Palin son and wife file jointly for divorce

The eldest son of former Alaska governor and U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has filed for divorce from his wife of nearly two years. The couple reportedly filed for divorce jointly, and it appears that their split will be an amicable one.

Track Palin and Brittan Hanson were married in April 2011. Their daughter was born three months after their wedding. She is now one year old. Palin is an Army Reservist who previously spent one year deployed in Iraq. He currently works as a commercial fisherman and reportedly plans to return to college in the near future.

Palin and Hanson filed for divorce in Alaska, where they and their daughter still live. By filing jointly, they are signaling to the family court that they have already reached an agreement on all property, child custody and child support issues. The details of those agreements have not been made public.

The ability to reach an agreement on all (or at least some) of the potentially-contentious issues of a divorce can have many benefits. Not only will it save significant amounts of money and allow the divorce to be finalized more quickly, but it also permits couples to find resolutions to their issues that are tailored to the needs of each spouse, each child and the family as a whole. In general, if the agreement is reasonable, it will be signed by a judge.

One area in which this may not be possible is child support, where state laws are relatively firm on how much each child must receive and how much each parent will pay.

Source: New York Daily News, “Track Palin and wife, Britta Hanson, file jointly for divorce after one year of marriage,” Christine Roberts, Dec. 12, 2012