After a lengthy separation, New Kids on the Block star Donnie Wahlberg and his wife Kim Fey are set to divorce.

Fey, who has cited irreconcilable differences as the reason for the split, is seeking sole custody of the couple's two children, 15-year-old Xavier and seven-year-old Elijah, with visitation rights for Wahlberg.

A representative for Wahlberg told People Magazine: "The couple has been separated for some time now and remain friends."

Wahlberg and Fey, who separated last January, have been married since August 1999.

But some split-ups do reconcile.

While Wahlberg’s marriage is kaput, he reunited with his band. New Kids on the Block, which sold 70 million albums in its heyday and inspired such boy bands as 'N SYNC and Backstreet Boys, broke up in 1994.

They got together this year and released a new CD called “The Block" and are on tour internationally.

With so many distractions, it is unlikely Wahlberg will be singing the blues.

Michael Phelps proved that children of divorced parents can achieve swimmingly.

With his record 8 gold medals for the Beijing Olympics, the 23-year-old Phelps is considered the greatest Olympian in world history.

The tribute goes to his mom Debbie, a school administrator, who diligently drove him and his two sisters, Whitney and Hilary, to swim in their hometown of Baltimore. As a single mom, she also helped him through his ADD and proved to be a loving, supportive parent — and a smart one too.

Since Michael’s father Fred, a retired state trooper, was an invisible presence in their lives after the 1994 divorce, Debbie realized that swimming was a great release for her young son.

When he was 11, Michael Phelps bonded with swimming coach Bob Bowman, who became a surrogate father figure to the young boy. This often happens when a father figure is absent. A smart mother often tries to find another male figure, either in a relative such as an uncle, or perhaps a coach.

Only 9.2 percent of households are run solely by single moms and the challenges often result in higher high school drop-out rates and behavioral problems. However, with the right parenting, focus, and outlets, children are less impacted and can learn other lessons from the experience.

When asked about his father in interviews, Phelps has said that they occasionally “email” but shrugs his big shoulders when asked how it impacted him. He always refers to the love his mother Debbie gave him and his sisters.

But a philosophy of coping did emerge from this experience. Although a fierce competitor, Phelps is known to take the rare defeats in stride or even the pressure of constant competing. His famous saying is, “Whatever happens, happens.”

It is no surprise that a boy who didn’t have a father throwing baseballs, going to swim meets, or playing lacrosse with him had to find ways to make sense of this disappointment.

Hulk Hogan's wrestling days may be behind him, but as E! News so aptly stated, he can still avoid being pinned.

Judge George W. Greer of Florida released the pro wrestler from a commitment to purchase a $4.2 million Las Vegas condo, a property he agreed to buy with estranged wife Linda Bollea back in 2005.

The commitment on the condo, in a sinking Las Vegas real estate market, has been a sticking point in their ongoing legal dealings, with Bollea just last month seeking to get her ex held in contempt of court and jailed for failing to pony up his share of the condo’s purchase price.

Her Miami lawyer, A.J. Barranco, Jr., said that the condo would be a good investment, even if other condo values have gone down, because Linda Bollea believes that their properties sell at a premium.

And if they walk away from the condo, they stand to lose much of their $840,000 down payment.

For Bollea and Hogan, divorce has become a spectator sport, and an example of what not to do. Some observers believe that it will be more than a year before the divorce is final. The divorce was started in 2007.

“We are thrilled that the judge did not require us to continue to engage in the folly of purchasing a $4.2 million condo at a time when we should be considering other matters,” Hogan's attorney, David Houston, told E! News.

Houston added that, in addition to his client getting off the real estate hook, a stipulation outside of court allowed Hogan the right to reside in a beach house that had previously been awarded solely to Linda.

Perhaps this was the judge's way of penalizing Linda Bollea for wasting the court's time. But she also gained some traction too.

Phil Collins isn’t having Another Day in Paradise this week, because he will be paying his third wife, Swiss-born Orianne Cevey, around $47 million in their divorce case, the largest payout ever by a British entertainer.

But at least the 57-year-old singer-songwriter has had a Groovy Kind of Love in the past few years with WCBS-TV anchorwoman Dana Tyler, a divorced woman, 49, who at least is closer to his age.

The two met when Tyler interviewed him in 2005 and they realized there was something In the Air Tonight.

Cevey acknowledged in a later interview that the couple had grown apart in 2005, and were leading Separate Lives. “We really got on well and then we realized our interests were not the same anymore,” said Cevey, 35, who met the singer when she was 22.

But she says, he will always Be in My Heart since she is looking on the “positive side.”

He has agreed that That’s Just the Way It Is, and, frankly, I Don’t Care Anymore.

Collins will keep a home in near Lake Geneva, in Switzerland, near their two young sons, Nicolas, 8, and Matthew, 4, as well as a bachelor pad in New York and a home in England.

But this is shaping up to be a far more amicable divorce than his previous two. Maybe he has learned from experience.

To end his relationship with his second wife, Jill Taverman, after he met Orianne, Collins gave her the heave-ho via fax. Apparently he couldn’t wait One More Night.

(The fax maneuver was worthy of the Artful Dodger.)

However, he still was generous in his divorce settlement, which at the time was more than $34 million for a 14 year relationship. They had a daughter, Lily, together.

Collins also had an earlier marriage to Andrea Bertorelli, which ended in 1980, and produced two children, Simon, 28, and Joelyi, 33.

I would like to tell you that I was once married to Che Guevara, but that would be a lie. (Your first clue is that Che died in 1967, one week after my mother turned 11.)

Since the revolutionary with a modern-day cult following couldn't have me, he had to settle for Hilda Gadea, who has written "My Life With Che", a book chronicling her tumultuous marriage to — and subsequent divorce from — the rebel with a very real cause.

