There are a lot of good reasons to break up a marriage.  Violence, affairs, any number of good reasons can be cited on divorce papers or annulling procedures.  However, a bad excuse is virtual betrayal.  We’re not talking about Facebook affairs or Second Life orgies or tangible affairs in the virtual world, we’re talking about mentally pondering affairs.  The highest court in Italy, the Court of Cassation, has annulled a marriage over a wife’s “virtual betrayal” or what most people would call dirty thoughts.

To be clear, the wife had never cheated, only thought about cheating.  However, that was enough.  The court broke up the marriage and furthermore, denied the wife alimony payments (since she was the partner at fault) because she was considering affairs that she never had (and never apparently planned on having).  Those Italians have gone divorce-crazy!

“I find it shocking and very perplexing that the court should rule on what is a virtual betrayal when real betrayals frequently go unpunished,” said Gian Ettore Gassani, the leader of Italy’s association of matrimonial lawyers.  I guess, as Charlie the salesman says in Barton Fink, “Look upon me!  I’ll show you the life of the mind!”

Tags: virtual betrayal, Rome, Italy, Court of Cassation, woman’s thoughts of affair break up marriage, unusual annulments, marriage annulled for impure thoughts, Gian Ettore Gassani, unusual marriage laws, divorces, marriage break-ups

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that followed, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and NOLA.com did a wonderful job in updating the outside world about the conditions in their city, and have further kept going in bringing the city back together in the wake of the hurricane.  Unfortunately, this is a “what have [...]

Hewlett-Packard is one of the world’s largest companies, and as such, they are not immune to mistakes.  Given their current revolving door at CEO, it’s no wonder the company has been making some bad decisions.  Paying too much money for Palm, killing the TouchPad, and generally just making mistakes left and right due to not [...]

Facebook’s IPO has been an incredible windfall for its founders, and a huge flop for investors.  Since the massive IPO late last week, the stock price has collapsed.  There are concerns over ad sales, revenues in general, and now, there are allegations of insider trading after people have alleged that Morgan Stanley warned favored investors [...]

Solar eclipses are very rare, but they probably should be used as an excuse for a car accident.  Then again, if you saw the sun disappearing, you might freak out a little bit.  A 26-year-old San Bernadino, California, woman blames the recent solar eclipse on a car accident in which she hit a woman and [...]

The Orlando Magic really want to keep Dwight Howard after this season.  Dwight Howard, slam dunk champion,  is one of the best centers in the NBA and that’s a hard thing to come by these days.  Orlando knows they have to do something big to convince Howard to resign with their team, and they’ve done [...]

It was as dramatic as the closing sequence of any James Bond movie.  The clock was counting down–5, 4, 3, 2, 1–and at the last second, everything ground to a halt.  It wasn’t some evil plot that was stopped, but a good plot.  Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, a pioneer in commercial space flight, was scheduled [...]

At one point, the toning shoe was a fad that you could not get away from.  It was a basic sneaker with an odd-shaped sole that was supposedly designed to help the wearer burn more calories and tone up while doing essentially nothing to add to their fitness level.  As it turns out, just walking [...]