This was something that former View host Debbie Matenopoulos didn’t want to see. On Internet sites, there were rumors that her husband was cheating. Now to her shock and dismay, her husband, the music executive Jay Faires, has surprised her by filing divorce papers in California.

"I am deeply saddened by the dissolution of my seven-year relationship with my husband, a man I truly believed I would be with forever," Matenopoulos said in a statement to E! News, where she now works. “Although my public persona may seem unconventional at times, I do not take marriage and family lightly, and I am quite traditional.”

Faires filed for divorce in Los Angeles Superior Court citing the usual — irreconcilable differences. He also said that, since the couple does not have any children and she is gainfully employed, he should not have to provide any spousal support.

It appears, he wasn’t supporting the relationship for some time. The couple, who married in July of 2003, did separate in March of this year. But like many women, Matenopoulos thought they were going through a rough patch and that maybe a separation would give them time to appreciate what they had.

But perhaps she should have read How To Tell If Your Man Is Cheating. Although she may have known that less than 5 percent of couples who separate ever get back together, hope is something all of us have when it comes to reviving troubled relationships.

Before it is truly over, women try really hard and are willing to forgive many sins in an effort to keep their marriages afloat. However, the boat has now left the dock and Matenopoulos will sail on solo, seeking a safe harbor with someone who will appreciate her, which is just what she deserves.

“I’ve been trying to sell this house for two years,” Chris Wealty said. He dropped the price from $850,000 to $599,000; still no interest. The house sits empty, once home to a married couple. They are trying to divorce, but settling the financial terms depends on selling this house in College Park, a neighborhood north of Orlando, Florida.

So he decided to advertise. On a large (and not very attractive) sign in the front yard, he wrote “3,400 sqft Lake View House: $599,000. Helping me get divorced: $ priceless $. 407 592 4964 (Husband)”

As he told the Orlando television station WESH, he and his wife had been married for 17 years, and had been in negotiations for several years over a divorce settlement. The house is in one of the nicer areas, former orange groves surrounded by lakes near the well-known Winter Park. It is not far from the modest bungalow where Jack Kerouac wrote Dharma Bums, a home that is now a writer’s colony.

But a nice four-bedroom, three bath house, a pretty view, a good neighborhood have not been enough. Housing prices in Orlando, which went up 34 percent from 2004 to 2005, have now dropped by 20 percent. One leading real estate expert, Robert Schiller, says Orlando prices will drop another 30 percent this year.

Thus Wealty’s desperation. If he doesn’t sell the house soon, he said, he faces foreclosure. One of his neighbors opined that putting up a sign airing dirty laundry was kind of “white trashy,” so the experiment hasn’t endeared him to the community. But his life, and his wife’s life, have moved on.

When asked what his soon-to-be-ex wife thought of the sign, Wealthy answered: “Well, to tell you the truth, I'm not real sure. We don't talk much these days except through lawyers.”

No kidding.

Does your spouse chew too loudly? Maybe he can't beat his smoking habit. Or perhaps he's garnered a bit too much attention from the ladies? According to The Times of India, these minor annoyances have morphed into major grounds for divorce. If you follow our Relevant News coverage, you may have noticed a trend. Some of the most unusual divorce stories come from one country: India.

Taking a cue from Western culture (unfortunately, that would be us), Indian couples have increasingly rushed to the courthouse should a facet of the beloved's bother them. Of course, these are just a handful of cases of the already low 1.1% divorce rate for the country.

Couples have supplied a plethora of off-the-wall reasons to split. We recently wrote about the man who filed because his wife's acne was "traumatic" and he could not share a home with her. A few weeks back, a homemaker gambled in the temperamental stock market and her husband wasn't willing to shoulder the financial loss with her. Just a few months ago, a frustrated husband drew up divorce paperwork should his wife light up one more cigarette.

This story involves an old dog, and one new trick.

On Monday, a court in Naples was supposed to hear a plea for the dissolution of a marriage of 19 years. The husband had been a widower when they met. He hired the woman to pick potatoes on his farm. What could be more romantic?

They married, even though he was 30 years older, and worked together, earning enough money to build a deluxe hotel in Barano d’Ischia, a popular mountain town above Maronti Beach. Barano, population 10,000, is on the island of Ischia, just outside the Bay of Naples. That hotel was so successful they eventually had a small chain of hotels.

