago’s Southwest Side.

In Atlanta, a man who had recently been served divorce papers is a suspect in the murder of his wife Lynnale Baker and her 19-year-old daughter ShaeLinda Sanders. Kenneth Baker is currently at-large, with police searching for him. He is considered by law enforcement to be armed and dangerous, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Friends of the victims remember them as being well-loved. “She was an angel,” said Julia Pattillo about Lynnale Baker. “She was like a second mother to me. She always made it known that no matter how down you were about yourself, you were beautiful.”

Sanders would have graduated from high school this month. “She had a very big heart,” Pattillo said of her friend. “We could go to Wal-Mart and she would make it the funnest place on earth.”

After 1 p.m. on the day of the shooting, Kenneth Baker himself called 911 to tell police what he had done. “He told a relative he had killed his wife and stepdaughter,” said Griffin police chief Frank Strickland. Officers arrived at the home to find the women slain.

A week before, Lynnale had served her husband with divorce papers. Trouble had been brewing long before that, however. “He and (Sanders’) mother were always fighting,” said a classmate of ShaeLinda’s. “When they did, she would have to find somebody to talk to.”
Police retrieved Kenneth Baker’s 12-year-old son from school, and he is now in protective custody.

Copyright © 2010 TotalDivorce, LLC. (as licensee). All rights reserved.

When it comes to divorces that don’t involve celebrities, there are usually two kinds of stories that make it into the news: those that chronicle odd behaviors and incidents that led to divorce, and the strange and often unpleasant ways that people deal with a divorce that has already occurred.

In two recent stories of divorce, the first chronicles a strange alleged threat from a wife to a husband that could have ended far worse than it did, and which played a part in the divorce proceedings. The second story involves how a man in England hoped to cope with a divorce, and ended up with a problem donkey.

In a Long Island divorce court, a judge recently ruled that a wife’s alleged violent threat towards her husband was not a grounds for divorce. Shlomo Kupperman had accused his wife Irene of threatening him with a dangerous weapon, according to the New York Daily News. That weapon? A samurai sword.

Shlomo told the judge that after his wife had several affairs he confronted her one evening, asking her where she had been. According to his story, she became enraged and grabbed a 3-foot samurai sword from his collection, charging at him and coming very close to his face. In his testimony, he claimed that he slowly backed away from his wife and retreated to the bedroom and locked himself in for the rest of the night.

Nobody called the police or went to the hospital that night, however, which cast some doubt in the eyes of the judge, who decided that the alleged incident was not, on its own, a grounds for divorce.

Irene Kupperman, for her part, claims that she never attacked anyone. “It’s beyond ridiculous,” her lawyer said.

The judge granted the divorce on other grounds, however, citing the couple’s functional separation.

In Tiffield, England, a man was ordered to pay 6,000 pounds in fines after he let a donkey that he owned attack pigs that he also owned, and even kill another donkey in a neighboring field.

Andrew Harding was convicted of eight counts of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal. He must pay the fine and serve 200 hours of community service. His donkey, Paco, was seen grabbing and shaking the pigs by the neck, and a neighbor captured images of that and other offenses against his own donkey, according to the Telegraph.

The reason that Harding kept the property and the troublesome livestock was to cope with a 2007 divorce from his wife, and to provide a place for his children to visit and play when they were with him on his weekend visitations.

“It was a family farm,” he said in his own defense during the trial. “A place to get the kids away from their Xbox. It was fine until we got the donkey.”

Officers had found other unsavory conditions on the farm in the past, including livestock that didn’t have enough water or shelter.

Harding said that the farm was a nice place for his children before he got the donkey for them to ride. “I wish I never had the thing,” he said. “It was a pain in the ass.”

Copyright © 2010 TotalDivorce, LLC. (as licensee). All rights reserved.

Interfaith marriages have increased over the years causing religion to play a key role in child custody cases across the nation.

Parents find themselves fighting not only for the right to spend time with their kids, but to share with them their individual religious beliefs.

A divorced Chicago couple recently faced a bitter battle over the religious upbringing of their daughter, with a judge ruling to allow the child to both Christian and Jewish services, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Rebecca and Joseph Reyes both wanted custody of their three-year-old daughter and both hoped to raise their child with their traditions.

