Hey First Wives World members... check this out!

We are always keeping our eyes out for exciting opportunities to get the world talking about divorce. We believe that through discourse comes understanding — and with understanding comes acceptance. With that in mind, take a look at the below description, and see if you'd like to be part of this show!

NATIONALLY SYNDICATED TALK SHOW SEEKING COUPLES GETTING DIVORCED AND EXES CONTEMPLATING A REUNION

Are you and your spouse contemplating divorce?

Or are you and your ex-spouse contemplating getting back together?

Are you in limbo about the decision?

If so, and if you're willing to share your make-up or break-up story on television, please submit your name, a brief description of your story and the best way(s)/time(s) to contact you to:

julie@firstwivesworld.com

Is it possible that times are so bad, and divorce is so expensive, couples are staying together? It seems that divorces have moved into the luxury category, along with gas-guzzling cars, soy lattes at Starbucks, and big homes. Fine for those who can afford it.

That's what an article in the Newark Star-Ledger says, with statistics to prove it.

The number of couples signing on with mediators has fallen 21 percent in one year, according to Keila M. Gilbert, president of the Alpha Resource Center, a nonprofit divorce mediation network based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Part of the reason, she thinks, is housing prices. If the home is a couple's only real asset, and it can't be sold, or it would be sold at a loss, that makes it very difficult to resolve a divorce.

Moreover, with some husbands and wives losing their jobs, or not being able to find work at their previous level, it becomes clear that it's a bad time to split up: all expenses will be higher for two separate households, starting with health insurance and ending with cable TV.

For couples who are barely making it now, divorce becomes a near impossibility.

A divorce mediator in Metuchin, New Jersey, Michael Grodjeski, said: "They end up getting stuck living together. It's not easy, but don't forget, couples who come to mediation tend to be more amicable about their divorce. They can continue to live together, not happily maybe, but they are trying to make the best of things."

Of course, for some women, divorce isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. It may mean renting their home out and keeping it in both names until the market improves, or it may mean biting the bullet and making a break. Even reduced circumstances are better than living in an unhappy home.

Women who complain about the high price of divorce should consider the price some women pay to get out of an unhappy marriage. Chudhry Rashid, the Pakistani owner of a pizza parlor near Atlanta, has been charged with killing his 25-year-old daughter because she wanted to end her arranged marriage.

Sandeela Kanwal had been living apart from her husband in Chicago for several months, and living in her parents' home in Georgia. She had not spoken to her father for two months because of their disagreement about her leaving her husband.

Their conflict came to an end early Sunday morning in her upstairs bedroom.

Rashid was arrested on suspicion he strangled his daughter with a Bungee cord. When he was arraigned, on July 7, he told the judge, through a translator, "I have done nothing wrong."

Honor killings involve both men and women, but women are killed for disgracing the family by being seen in public with a young man who is not a relative, marrying outside their religion or culture, or asking for a divorce.

In the United Kingdom, home to thousands of Pakistani, there is a dedicated unit meant to protect young women from unwanted arranged marriages. The Forced Marriage Unit handles about 400 cases a year in Great Britain. Some young women are forced into marriage in England, some are sent abroad for an arranged marriage.

It's enlightening to remember that England outlawed slavery 60 years before the United States freed its slave. And forced marriage is slavery by another name.

She Is! She Isn’t! She is? She is! It seems that Madonna is getting divorced after all, or at least she has seen a highly placed divorce lawyer in London. Her press person keeps repeating that Madonna and her husband, the movie director Guy Ritchie, are not getting divorced.

Could this all be a publicity stunt to promote his new movie and her European tour?  

Madonna has a 13-show European tour “Sticky and Sweet” starting in Cardiff in August, and is planning her 50th birthday bash on August 16. Richie will turn 40 in September, and has a new film, “RocknRolla” opening in September in London, and in October in America. His film has nothing to do with Rock ‘n’ Roll and everything to do with Russian gangsters in London.

The whole thing has certainly brought enough attention to the two of them. (Like, did you know he had a movie coming out before this?) People magazine online has been having a field day reporting day-by-day updates. On Tuesday night, for instance, they breathlessly reported that the couple was holding hands after having dinner together in New York. Perez Hilton, meanwhile, is bragging that he predicted they would make a very public dinner date. And that this is a well thought out ploy. And then there are rumors elsewhere that Madonna is seeing A Rod.

If there is a divorce filed, dividing up the marital property will be intense. There is no prenuptial agreement, but the assumption is that Ritchie won’t try to drain her of her millions, or try to take away her newly acquired British accent.

Wonder how you’ll collect child support? Some states like Mississippi throw deadbeat dads in jail. In Ohio they put delinquent dad’s mug shots on pizza boxes. And California will pull a deadbeat doctor’s medical license. You’d think that would kind of get his attention, but it happened twice to the Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who operated on Kanye West’s mother, Dr. January (Jan) Adams, most recently on Wednesday night.