For the last week or so, leading up to the court hearing, the case has been the talk of Barano.

Why?

Because the man asking for a divorce is 91 years old. And although the wife, 60, agreed to give him a divorce, she was unhappy about her settlement, saying that she wouldn’t have enough to eat, and that she had been evicted from their home. In explaining why she deserved more of his social security money, as well as the house, she countersued, saying that he had a lover. (“Hai un’amante.”)

That’s when things got nasty. He counter-complained: She was the one who had taken a lover.

The case was due in court on Monday, but the 91 year old sent in a note saying he was sick. So the court adjourned the case until March.

That was certainly not going to stop Italian newspapers, blogs, and television stations from mulling over the meaning of the case. One TV crew went to Barano to get some local reactions. I don’t speak Italian, but it’s worth watching the video just to see the man at the end. His gestures can only mean, “I just hope I can do that when I’m 91.”

A 50 year longitudinal study of 17,000 people in Great Britain, the National Child Development Study, has concluded once again that children of divorce are more likely to struggle academically and have emotional problems, are usually less well educated, and are more likely to divorce themselves.

But as Tolstoy said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And unhappy families, whether they divorce or not, have unhappy children.

Consider what life was like in one Italian family that is now facing divorce.

The mother and father face five years in prison for completely refusing to consider the effects of their incessant arguing on their 12 year old son as they pursued a divorce. Italian privacy laws have withheld the names of the parents, but not their behavior. Prosecutors in Milan have asked the judge, Cesare Tacconi, to charge the mother and father with mistreating a minor.

The child, prosecutors say, had a "syndrome of anxiety and depression" that prevented him from concentrating in school. When a court-appointed health worker visited the home, the report said the son seemed “disturbed,” had fallen behind in school, and believed, with some evidence, that his parents hated each other.

The prosecutors said, "Each blamed the other for shortcoming and educational errors in bringing up the child."

The parents, the report said, used the child as a psychological punching bag in their battle. It is the first such charge in a European court. Judge Tacconi will decide in December whether or not the case should go to trial.

No word on whether mom and dad have managed to get a divorce yet.

The British comic John Cleese has felt, three times, that it was time for something completely different in his personal life. He is divorcing wife No. 3, the psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger Cleese, after 15 years of marriage. In a recent interview with The Times of London, he had some bitter things to say about divorce, and some funny things to say about marriage.

This marriage was his longest. His marriage to Connie Booth lasted from 1968 to 1978, and the one to Barbara Trentham lasted from 1981 to 1990; both included a daughter.

That is Gripe No. 1 in this divorce. “I'm paying more than £1 million a year right now,” he told the newspaper. That’s $1.6 million at today’s exchange rate. He said, “And we never had children.”

He has also given her $10 million in marital property, which is presumed to include their $1.5 million apartment in New York. But he would hardly be left homeless. Cleese has four homes in California, three in London and a villa in Jamaica.

He has said that if the weather in California could be dragged to London, he would never leave London. But, alas, London is dreary so he spends much of his time in California, or Jamaica.

Gripe No. 2: He is 68, and he’s going to have to keep working to pay spousal support. But keep in mind, work for him is doing voice-overs for animated films, playing Chief Inspector Dreyfus in "Pink Panther 2", due out next year, and doing other films; making various television shows, and appearing in comic but inspirational business training videos.

Jo Wood, the soon to be ex-wife of The Rolling Stones rocker Ronnie Wood, gave it her all to try and reconcile, but to no avail. However, her husband is planning on being very generous in honoring their 23-year marriage.

Wood, who has moved on and hooked up with 20-year-old Ekaterina “Katia” Ivanova, is reportedly offering Jo a multi-million dollar sum as well as almost $5 million a year. When the affair was first reported, speculation was that Jo could get as much as $81 million of Ron Wood's $114 million fortune.

A source close to Wood told a British tabloid that "Ronnie feels the marriage is over but he wants to do the right thing by Jo — even though they have not talked for months."

Although Wood hired Joyce Smyth, the same attorney that his bandmate Sir Mick Jagger used to divorce Jerry Hall, he has instructed the barrister to work out an amicable deal for the good of the family.