Joseph Reyes converted to Judaism during the couple’s marriage, but he later said he felt pressured to convert. Since the two divorced, he decided to go back to his Catholic roots.

During their divorce proceedings, the judge awarded Rebecca Reyes custody of their daughter. She then requested that the judge rule her daughter only follow the Jewish tradition.

She requested a court order prohibiting her ex from taking the young girl to Catholic masses during his visitations. The court ruled in her favor and banned her ex-husband from having their daughter go to Catholic ceremonies.

But during a visitation with his daughter, Joseph Reyes decided to take her to a Catholic mass and have her baptized. He then sent pictures of the baptism to his ex-wife.

This upset Rebecca Reyes because she said that they agreed to raise their daughter in the Jewish faith.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Joseph Reyes fought the court ruling prohibiting him from exposing his daughter to Catholicism. And the ban was lifted.

The court ruled that Joseph Reyes will now get visitation rights with his daughter on Christmas and Easter.

But they were not the only couple to battle over their religious beliefs and their children.

Elina Margolina and Nelson Derbigny have been divorced for three years. Now they are back in the courts to determine their child’s religious followings.

Margolina won a temporary court order stating that her husband must raise their son in the Jewish tradition. She requested that he keep kosher food in his home and require his son to wear traditional Jewish garments to his public school.

As interfaith marriages increase, the issue of religion in custody battles might become more commonplace.

Copyright © 2010 TotalDivorce, LLC. (as licensee). All rights reserved.

Divorce parties have become more and more popular in the past decade. The idea behind these parties is that recent divorcees invite their family and friends to celebrate their dissolved marriage and newly found freedom.

But unfortunately for one British woman, her divorce party ended with a fatal twist.

BBC news reported that Katrina Jones was stabbed repeatedly by her ex-husband after he saw her prepare her home for a divorce party.

Brian and Katrina Jones were married for 10 years before their marriage began to deteriorate. Katrina allegedly had an affair with an old friend. After that, she called it quits and filed for divorce.

Shortly after the divorce was filed, Brian Jones moved out of their home. He rented an apartment a couple streets over. But he later decided to stay with his neighbor that lived next door his ex-wife’s house.

Their divorce was final in September. Brian Jones, aware of Katrina’s plans to throw the bash, asked his ex-wife not to throw the party.

But several weeks later Katrina continued on with her original plans.

Brian Jones saw as his ex-wife post “Congratulations” signs outside the house. He said he lost it when he saw a game called “pin the tail on the X” with his picture on it.

Local British papers reported that Jones drank a large amount of beer and whiskey before walking over to his ex-wife’s home. He allegedly grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed his ex 12 times in her chest and arm.

After the incident, Jones called the police explaining that he stabbed his wife and that he loved her “to bits.”

He pleaded not guilty to the courts because he claimed the divorce party provoked his actions. In his police statement he explained that he just “snapped” and temporarily lost of control.

Prosecuting attorney Franz Muller said that Katrina confided in her new boyfriend that her ex-husband threatened her before she died. She claimed her ex-husband said, “If he could not have her, then no other man would.”

The trial was expected to last a couple of weeks but no verdict has been decided at this point.

Copyright © 2010 TotalDivorce, LLC. (as licensee). All rights reserved.

Debra Shanley was nurturing a lifelong dream when she purchased a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and joined a local motorcycle club. The New Jersey high school teacher was learning to ride and making friends in the Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.).

After a Saturday bike ride and dinner out with the group, she planned to go on another ride with them on Sunday. When Shanley did not show up for the Sunday ride, fellow members became concerned. There were apparently signs that they should have been. In the weeks previous, Debra’s husband of 35 years, Peter, had become enraged at her and taken a power saw to her Fat Boy motorcycle, destroying the bike.

The Sunday that she missed the ride, Debra’s friends in the motorcycle group called the police, reporting her as missing after she didn’t show up at the event and didn’t reply to numerous text messages and phone calls. Police cruisers were dispatched to the Shanley home, where they found Debra beaten to death and strangled in her bedroom, according to NorthJersey.com.

Husband Peter, who was found in the next room with a broken ankle and a cut neck, has been named by prosecutors as the primary suspect in the murder of his wife. The former public works employee was formally charged with murder on Monday, with bail set at a million and a half dollars.