The California Department of Consumer Affairs, which oversees the California Medical Board, wrote to Adams on May 21 informing him that he had to pay back child support or alimony by midnight on June 25. The Associated Press reported that he had been working under a temporary 150-day license, part of a debtor’s program run by the Department of Consumer Affairs, which issues temporary licenses until deadbeats pay up.

On June 26, the Medical Board announced in the matter of Dr. Adams that, “as of midnight last night, he is not allowed to practice medicine in California.” His license had previously been suspended for three months in 2006, for the same problem.

Turns out, that’s not his only problem. The Medical Board was already investigating whether or not to suspend his license because of two arrests for drunk driving. (You’d think that would be enough, wouldn’t you?) A few hours after his medical license was suspended he was arrested about an hour from Oakland by California Highway Patrol for driving his gray Jaguar up an off ramp on Interstate 680. He flunked the sobriety test. Oh yeah, and he was driving with a suspended license.

His website lists him as “a physician, author, lecturer, television personality, and entrepreneur,” and says he graduated from Harvard and has created some top cosmetic products. Maybe, but he also apparently doesn’t pay court ordered child support or alimony.

It was, as The Chicago Sun Times said, “A funny man and an ugly divorce.” And now it’s also been a fast divorce, after 10 years of marriage and four sons. Barely a month after Jennifer Butler Murray filed for divorce in South Carolina, with scathing accusations about Bill Murray's involvement in drugs, violence, and adultery, her divorce is final. She moved out of Murray’s home with their children in 2006, she said, and into a home in Sullivans Island, South Carolina, because of Murray’s “adultery, addiction to marijuana and alcohol, abusive behavior, physical abuse, sexual addictions, and frequent abandonment."

Jennifer Murray said her husband traveled frequently outside the US without her, ''where he engages in public and private altercations and sexual liaisons.'' And she claimed that in November at the Sullivan Island home, Murray ''hit her in the face and then told her she was 'lucky he didn't kill her.' ''

The complaint noted that this was not the first time Murray had abused her. Her attorney, based in Charleston, was Robert Rosen.

Murray is famous in film circles for not having a publicist, a manager or an entourage. But he certainly needed a lawyer, and he hired one, John McDougall of Columbia, SC. According to the Charleston newspapers, McDougall responded to the divorce filling by saying that Murray “was deeply saddened by the breakup of his marriage. He and his wife made loving parents, and they are committed to the best interests of their children.''

Jennifer Butler Murray and William (Bill) Murray signed a 23-page prenuptial agreement in 1997 in which they waived all rights to alimony or support in the event of a breakup. But Murray did agree to pay his wife $7 million within 60 days of a final divorce decree.

"Bad mother!" "Adulterer!" Those are likely to be the arguments when, and if, Christie Brinkley’s divorce action against Peter Cook, her fourth husband, hits the Suffolk County courts on July 2. It all started two years ago when Brinkley had already asked for a separation from Cook, and The New York Post tattled that Cook, a prominent architect in the Hamptons, had had an affair with an 18 year old in his office, Diana Bianchi.

Cook, it should be noted, was 47 at the time. Brinkley was a fine looking 52, but she was humiliated by the talk of a teenage Lolita, and abruptly fled to the West Coast with their two minor children. Public opinion was solidly in her favor.

Brinkley and Cook reached an agreement in January for temporary custody of Jack, 13, whom Cook legally adopted from Brinkley’s third marriage, and their daughter Sailor, 9. (Brinkley also famously has a 22-year-old daughter, Alexa, with Billy Joel.) The July 2 trial therefore is shaping up to be a battle over the division of assets, including houses and boats, despite the prenup Cook signed when they were married.

Gearing up for the championship match, Brinkley has successfully petitioned the judge to hear testimony in open court, and has threatened to reveal embarrassing things (porn, skirt-chasing, swinging, swapping) about her soon to be ex-husband. Cook’s lawyers, and the children's law guardian, have claimed that Brinkley ("Bad mother") is permanently damaging the children by dragging all of this into court.

It’s Divorce 101: One side argues the facts, the other side argues that the messenger should be shot.

So far, Brinkley seems to have the most to gain. And Brinkley may be willing to put up with charges that she is a bad mother just so she can humiliate her husband in court.

Let's see. You're working fulltime. You begin every day by turning on the Mr. Coffee, waking the kids, doing a load of laundry, making breakfast, packing lunches, sending the two of them off to the school bus. You drive to work with a thermos at hand. You barely have time for lunch, so you drink a diet soda and eat some crackers, because you need to leave on time to shop for groceries, then pick up the kids from afterschool. You rush home at night, make supper, supervise homework, do baths, tuck them in, read bedtime stories. Then you pay bills, answer emails, mop the kitchen floor, feed the dog, do another load of laundry, try to read a book, and collapse. And throughout the day youíve had six cups of coffee, two diet Cokes, and late in the afternoon a bottle of Go Girl energy drink.