Sometimes death and divorce sometimes nearly coincide.  Time Magazine recently wrote an article titled “Facing Death and Divorce at the Same Time.”  While focus was placed on Dennis Hopper filing for divorce from his current wife, while at the same time attempting to fight terminal cancer, a valuable lesson may be taken from the article – know what you have and speak with an attorney early.  As the article states, spouses are normally not allowed to disinherit their spouse.  Mississippi follows the same law, making it very difficult to prevent your spouse from receiving a certain portion of your estate.  Of course, this becomes particularly important once a decision is made to divorce, as not too many people want their estate to go in part to a spouse that is in process of divorcing them.

The reason it is important to discuss estate issues with you lawyer as soon as you begin a divorce proceeding is that divorces take months, not days, to finalize.  A husband and wife are often living completely separate lives, including with new significant others, while the finalization of the divorce is far away.  A lawyer knowledgeable in the area of estate planning can walk you through some steps that will minimize the problems that would occur should you pass away during that period.  If a divorce case is pending, you may be limited in what you can because of court restrictions.  However, that does not mean that you can’t take steps to preserve as much of your estate as possible for your heirs.  At minimum, you can come to a plan on what to do as soon as your divorce is final.  You do not want your new wife to find out years later that the ex-wife that ran off with the pool boy just received all of your life insurance because you forgot to change the beneficiary designation.   

 Talk to your lawyer early and ask questions.  Be aware of areas where you may have designated your spouse as beneficiary to an account or insurance plan.  Finally, as soon as you are divorced, have a new Last Will and Testament prepared.

In Mississippi, for a spouse to prove adultery, there must be clear and convincing evidence of both an adulterous inclination and a reasonable opportunity to satisfy that inclination.  Adultery can be proven by circumstantial evidence because the secretive nature of adultery normally prevents someone from obtaining direct evidence of what occurred behind closed doors.  The evidence of adultery must be logical and be inconsistent with a theory of innocence.  A classic example would be evidence that a husband claimed to be going on a business trip to another state but was seen kissing a woman (not his wife), entering a local motel room her and not leaving until the morning.  Of course, this does not provide any evidence of what occurred in the motel room but the evidence would clearly demonstrate facts inconsistent with a theory of innocence and would likely result in a finding of adultery. 

In a Mississippi divorce case, once a spouse proves adultery, the court will decide issues such as child custody and the division of assets.  So not only does the innocent spouse discover the cheating ways of the adulterous spouse, everyone takes a large financial hit with the asset division.  Sadly, however, the pain caused by adultery does not always end quickly.  Often, the destruction of trust caused by the cheating impacts people’s ability to act reasonably after a divorce is concluded.  This usually manifests itself in an unreasonable level of anger, an inability to communicate with the former spouse and frequent post-divorce contempt actions.  It can even result in a lawsuit being filed against the paramour for Alienation of Affections.  Adultery is possibly the most destructive of the divorce grounds in Mississippi. 

If you are the innocent spouse in an adultery situation, it is important to speak with a lawyer quickly to determine the best way to preserve evidence if you decide to pursue a divorce and so that you will understand what is necessary should you pursue a divorce.  Even resuming normal marital relations with your spouse after learning of an affair may drastically impact your ability to pursue a divorce on the ground of adultery. 

As for Tiger, his adulterous actions may cost him his family, fortune and possibly his career.  He will still remain a wealthy after a divorce, but the image he cultivated over the years that has contributed to his staggering earnings has likely been permanently tarnished.