A religious zealot offered $250,000 to anyone who would kill me. My two babies were threatened with death. I was condemned by the president, the majority leaders of the House and Senate, the governor of Florida, the pope, and the right-wing media, all because I was doing what Terri - the woman I loved - wanted.

The married do exhibit better health than the unmarried but it is not the case that any marriage is better than no marriage at all when it comes to health benefits. The quality of relationships is also linked to health.

So, are you risking your health if you remain in a bad marriage? Not necessarily. After all, marriage is, overall, beneficial to people, helping them to live longer and more prosperous lives, etc. Instead of seeking a divorce, the study’s authors suggest that couples who are in bad marriages try to identify their difficulties and improve their relationships.

From my own personal experience in dealing with couples, I'm convinced that there is a direct relationship between both physical and mental health and someone's relationships, married or not. Even if marriage has benefits, it would be too broad an endorsement of marriage to suggest it is married people alone who are healthier.

In my experience it is the quality of the relationship which is important. Any couple in a positive relationship, married or not, can expect to be healthier.

Divorces are intensely personal and often contentious affairs. Spouses fight. Anger grows. Accusations are traded back and forth. It can be impossible to know with certainty what goes on inside a marriage, or what causes one to end (divorce agreements are confidential, and people loyal to ex-husbands and ex-wives invariably color events in the ways that reflect best on their family members and friends). But when two such well-known figures as Ron Perelman and Ellen Barkin divorce, the relationship inevitably becomes a matter of public discussion.

What is most interesting about this article to me, however, is the detail it provides into the pre nuptial agreement between Perelman and Ms. Barkin:

Perelman and Barkin's prenup was another issue. In the months leading up to the wedding, Barkin had told a friend, she and her lawyers had raised concerns about certain clauses of the agreement (a Perelman friend denies Barkin raised such concerns). Barkin signed the contract the day before the wedding. "I would never use the word naive with Ellen Barkin in the same line," one of her friends says. "But she really loved him. She had heard all the other stories about his other wives. She thought this one would be different somehow."

Surprisingly enough, this is an all-too-familiar situation and certainly not one in which only celebrities find themselves. Many couples these days sign pre nuptial agreements and for good reason: such agreements protect the assets each spouse has amassed; assets that otherwise might be combined into the marital estate after marriage. Under state laws that govern how marital estates can be divided in any number of situations, especially those excluding divorce, and that puts each spouse at risk of losing their personal property.

Now when someone who is extraordinarily rich, like Ron Perelman, marries someone who is only ordinarily rich (or not-at-all rich) like Miss Barkin, there is cause for concern. Pre-nups must be fair. They cannot leave one spouse in a financially worse position than they would have been had they not married the other person. Pre nuptial agreements must take into account that whatever financial gains the richer spouse realized during the course of the marriage must be shared with the other spouse. In this case, however, Miss Barkin did have the advice of attorneys - and went against their advice.

I'll leave it to the reader to digest the rest of the magazine article, but suffice it to say that essentially the same kind of problems that can occur in other relationships - jealously, unwillingness to compromise, etc. - soon arose in the Perelman-Barkin marriage; problems that eventually came to a head and led to their divorce. And while the problems experienced by billionaires and movie stars may not have precisely the same analogue to those we experience, but I think we can all relate to the essence of them.

As to the fairness of the pre-nup, described in the article, I will also let the reader decide. What's important to note, however, is that the couple did have a pre-nup, that it was negotiated by lawyers and that each spouse was obliged to abide by its terms once they had each freely decided to sign it.

That much is true of all pre-nups and of all spouses. The end result is that this article presents a good objective lesson in how these things work, both in the lives of celebrities and those of us who watch celebrities. It's a lesson we can all profit by.

A special grand jury - essentially a fourth branch of government - would be created to indict judges for a string of bizarre offenses that include "deliberate disregard of material facts," "judicial acts without jurisdiction," and "blocking of a lawful conclusion of a case," along with judicial failure to impanel a jury for infractions as minor as a dog-license violation. After three such "convictions," the judge would be fired and docked half of his or her retirement benefits for good measure.