Meanwhile, Jo (pictured) is showing that she is not wasting any more time pining for Ron. She has resolved to move on and find a new life and love.

As British tabloid News Of The World reported, Jo partied last week at an exclusive nightspot in London's Mayfair, with one onlooker saying: "She showed girls half her age how to have a good time."

But one also knows that there must be private moments where she needs to mourn the end of her marriage and find ways to fill the holes left by his absence.

Ron Wood has been romancing Katia since leaving rehab in September. Reports also say that he is planning to take her with him when he reunites with his band The Faces to go on tour next year.

Despite everyone’s assumptions, E! Network has renewed Denise Richards’ “It’s Complicated,” a reality show inspired by her contentious divorce from "Two-and-a-Half Men" star Charlie Sheen. As divorced women know, this life event can get complicated — but some break-ups have more drama than others.

And Richards divorce makes the title “It’s Complicated” perfectly apt.

Richards and Sheen have been battling in the tabloids since their break-up in 2006. Complicating matters, after she split from Sheen, Richards started going out with Richie Sambora, who was married to her friend Heather Locklear.

Richards told Larry King that she “did not break up the marriage” because Locklear had already filed for divorce. “Richie and I were friends and they were going through their divorce,” she said.

Her divorce alone provided plenty of material for the first season of her show. It averaged 1.1 million viewers a week, which is why E! has made a commitment for a second season.

Recently, Sheen unsuccessfully fought to prevent their two young girls, Sam and Lola, from being part of “It’s Complicated.” But Richards won that battle and claims she is not exploiting them.

“In making a decision to do a reality show, I needed to commit to that and I wanted it to be real,” she told King. “And the reality is I’m a single mom to two little girls. The show is not about my children. They aren’t featured in the show. They’re in it very little. We’re just doing every day life and it’s being filmed.”

The population of Costa Rica is 76 percent Catholic, and it has showed in its laws, which forced couples to stay married for three years before they could get a divorce. (Chris Kattan would have been sunk.) The country almost reached Sharia levels when it allowed men to remarry right after divorce, but forced women to wait 300 days, or have a pregnancy test.

Costa Rican law protects life “from the moment of conception,” and interprets this so strictly it will not even allow the “morning after” pill to be advertised there, since it prevents implantation in the womb.

A pregnant woman, it seemed, had to wait 10 months after divorce to make sure that one man’s children wasn’t going to be raised as another’s. Thus the ban for women on remarriage within 300 days of divorce.

All that changed earlier this year, when the 300-day waiting period for women was eliminated by the Sala Constitucional (Constitutional Court), making women and men equal.

Earlier this month the Constitutional Court ruled unanimously that the requirement to wait three years after marriage before filing for divorce “violated the rights of an individual” and “deprived a person of his or her liberty to rebuild their lives.”

From now on, a couple in Costa Rica can marry one day, realize their mistake, and divorce the next. It won’t be easy, of course. It’s never easy.

But it will be easier than miserably staying married while living apart.

Back in 1979, mothers almost always got custody; joint custody was so rare it was almost unheard of. But one Minneapolis husband and wife pushed the courts (it helped that the husband was a lawyer) to consider their wishes to share parenting. In an interview with the father and daughter 30 years later (the mother died of cancer in 1994) Minnesota Public Radio revealed how beneficial joint custody can be.

John Bujan and his wife, Nancy Stein, decided when their daughter was 4 that their marriage wasn’t working. Molly Brom, that daughter, now 36, remembers riding in the car with her parents when they told her they were separating.

Her first question: Would her father still come to her birthday party? He did.

They separated for a year, during which time Molly went to kindergarten and spent three nights a week at her father’s home and four nights at her mother’s. The parents felt the situation was working beautifully, and said that to the referee when they filed for divorce.

The referee, on the other hand, discouraged them. “Why do you want joint custody?,” he said. “These things just don't work out.”

In the 1970s, with the divorce rate hitting an all-time high, the conventional wisdom was that children of divorce would end up delinquents, or misfits who would never make a lasting connection to another person. But Molly’s parents fought for and won joint custody.

It was so revolutionary then that The Minneapolis Tribune ran a story about the family in 1979 with the headline “After Marriage Break-up, Children Can Still Live with Two Parents.” It seemed almost an answer to the bitter divorce portrayed in that year’s Kramer V. Kramer.