In hindsight, Peter’s aggressive and angry treatment of Debra’s motorcycle should have been and was a red alert in her friends’ eyes. “I thought it was a tremendous amount of rage,” said biking friend John Bibas, who was in the motorcycle club with Debra. “I told her she should have the guy arrested and she should get a restraining order. I told her that numerous, numerous times. She apparently did not want to do that.”

Debra had taken her destroyed bike in to get worked on at a local motorcycle shop. While there, she had talked about how much she had wanted to take up riding, and that this was the fulfillment of a dream.

Also, according to friends, Debra had wanted a divorce from Peter. Debra’s mother also said that her daughter had told her in conversation that she wanted a divorce from him. According to those same sources, Peter was planning to move out of the home that the couple shared. Debra, apparently, had found an apartment for him to live in.

Debra Shanley had a reputation as a person passionately committed to education and to children. In addition to being a high school teacher, she served five terms on the Board of Education before she resigned in 2008, and she was running for another term this year. Over the years, she had gone from a concerned mom on the PTA to a crusader for technology and full-day kindergarten in the schools.

“She was just one who really wanted to make sure that every child had the opportunity for a strong education,” said former Dumont schools superintendent Jim Montesano. “She was just the consummate volunteer.”

Copyright © 2010 TotalDivorce, LLC. (as licensee). All rights reserved.

Credit companies are using information gained from transactions to predict large life events that might impact consumer activity. One of those life events is divorce, and credit companies want to guess when that might happen, according to an article in The Daily Beast.

Credit card companies have access to a lot of data about the people who use their cards. All manner of transactions go through the credit card companies’ systems, and they do what they can to use it to their advantage.

Credit companies want to sell more services and products, and they want to know what the likelihood is that consumers will pay off their outstanding debt. They are willing to use the data to achieve that goal.

When it comes to divorce, if a credit company can predict when a consumer might be nearing a divorce, they can better evaluate whether someone will be paying off their credit card bill. People going through a divorce are more likely to leave a balance on a credit card or miss payments. When domestic trouble translates into an impact on the credit company and its financial interests, then they want to be able to predict it.

For companies that specialize in and depend on risk management, divorce is a potentially serious risk.

In his book “Super Crunchers,” author and professor at Yale Law School Ian Ayres discusses the strategy used by the credit companies. He told The Daily Beast that “credit card companies don’t really care about divorce in and of itself—they care whether you’re going to pay your card off.”

The methods that credit companies use to track this information is confidential, and guarded tightly. Visa told The Daily Beast that it “does not track or monitor cardholder marital status, not does it offer any service or product that predicts a potential divorce.”

Increasingly, though, easily accessible data is enabling companies to predict the lifestyle choices and behaviors of consumers. Predictive modeling can use one set of data to answer a seemingly unrelated question. Purchasing information, for example, could provide information about whether a consumer has recently relocated. This data could then be used to offer products aimed at consumers who have just moved.

Credit card marketing partnerships can be well-served by knowing such biographical details about potential customers. If a customer has just moved, for example, a credit company could inform a marketing partners that might be a home refurbishing business.

“There’s a whole market out there that has tried to predict whether someone has just moved, and to be first with offers,” according to Bob Grossman, the director of the Laboratory for Advanced Computing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The Daily Beast makes sure to note that crunching numbers for strategic purposes is a trend taking hold in business at large, and that the credit companies are early adopters. Tools to analyze data are more sophisticated, and therefore more insight and analysis can be drawn from the data.

Whether or not the credit companies know about an impending divorce, one can be sure that they are working hard to make the information at their fingertips profitable.

Copyright © 2010 TotalDivorce, LLC. (as licensee). All rights reserved.

In the headlines, we all see how interesting it can be to watch celebrities like Paul McCartney and Sandra Bullock work through their marital problems.

One way that Hollywood has captured this drama and turned it into entertainment is with court shows. And of all of television’s courtroom shows, “Divorce Court” is the longest-running of them all, capitalizing on the fireworks between couples who are splitting up.

All of the drama that comes when two people make the hard decision to part ways has made for compelling TV.

Since 2006, the host of “Divorce Court” has been Judge Lynn Toler, who is very realistic about the role that her show plays in the lives of its participants. She is a real judge, but it is not a real court, as only a state can legally grant a divorce. The show’s participants, though, do come on to argue about how their property and their money should be divided. And they also get the chance to get a few things off of their chests.

