Every state has its own laws against adultery. Each one is unique in its own way, but there are similarities between all of them. We aren’t necessarily talking about the good old days when you could be stoned to death, but more modern time laws. Below you will find some of the things that can happen if you find out your spouse is cheating on you. Some of them can make you think twice the next time you’re in that situation.
While you could travel to other countries and see the different laws against adultery they have, the United States is much more lenient. This is due in most part to laws that only exist in each state. For instance, the seriousness in Michigan is a whole lot stronger then what Maryland thinks. It’s an ongoing problem for something that Christians have been told to obey through the Ten Commandments for centuries.
Divorce
Everyone probably already knows that if your spouse has committed adultery, then it’s a free pass for you to get a divorce. Even though this sounds like an easy fix, you may want to contemplate the situation especially if you have kids involved. However, if you do decide to go through with it there are several steps you can take that will give you the most in return for going through the mental stress, anxiety, pain and suffering, as well as many other issues that stem from divorce.
Spousal Support
When it comes time to go over those laws in court, if you’re the innocent party then you can ask for spousal support. Arguments will revolve around the scrutiny you will go through by neighbors, family members, and the pain this can have on you. In many cases, this results in either large sums of money or monthly payments given to this person for their troubles. Sounds trivial, but if you are the one that learned about your spouse’s affair then you understand the pain.
Criminal Action
Depending on where you live, you won’t find too much criminal action against the person who committed adultery. This is due to the fact that “the damage is done” so to speak and it is an irreversible issue. However, there are states like Michigan that will offer up a life sentence if the adultery warrants such a judgment. Unfortunately, prosecutions of this crime have become so obsolete almost everywhere, people just figure the only laws against adultery is that you’ll get divorced.
The Silver Lining
At the end of the day, it’s hard to tell someone who is the victim of an adulterous spouse that everything will be okay. Until of course, they are in divorce mode where most of the laws that are upheld today come into play. We already talked about spousal support above, but there are many other laws for this that haven’t been discussed. In most part, it is due to the different state laws, but most of all, it’s because these are the common traits between them.
By: Ryan Singler
Laws Against Adultery
Law Enforcement Articles – Characteristics of a Good Interviewer
Interviewing is hard work, certainly harder than not making the effort. I have observed a multitude of good (and some great) interviewers and they share some common characteristics, as follows:
INQUISITIVE – Simply put, most good interviewers want to know what’s going on, have their suspicions raised easily and are nosy.
OBSERVANT – Successful interviewing means thinking on your feet, while observing your surroundings and constantly observing the subject being interviewed.
o Not a job for those people who go through life half-awake.
ENERGETIC - No one makes interviewers put forth the effort to get that confession, it’s something that comes from within.
o You either have the desire or you don’t.
ABILITY – Good interviewers can talk with people and put them at ease, while eliciting useful information.
o There’s a fine line here between being an officious “John (or Jane) Wayne” and a complete B.S. artist.
PROBLEM SOLVERS – Interviewers must look at the big picture to succeed in obtaining incriminating admissions from a suspect.
I once saw an investigator lose a rape confession because he wanted the suspect to first admit stealing the car that he used to commit the rape!
o The suspect was willing to admit doing the rape, but didn’t want to admit stealing the car.
o The investigator doggedly continued questioning the suspect about the car until the interview ended with no admissions at all.
o When I was asked to help with the interview, I just skipped the whole car issue and secured the rape confession.
o We later discovered that the suspect had been reluctant to admit stealing the car because it belonged to one of his family members.
Lesson: what’s most important to you, the interviewer, is not necessarily what’s most important to the interviewee.
PATIENT -Police often damage the memory retrieval process by:
o hurrying witnesses
o interrupting people when they are talking
o using inappropriate sequencing of questions
o stopping the statement process too soon.
The most common question I’m asked by students is this:
“Can anyone learn to be an effective interviewer or is it an in-born skill?”
Here’s an analogy which may help explain the answer. Think of interviewing like playing the piano. Some children are born with a gift for playing the piano. With diligent practice, they become master concert pianists. Others have very little natural ability, but are also diligent in their training. After years of practice they become adept at playing and become “practitioners” of the piano. The common denominator is: PRACTICE.