The book is being billed as the history that starts where “The Motorcycle Diaries” left off.

Gadea, who met Guevara in 1953 at the tail end of his motorcycle tour across Latin America, was not initially impressed. "He seemed superficial, egotistical and conceited." As they swooned over poetry and a mutual love of the Guatemalan government, though, she changed her tune and they got married in 1956, six months before their daughter Hildita was born.

It seems Gadea wasn’t the only one with doubts about the romance. A few days before their marriage, Che wrote in his diary, "For someone else it might be one of the great moments in their life, but for me the whole business is rather painful. I'm going to be a father, and in a few days I'm going to marry Hilda. For her, this decision was a dramatic one; for me it was hard. She's finally getting what she wants, though only for the time being as far as I'm concerned, even if she hopes it'll be for good."

Che was right, and when mother and baby Hildita joined him after an extended absence in January 1959, he greeted her with the news that he had met someone else and wanted a divorce. He married his second wife a few days after the ink was dry and was still married to her when he died eight years later.

You'll be happy to note that he still found the time to father another child out of wedlock a few years before his death.

Your mother was right. If he does it with you, he'll do it to you.

Married men are 7 percent more likely than married women to commit adultery. And when a man has an affair, he doesn’t seem to consider the consequences of his actions. So says a study to be published in the fall, “So What Did You Do Last Night? The Economics of Infidelity.”

Infidelity for women peaks at 45, the study found. For men, it peaks at age 55.

Gee, what 55-year-old confessed adulterer has been in the news this week?

John Edwards, who claimed a week ago that he at least had been “99 percent honest” in his statements about the young filmmaker Reille Hunter.

“… [A] wealthy, famous politician such as John Edwards is a man with plenty of opportunity, and it seems that he gave the costs of getting caught little consideration. [That] fits well with our findings,” Bruce Elmslie, an economics professor in the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire and a co-author of the study, told Firstwivesworld.

The study, co-written with Edinaldo Tebaldi, assistant professor of economics at Bryant University in Rhode Island, was based on data from the United States General Social Survey.

It is unusual in that it looks at infidelity from a cost-benefit analysis, rather than a sociological or psychological point of view.

Other points made in their study:

1. Men who are more likely to commit adultery:
• Live in cities (where there is greater opportunity to escape discovery)
• Do not have a college degree
• Do not belong to any particular socioeconomic group

2. What men do not take into account when having an affair:
• The economic status of the new woman, or her ability to bear children
• Their wife’s educational level
• Religion

"As with spousal education, men don't weigh the costs — spousal quality or eternal damnation — when deciding whether or not to have an affair," Elmslie said.

Women's rights activists are in an uproar in Malaysia this week after their national court upheld Muslim Sharia law and allowed a husband to divorce his wife by text message. We've discussed divorce by text message here before, and it's still just as disgraceful as it ever was. Unfortunately there's nothing new to report there except that another country is jumping on the bandwagon.

But — and there's always a but — when I read this article, one particular thing caught my eye. The reporter mentioned that under Sharia law, a man simply needs to announce that he wants to divorce his wife and whammo, they're done.

I knew this. I also knew that a woman seeking a divorce, no matter what the provocation, has an uphill battle of red-tape and gender discrimination ahead of her.

Until today, though, I didn't know how bad it was.

"If a woman wants a divorce, she must go before a court … and she must prove her husband has an inadequacy - usually impotency or extended absence." (Emphasis mine.)

Let's play a little imagination game here. Let's imagine that a woman has decided to divorce her husband, and let's imagine she's doing it because he's impotent. Now let's imagine that her husband is Muslim as well, and he knows that proving his impotence is one of only two ways she can get out of the bonds of holy matrimony.

Exactly how can a woman prove her husband's impotence in a court of law?

Do you think hubby's going to pack up the car and head down to his local urologist and say, "Hey doc, let's see how Captain Winky's doing!"? Do you think he's going to show the gentleman of the court so they can see for themselves?

This system is set up for women to fail. Way to go, Malaysia, for doing your part to repress the rights of women. Rock on.

Click here for more.

The gossip was right. A month ago, it was reported that Shaquille O’Neal and his supposedly estranged wife, Shaunie O’Neal, were back on the same team. They were spotted applying a full-court press on the beach in the Cayman Islands.

And now, nearly a year after filing for divorce, Shaunie O’Neal says they have changed their minds. Shaq’s divorce petition, filed in Miami in September, 2007, said their marriage was “irretrievably broken.”

Apparently, that was only a brief time out.

"Neither one of us could probably answer why we were getting one in the first place," Shaunie told AP.

and for the new web site Shaunie is launching, this marks the end to the sometimes hilarious charges, suspicions, and counter charges.While it’s good news for the institution of marriage, and for the four children they have together — Shareef, 7, Amirah, 5, Shaqir, 4, and Me'Arah, 1 —

Babies out of wedlock while they were married (him), an affair with a female trainer (her), stashing money (her), selling their Star Island mansion in Miami in November to A-Rod, and apparently telling him a thing or two about divorce (him), selling items on eBay (her), and a new contract with the Phoenix Suns (him).

There was a prenuptial agreement when they married in December, 2005. Shaq’s divorce petition gave her physical custody (considering his new home in Phoenix, and his traveling schedule, that’s only logical) and allowed him liberal visitation rights.

Now Shaunie says that they plan to blow the whistle on the divorce proceedings. "Things have been going so great, that someone actually had to remind us that 'Hey, you do remember those papers are still there.' Literally, it was days ago," Shaunie said.

"So, we've agreed that before we leave Florida in a few days we'll make sure that that's gone away."

Unless all this has just been one big free throw.