Your mother's rights to her own property are not relevant to the Navratilova case, since her partner did not (so it would seem) have any part on the creation of the wealth. It's not her money.

Can't your mom prove equity in the house? In the absence of a marriage certificate, she must (I would assume) have her name on the deed of the house. Barring that (which would be staggering) she surely has tax records, receipts, credit card records, etc. that prove her contribution to the house, which could be defended in a court. Good-faith "napkin" agreements go pretty far -- look at Jerry Garcia and Mountain Girl; he literally wrote his very amicable support agreement to her on a napkin and was upheld despite the best efforts of his widow.

As for her possessions -- they're still her property, and she should immediately return and get them. Take the ex partner to small claims court if she has to.

What do you know, it turns out, being gay doesn't automatically make you a nice person. Surprise! This all seems about on par with behavior during any other "palimony" lawsuit, i.e. "this person was not my spouse, even though I spoke words of commitment to them, bla bla bla".

Martina is entitled to keep her money and her possessions -- she earned them. I guess I don't see why being someone's spouse or life partner entitles you to money and property you didn't earn, post break-up. The *one* exception to that would be if one spouse forgoes a career (and thus a personal savings account) based upon a mutually-understood agreement that the other spouse's income and retirement funds would provide for them both. But that is not the case in this suit.

Uh, did we really wink at "Murmurs of the Heart?" I was horrified by that, and the memory of that scene in the movie (I saw it what, 20 years ago?) still makes me shiver with disgust.

The title of the article doesn't mean that MJ offed himself yesterday, it points to the suicide of his celebrity -- the extremely long, slow, agonizing, tortured process by which a cute, affable singer named Michael Jackson killed himself and became "Michael Jackson" and then finally the inevitable.

Who *didn't* see this coming?

The child-molester thing I find kind of interesting, because I'm less convinced that he's an adult man who is into diddling little kids than an adult man *who actually thinks he is a little kid*. A few years ago I was watching part of an interview with him next to my roommate, and in the interview he was up in a tree, expressing incredulity that the reporter (Matt Lauer? Brian Williams? Someone) had no interest in getting up in to the tree also. I thought he was posturing, doing some pretentious "I'm so open and free etc. etc." bullshit, but then my roommate -- looking closely at MJ's face -- said "He's trying to turn into Peter Pan". He was right. He didn't look like a white woman, he looked like the Disney cartoon drawing of Peter Pan. Did he hang out with (and get naked with, apparently) kids because he actually thought he was one and genuinely didn't understand what the problem was? I couldn't say.

On the flip side, there was that whole Lisa Marie Presley thing.

I will say that "The Way You Make Me Feel" is a good tune, but even better when sung as a slow piano-jazz tune by a kid from New York:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng7tNJaUrnA

Well, I guess I'm sorry for regular folks who lost equity, but suddenly there's a condo in my own neighborhood (i.e. not in the squalor three blocks away) that has slid into the realm of affordability, so I'm actually pretty happy that prices are still dropping.

I'd love to have my own place, but there's no way I can afford anything more than like 800sqft (!!!), and I make a *very* comfortable salary. I can definitely forget about owning land, or even a house with a yard, and being a girl who grew up in a really rural area, that alone is hard to swallow.

That's just the way it is. It is nothing to do with you, the person you were then, or the person you are now. This has everything to do with the person she was then and the person she is now. You are not the same person you were so many years ago, either. Maybe she sees the more-seasoned you and occasionally wonders "why not with me?" about the person you have become.

I don't believe that people 'get over' big loves. I do believe in transcendence, but there will always be a little melancholy, even if you have moved on with your life. There can't not be, whenever feelings were that strong. That's totally OK, as long as you don't let it consume you or affect your life as it is now.

What is the magic age at which a woman can be entrusted to know her own mind? 25? 30? 35? 40?

Who is going to pay for the decade or so of birth control in the meantime? You?