Author: Thomas G. Papps

Page Count: 208

Published Date: June 2012

ISBN: 978-0-9848162-1-7

Format: Trade Paperback

Price: $16.95

Why Marriages and Relationships Fail and How to Ensure That Yours Doesn’t

Cover

Thomas G. Papps is an attorney who argued cases before the United States Supreme Court (U.S. v. Jimmy Johnson) and argued cases that have become the law of the land (”failure of informed consent” from Grey v. Grunnagle). The toughest battles he fought in the courtroom, though, have been his divorce cases.

In The 8 Reasons for Divorce, Mr. Papps will share with you his findings as to the true causes for divorce after analyzing almost 2,000 divorce cases in which he was an attorney. Within its pages you will discover…

• what marriage really is;
• how kissing can ruin—or save—a marriage;
• how effective marriage counsellors really are;
• the effect of clergy, friends, and family on your marriage;
• the significance of age differences;
• how children can affect a marriage;
• what it takes to have a successful marriage;
• the single most important thing you can do to ensure that your marriage will succeed.

Finally, you will find two important tests that were developed based on the data from Mr. Papps’s cases: The Pre-Marriage Test (“Should you get married?”) and the Marriage Test (“Will your marriage last?”). These tests have been shown to be accurate in predicting the health of a relationship and the chances for it’s success—or divorce.

Synopsis

Several years ago, after completing a divorce case and having handed my client her final papers, I felt that I should give her a bit of advice. She was quite young.

First I told her to keep the final papers in a safe place and that she may need them in the event of a future marriage.

Inasmuch as my client was a mother of four very young children and the divorce had been somewhat bitter for her, I added the advice that even though she had divorced her husband, the children had not been divorced from their father and still needed him. I further recommended that she put aside her anger towards her unfaithful husband when it came to the interest of the children.

She thanked me and added: “You’ve handled so many divorces, you must know so much about marriage.” I had no idea then, that this would turn into a book.

Later at my office, I reflected on her comment. It was absolutely illogical and untrue. I knew a great deal about divorces but absolutely nothing about marriage. In fact, after handling more than one thousand domestic relations files as an attorney, and after having taken the college courses and seminars on domestic relations problems and even after having counseled hundreds of couples before and after divorce, it was obvious to me that I had no substantive understanding of marriage.

In fact, it became patently clear that all my work as an attorney and the work of thousands of other attorneys in the United States are only the mechanics of the destruction of marriage; and that the entire legal profession has not addressed itself to an in-depth treatment of marriage; what it is; and what causes it to fail.

Having established my ignorance of the subject, I attempted to evaluate the current literature and case treatments on the subject. I looked through psychiatric journals, psychological writings, and marriage counseling treatises.

My startling conclusion? It appears that no one in a professional capacity, in the United States, understands anything about marriage and especially the court system. Furthermore there is absolutely no literature that one can find that will define what one’s problems are, or,  what one can do to correct defects that are existing in one’s marriage.

The answers that one can find are pitiful. Gross guessing by bearded professors. Speculations by supposed noted psychologists and psychiatrists. Pontifications by totally ignorant counselors. One can do as well by watching day time television which is where I suspect these professionals get their information.

Therefore, in this book, I have attempted to treat the subject of marriage and devise a workable explanation of its decay or its success based on the conclusions reached in my handling of over one thousand domestic relations files.

Read a Sample from The 8 Reasons for Divorce

Advance Praise

Who better to chronicle the reasons why roughly 50% of married people get divorced than a divorce attorney? In “The 8 Reasons for Divorce” Attorney Thomas Papps gives a revealing glimpse of the reasons so many marriages fail and he even offers a simple, easy-to-take test of his own creation to see if yours may be heading for the courthouse. The anonymous case studies are fascinating, tragic, blackly funny and even bizarre all at the same time and he makes no bones about drawing his conclusion that the demands, temptations and distractions of our fast paced, culturally diverse society plus our own selfishness have made keeping our marriages whole and integrated into our own “family tribe” almost impossible — and the “family tribe” is what supported and held marriages together in the past.

Readers that are still married might wince and get a little nervous reading how other couples that share the same unresolved issues they live with wound up divorced but maybe what they’ll learn from the book can help minimize the damage or even avoid a divorce altogether… Maybe. Everyone will get something different out of this interesting book. Nervous parents will want their kid to take the pre-marriage test before they set a wedding date and the recently divorced who still haven’t figured out what hit them may take some comfort in knowing they weren’t alone in their heartache and frustration. Mr. Papps makes what could have been a dry and boring data mining exercise interesting and gives the reader an often times funny glimpse behind the curtain of the “divorce business,” something it could really use and I know this because I’m in it too.

—Kevin J. Grover
Rhode Island Divorce Mediation Center
Cranston, RI

A work of brilliant research and insight, The 8 Reasons for Divorce has the potential to save marriages.

—John Curtis, Ph.D.
Author of The Business of Love