If in fact judges around this country are increasingly inclined to recognize the validity of same-sex parenting arrangements, it's not because they are activists ... Courts that adopt broader visions of "parent" and "family" aren't reading radical new rights into their state constitutions. They are doing precisely what family courts are asked to do: Make a determination about what's in the "best interest of the child." That standard remains the polestar for judicial decision-making in both the adoption and custody contexts. And, as it turns out, most children usually have larger and more urgent concerns than what their parents do in bed.

Categorical rules rooted in sweeping moral judgments don't generally work in family law for the same reason they don't work for families: Kids love and need the parents they have, not necessarily the parents we love.

"If either the father or mother of an unmarried minor child is deceased, the court ... may grant the parents or other relatives of the deceased father or mother ... visitation rights ... if the court determines that [it] ... is in the best interest of the child."

The "unmarried parent statute" (R.C. 3109.12) says that if a child is born to an unmarried woman, her parents or relatives may request visitation - and so can the father's relatives, if he has acknowledged the child.

Applying the strict scrutiny standard, the majority of the Ohio court concluded that these statutes were narrowly written, applying only to relatives of the father and mother - and only in cases where a parent is dead or the child is born to an unmarried woman.

In neither case did the laws preclude giving "special weight" to the parent's wishes. So long as there is a showing that a lower court did that - and such were the facts in this case - then there is nothing wrong with a court overruling a parent's choice in the interest of the child.

Now, I certainly agree that parents have a fundamental right to raise their children as they see fit, and that courts should not interfere with their child-rearing decisions. But there must be exceptions. The government must be able to act if those parental decisions are not in the best interest of the child.

Of course, how the government determines those "best interests" is a serious subject. No government definition of "best interest" should override a parent's definition except in extreme circumstances. It is for that reason that courts have overruled parental decisions to withhold medical care for their children in favor of the parents' relgious or ethical beliefs.

While no physical harm would come to a child if he couldn't see his grandparents, the consequences are no less dire - and may well warrant a court's intercession. It is undeniable that in today's blended society, that grandparents are oftentimes a vital resource for children.

Our society has devalued that resource and in many instances our courts have codified that devaluation. I believe that grandparents' rights have been substantially undermined to the detriment of grandchildren who oftentimes have very loving, nurturing and parent-like relationships with grandparents.

This case seems to stand for a common sense approach that favors grandparents with substantial ties to their grandchildren and should be welcomed. The U.S. Supreme Court has, by standing silent on the Ohio court's ruling, greatly helped courts groping to determine childrens' interests in an increasingly complex culture.

"Michael has been a wonderful father to the children and I do not wish to share parenting responsibilities with Michael because he is doing so well without me ... I want to forever give my any and all rights pertaining to the children because I believe that by doing so, it is in the children's best interests."

Of course, it's highly unusual, not to say drastic, that any court would approve a unilateral, albeit voluntary, request from someone to give up their rights to their own children. It most states, the law assumes that children need both parents, so any termination of rights for one of the parents must be called for by extreme circumstances.

Nevertheless, the judge in the case approved Rowe's request - but then realized, apparently, that he had acted improperly by not first requiring an investigation to determine whether the request was in the children's best interest. The judge then voided his own order, prompting Jackson's appeal to the state's 2nd District Court of Appeal.

This past week, that court agreed with the original judge, saying:

"A court cannot enter a judgment terminating parental rights based solely upon the parties' stipulation that the child's mother or father relinquishes those rights."

"It was an arranged deal from the beginning. ... This was not mom and dad saying, 'Hey, let's have a family that we're going to raise.'"

I suppose it is commendable that Rowe reversed her decision and I am glad that the court has now, in effect, voided the whole "business transaction" between she and Jackson. Still, it gives me great pause that any person, celebrity or not, could use the system to promote their selfish desires to have children 'of their own.'

In this case, think of what the woman was doing to her own children by giving them up to Michael Jackson ... at least now, however, she is trying to correct a disasterous decision.

Let's just hope she's not too late.