Spouses

? A Michigan man who says he learned of his wife's infidelity by reading her e-mail faces felony charges of computer misuse. Prosecutors, relying on a Michigan statute typically used to prosecute crimes such as identity theft or stealing trade secrets, have charged Leon Walker, 33, with a felony after he logged onto a laptop in the home he shared with his wife, Clara Walker. If convicted in the trial that begins Feb. 7, he could be sentenced to five years in prison. Using her password, he accessed his wife's Gmail account and learned she was having an affair.

Until a few years ago, the architects who won the commission to design Eli Broad's downtown Los Angeles museum were known for anything but the standard practice of architecture. Elizabeth Diller and Rick Scofidio, who are married, were more interested in being artists than architects, in running a small practice out of their Lower East Side loft ? even allowing the FedEx man to use their bathroom. They collaborated on theater performances, media shows and museum installations, and, for a long time, were best known for a banana-shaped house that was never built and a temporary pavilion on a Swiss lake that spewed fog. They once set up 2,400 orange traffic cones for 24 hours in Manhattan's Columbus Circle to understand driving patterns.

It's easy to tell 1st Sgt. Patrick Olechny is away. The freezer is stocked with single-serving dinners. The TV is off and, at nearly 8 p.m., the living room is dark. Olechny is at war in Afghanistan, on his fourth tour of combat duty. His wife, Veda, is waiting for his return ? in time for Thanksgiving, she prays each night. War sets the rhythm for military families like theirs: Home by 9, in case he beeps on Skype. Cellphone charged, in case he calls. No point buying pot roast; she can't finish it herself.

Americans often tout the great freedoms that U.S. citizenship grants. But lately I have a hard time seeing it that way. Instead, I find myself toying with renouncing my citizenship. When it comes to my ability to spend my life with the person I love, this country has turned its back on me. I am a dual national. I was born in the United States to an American mother and a Spanish father. I grew up in Spain, although my family frequently jetted across the ocean to maintain bonds with family and friends.

It's 2 a.m., and several hundred Marines are assembling their sea bags, weapons and other gear on the parade deck. Families huddle in small groups; many a Marine and his wife are sharing a last embrace. And 3-year-old Landon Molumby has figured out what's happening: His father, Staff Sgt. Loren Molumby, a combat photographer, is going away. The boy buries his head in his father's shoulder. Tears of confusion and exhaustion stream down his face. So it was early Monday as 250 Marines and sailors from Regimental Combat Team One gathered for the bus ride to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside and then the flight to Afghanistan.

Just after Wesley Bauguess' husband, Larry, an Army major, was killed in action in Pakistan in May 2007, she had to make immediate decisions, including what to do about her husband's survivor benefits. In shock and consumed by grief, Bauguess waded through confusing technical details before deciding to receive benefits in the names of her two daughters, then 6 and 4. Later, she discovered that her daughters have to file tax returns on the benefits — at a potential tax rate of 36%. They were snared by the "kiddie tax," a provision passed by Congress in 1986 to prevent wealthy parents from sheltering assets in their children's names.

When a family with a sports franchise undergoes divorce, one heart-rending question is: Who gets the team? That's the issue at stake between Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and his estranged wife, Jamie. McCourt, who fired his wife as chief executive last year, says she signed a document giving up claims to the ballclub (and allowing her to keep seven of the couple's residences). She says the document isn't binding. It may lead to the most dramatic ruling in this category since filmmaker Steven Spielberg, during divorce proceedings against actress Amy Irving, submitted a prenuptial agreement written on a cocktail napkin (the judge rejected the napkin and awarded Irving $100 million)

It's 2010, and women scorned have resources, outlets and marketing plans. Used to be that if you were a high-powered man, you were a target, but now the man is no longer the end; he's just the stepping stone to a multimedia career, mere collateral damage. Not that the women of "Basketball Wives" (VH1, 10 p.m. Sundays) haven't paid a steep price for their ascendant fame. Most of the show's main figures have been cheated on and watched their relationships disintegrate in highly visible fashion.

Five women sit at a dining room table in Camp Pendleton, talking about the dreadful task of saying goodbye to their husbands. Again. As you read this, their Marines, as they call them, are on the way to Afghanistan for seven months, maybe longer. Most of the Marines have already been to Iraq, and Holly Lavely's husband, Patrick, twice injured by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), is fit again and on his 10th deployment. "The second time he was hurt, I was sure that was it -- he was going to die," Lavely says.

It was those ungrateful Housewives of Atlanta who pushed Fawn Weaver over the edge. Not to mention those soulless Stepford Wives, and the Desperate Housewives on Wisteria Lane. You see, after seven years of marriage, Weaver is still deliriously in love. But all she sees "in the media," she said, are miserable wives with cheating husbands and failing marriages. "I thought, 'There must be other women out there like me,' " she said. So she launched the website www.happywivesclub.