Divorce

The minute Paula Bisacre decided to remarry after a divorce, she was overwhelmed with questions: What to wear for her second sashay down the aisle? What was the best way to include the former in-laws of her future husband, a widower? How do you manage a honeymoon with their combined brood of five kids? Where would they live? Would Buster, her 5-pound miniature Pinscher, and Hunter, his 100-pound golden retriever, ever become friends? Bisacre bought a bunch of wedding magazines, but quickly found they had little for her. "I wasn't looking for a long, white, poofy dress again," she said.

Mark Castillo of Rockville walked with his three young children Saturday afternoon through Baltimore's Inner Harbor, where tourists congregate along the city's waterfront promenade. About 5 p.m., he checked into the Marriott Hotel near Camden Yards and took his children into Room 1060, a top-floor room with two beds. An hour later, one by one, Castillo drowned his children in the bathtub, police said. When he was done, he laid their tiny, naked bodies on one bed: Anthony, 6, Austin, 4 and Athena, 2. Then he swallowed 100 Motrin pills and cut himself in the neck with a steak knife in an apparent suicide attempt, police said.

Lynn Shiner heard the news as she drifted off to sleep Sunday night, and when she awoke yesterday morning, she thought maybe she had dreamed it. A few taps on the keyboard, though, confirmed that the crime, however nightmarish, was no dream. Three children killed in a Baltimore hotel room, allegedly by their father, who had been engaged in a pitched custody battle with his estranged wife. "I see a judge denied her request," Shiner said, referring to a petition for a protective order that the children's mother, Amy Castillo, had filed against their father a couple of years ago after this threat: "He ... did tell me that the worst thing he could do to me would be to kill the children and not me so I could live without them."

Splitting from a spouse? It may be painful, but don't forget the long-term view. Getting your retirement nest egg through a divorce takes more time, patience and short-term cash than many people can muster during such a traumatic period. Often, this leaves them vulnerable to problems down the road, said financial planners who cater to divorcing couples. And when the split happens near retirement, it can be particularly painful. "A lot of people [at or near retirement] just stay in unhappy marriages because the economics are more than they can contemplate.

LONDON -- Mere minutes after declaring she was "just glad it's over," Heather Mills vowed she would be back in court again today in an attempt to seal the full text of the divorce judgment she won against former Beatle Paul McCartney. The $48.6 million divorce settlement reached yesterday nearly concludes a case so nasty even this city's salacious tabloids might be glad to see the end of it. Mills said she wants the judgment sealed to protect her 4-year-old daughter, Beatrice. "I won't go into the horrific details of what has happened," Mills said outside the High Court, as she proceeded through a 10-minute diatribe that lit into the judge (for allegedly undervaluing McCartney's assets)

Controversy surrounding the divorce case of the Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant - the flashy, influential pastor of the Empowerment Temple - will likely be addressed at the annual conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church next month. Bishop Adam J. Richardson Jr., who presides over the Second Episcopal District, which includes Maryland, said that although he was not aware of any formal complaints about Bryant's pending divorce and his wife's allegation of adultery, Richardson planned to broach the topic at the conference in Baltimore.

From the Should-Be-Obvious Department comes word that divorce is bad for the environment. It's not that Mother Nature gives a fig about marital status, or even gender, for that matter. But she's quite upset when households of two or more split up to become two or more households. For the sake of saving land, water, energy and other scarce resources, she wants people to live together. The contention that two can live as cheaply as one may overstate the case a bit. But from the standpoint of the ecology as well as the economy, two can live at least as cheaply as one and a half - sharing heating, air conditioning and lighting, as well as the refrigerator, the dishwasher, the television and other energy-consuming appliances.

If you thought divorce was bad for the kids, you should see what it does to the environment. A study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science found that the resource inefficiency of divorced households resulted in an extra 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity use in the U.S. in 2005 - about 7 percent of total home use. "Turning on the light uses the same energy whether there are two people or four people in the...

UNITY, Md. -- A 43-year-old flight attendant living in Howard County and her three young children were shot to death by her former husband on Thanksgiving at a small park where she had gone to turn the children over to him for a visit, police said yesterday. His body was found nearby, along with a rifle he apparently used to kill them and himself. Despite a bitter and protracted divorce granted earlier this year, Gail Louise Pumphrey, of Woodbine, drove her two boys, ages 6 and 12, and her 10-year-old daughter to a pre-arranged spot so they could spend part of the holiday with their father, David Peter Brockdorff, 40. Police believe Brockdorff, an electrician who lived in Frederick, shot his ex-wife and daughter in her Ford Taurus and his two boys in the stolen Nissan Altima he drove to the Unity Park.

After a three-year separation, Frank and Stephanie Ellis decided to formally end their marriage. The couple had worked out a shared custody agreement for their 6-year-old daughter during counseling, but there were some difficult financial issues to resolve that they hoped would not ruin the good will they had built. Instead of litigating their split in a traditional court proceeding, in which each side is represented by attorneys who are sworn adversaries, they turned to a growing but not universally welcomed strategy: "collaborative divorce."