What is it about divorces that beguile us so? Do we see ourselves in their stories? Are we simply hungry for gossip?
Whatever it is that these stories do for us, we simply eat them up - and some are more delicious than others. Here are the top three celebrity divorce stories of all time:
Michael Jordan and Juanita Vanoy
Everyone knows Michael Jordan. He was super rich, internationally known, respected and honoured even beyond his field - heck, he was even good-looking. He seemed to have it all.
So when news came out that he and his wife were having a divorce, the story was huge. Here are some of the details:
' Jordan met Vanoy on a blind date.
' They were engaged after three years and got married two years later. At that time, Jordan was 26 years old and Vanoy was 30.
' A year and a half after the wedding, they signed a post-nuptial agreement.
' The couple had three kids.
' In 2002, the couple filed for an amicable divorce, citing irreconcilable differences as their reason. Vanoy got custody of their three children.
Under the terms of the divorce, Jordan was to pay Vanoy $168m in settlement. That did not yet include child support and alimony. Forbes magazine has declared the Jordan divorce to be the most expensive celebrity break-up back in April of 2007.
Harrison Ford and Melissa Mathison
Harrison Ford has played two of the most famous movie characters to date: Indiana Jones in the "Indiana Jones" series, and Hans Solo, from the epic "Star Wars" series.
We loved watching him so much, we could not help but watch too when he went through his divorce with "ET" screenwriter Melissa Mathison, whom he met in 1976 at the set of "Apocalypse Now".
Ford and Mathison were married for two decades, but the couple had already been living separately for four years before their divorce in 2004. At that time, Ford was already in a relationship with Calista Flockhart.
Ford had not signed a prenuptial agreement with Mathison, and in addition to dividing their shared assets, Ford also agreed to give Mathison her share of royalties from two of Ford's Indiana Jones films as well as his movie "Air Force One".
The final settlement with Mathison reached $118m.
Steven Spielberg and Amy Irving
If Indiana Jones, a.k.a. Harrison Ford, did not immediately get his happy ending, the director of his movie, Steven Spielberg, didn't either. In 1989, Spielberg and his then wife, Amy Irving, mutually decided to end their four-year-old marriage with an uncontested divorce.
Of course, the divorce got media mileage, not just because Irving was a known actress, who starred in the 1970s box office hit "Carrie", and Spielberg was the director of "Indiana Jones" and "ET"; another thing that piqued the public's interest was that Spielberg actually had a prenuptial agreement with Irving - but instead of having it drafted as an official contract, Spielberg had written it down on a napkin.
The judge threw out the contract, resulting in the third thing that made this divorce a huge attention-getter: Spielberg ended up having to pay Irving $100m. Of course, at that time, Spielberg was said to be worth more than $1b, so it wasn't totally devastating for him financially.
Unfortunately, not all of us are as financially comfortable and secure as Spielberg. For those of us who need to work two or three jobs just to keep our heads above water, divorce can be devastating, not just emotionally but, more so, financially.
At times like these, you can scrimp on a lot of things, but it's worthwhile getting debt management advice from a professional. It may not save our personal relationships, but - on second thought, for some of us, it may.
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