Without diligent practice, no one (irrespective of natural ability) will ever play the piano. Interviewing is like playing the piano in that there are some people who are natural communicators and some who are not so blessed. However, if each person practices, both types will become effective interviewers. A good interviewer should understand basic human behavior, should be intelligent, friendly, patient and persistent.
Remember: Good officers do not necessarily make good interviewers.
By: Chip Morgan
Mother In Law Abuse – What You Can Do About It
Maya had the dream life. She had a career she loved. She married when she was mature enough to pick a partner for the right reasons. She had a partner, a son, a daughter and a lovely puppy. Add the picket fence and you could say she had it all. On the surface of course…
Beneath the surface she was struggling with the demise of a marriage due to the malicious interactions of a verbally and emotionally abusive mother in law who was going unstopped in the family. This women had such control over the men in her family, that she could say and do as she pleased, and no one would stop her from viscious behavior. Maya became the victim of emotional and verbal abuse, first from her mother in law, then her extended family members, and then ultimately from her husband. She was a highly educated women, so how could anything so serious be happening in her life?
The walls came crashing down upon Maya, when her mother in law crossed the line to not only verbally and emotionally abuse her, she repeatedly hurt her infant son too. The saddest thing about this situation, is that her mother in law “did not intentionally” verbally and emotionally abuse anyone. Even though she was the former manager of a pre-school, she did not consider that flying into a mad rage directed at Maya in front of her 2 month old son, would ultimately harm the baby.
When Maya tried to rationalize with her mother in law not to shout in front of the baby and even set a limit with her mad rages that were in hearing distance of her two month old son, she exploded into an enormous shouting attack of unbelievable proportions. Maya’s then 2 month old son, was quivering in her arms with fear. Maya had one gift as a mother, in that she had enormous mother’s intuition- and she knew my mother in law’s shouting verbally abusive comments at her had resulted in sheer terror and fear for her son- from his perspective, he had done something to cause such anger. An infant of this age does not have the capacity to handle hearing an abusive adult. As adults- parents or grandparents- we owe it to our children not to expose them to such emotional abuse.
Maya’s son suffered from the most intense “colic” at that time. He was crying in pain throughout the day, and no one else had the patience to sit with hours of screaming agony from him. Maya knew that her son was a very empathic, emotionally gifted child that was picking up the emotionally abusive nature of her mother in law, and it was manifesting itself physically as “colic”. Colic is an interesting term for “we don’t know what is going on, there are no physical problems, good luck, we could over medicate the baby with addictive drugs to make us all feel better.”
During this time, Maya’s husband refused to see the connection between Maya’s mother in law’s abusive behavior and the grandchild’s sickness. Maya had one advantage in that she was highly educated and could read like a demon when need be. So Maya read everything about the brain gut axis in the infant, and the link between exposure to emotional abuse and infant physical problems. Maya fortunately had the strength to walk away from the situation, with a two month old infant and two puppies, and take back her life even when her family was not being protected by her husband.
Interestingly, after Maya’s son was removed from Maya’s mother in law’s house, all the extreme physical symptoms Maya’s son had disappeared. And yet to this day, although Maya’s husband and Maya have worked on staying married and communicating through the struggle, as a victim of infant abuse himself, the husband is very unwilling to ever see his mother with the lense of reality. It’s a sick situation.
However, it’s important for women with abusive mother in laws to know you are not alone. You sometimes have to be the strong one to protect your family. In Maya’s case, Maya’s mother in law had a pattern of abusively force feeding babies. She force fed Maya’s husband as an infant with a spoon, by holding her thighs over his torso as he screamed and cried in protest. This lady actually tried to force feed Maya’s son in her home while Maya was on a business call. Fortunately, Maya was present and able to intervene. The lady never took responsibility for her abusive behavior with Maya’s son. And interestingly, the entire family, Maya’s father-in-law and husband tried to emotionally and verbally attack Maya in defense of this sick behavior. However, over time with compassion, I understand a family with a narcissistic and abusive mother without self awareness, learns to cover up what really happens. They try to make the person who stands up against abuse as the crazy one.
After experiencing from Maya how bad abuse can get from an intimate family member, I have committed my life’s work to spiritually healing abuse survivors, so you become the mothers, lovers, and the professionals you deserve to be. I will be publishing a series of articles called, “You’re the First”, that will be about how women and men have turned around difficult situations, and become highly successful in their own right. Believe in yourself, you can get anything you dream of…
By: Neera Puri