“We talk to people who are upset,” Judge Toler told ABC News. “What the divorce system does these days, it doesn’t allow anybody the emotional period on the marriage sentence. Here [on the show] we give people the opportunity to be heard. Then I decide who gets Fluffy the dog.”

Property, according to the ABC article, is often at the center of divorce disputes.
ABC News also spoke with Helen Fisher, a professor of anthropology and human behavior at Rutgers University, who talked about the importance of property in a divorce.

“I think that property is very important in this day and age,” Fisher said. “It defines you; you worked hard to get it. When you divorce, a lot of people have a lot of battles over their property for good reasons.”

“Divorce Court” has also been known to put on display the racier side of divorce and the spectacle of reality television, all of which is brought together with Judge Toler’s unique brand of insight.

In her opinion, the Internet has changed divorce. In the past, she says, infidelity was not as facilitated as it is now. “From what I see in here it’s a mess,” she said. “Before when you wanted to cheat, you had to go out and meet the person, and now on the Internet you have millions of people at your disposal that could walk into your life. They meet online and she gets on a plane to go see him, and they get married. And she’s wondering why it didn’t work out.”

“Divorce Court” depends on the drama of reality TV, the witty zingers of Judge Toler, and a high level of production efficiency as reasons for its success. The show in its latest iteration has been on the air since 1999, with more than 2,000 episodes.

A number of famous divorcees have graced the studio, from disgraced evangelist Ted Haggard and his wife, to Gary Coleman and his wife.

On why people like to watch the show, executive producer Mark Koberg said that it’s essentially voyeuristic. “I think people really like to see how these people are acting crazy and silly and the funny things they do.”

Toler’s view was somewhat more sensible: “I provide them with some emotional resolution,” she said. As for advice?: “Stay one step ahead of your emotions,” she says, urging couples to think clearly rather than acting impulsively. “If you act on how you feel, you are doing a lot of things that are counterproductive to the marriage.”

Copyright © 2010 TotalDivorce, LLC. (as licensee). All rights reserved.

At nine years old, Nujood Ali was force to marry a man in his late twenties. She was raped and beaten. Then she made history: she got a divorce.

Her ordeal as a child bride was reported in Yemeni media outlets before slowly getting picked up and reported internationally. She was ultimately named Glamour magazine’s woman of the year, and she traveled to New York as a new spokesperson for the rights of women.

Ali shared her story, in spoken form, with a French journalist, Delphine Minoui, and now the story has been published in print form in English, titled “I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced.” When the Arabic language edition is published shortly, Ali, who is now twelve years old, will finally be able to read her own story for the first time.

Ali told the story to Minoui in person, rather than writing it down.

“I do not know what is in it, except what I have been told about. I am still waiting to read it in my own language,” she told Reuters, which is reporting the story. “But I guess it is important to have my story come out to the rest of the world.”

According to the article, publishers have plans to publish the book in a total of 19 different languages, all the better to spread her inspiring story. It first appeared in France last year.

The book tells Ali’s story, how she was married off by her poor father to an older man. She was the one of more than a dozen children.

Her new husband removed her from school and took her off to his home village. He also raped her on the first night of their arranged marriage.

“No matter how I screamed,” said Ali in the memoir, “no one came to help me. It hurt awfully, and I was all alone to face the pain.”

When her husband let her visit her family in Sanaa, a Yemeni city, Ali was able to escape, hailing a cab that took her to the city courthouse. The human rights lawyer Shada Nasser helped her to seek and ultimately get a divorce from the husband. She was the first child bride to successfully get a divorce in Yemen.

Ali’s translator, filmmaker Khadija Al-Salami, reported that the part of Ali’s life captured in the book is not the end of the story. The girl was so busy doing media interviews last year that her school kicked her out. Al-Salami now monitors her education, and the book’s French publisher has lent Ali’s family a hand, buying a home for her family.

Ali has used royalties from the book to pay for her education.
“My life now in Yemen is calm and I live like a happy middle-class kid,” she said, “where last year I was having a miserable poor life.”

Ali’s story, which she can now herself read, has led Yemeni citizens to push for legislation that would ban marriage before the age of 18. A quarter of girls there are still, however, married by age 15.

Copyright © 2010 TotalDivorce, LLC. (as licensee). All rights reserved.