Estranged spouses and girlfriends account for a lot of the calls, officials said, but regular citizens often phone in tips, too.

Was a passenger the victim of an insurance scam, an enemy or an estranged spouse?

Or a husband or wife in the middle of a nasty divorce may want to ward off the estranged spouse.

Mr. Siegel said he became involved child advocacy cases in the 1970's, working for parents whose children had been kidnapped by estranged spouses.

But it should be news based on fact, not conjured up disinformation designed to damage estranged spouses or commercial competitors,' he added.

Their relationship was essentially intellectual as neither were able to afford a divorce settlement from their estranged spouses.

Mr. Sasso said that the situation presents plenty of opportunities for an estranged spouse to drag out a painful process.

"Linda was the one we called first, before the lawyers," said Ms. Unger, whose friend promptly went to work for her estranged spouse.

Some want to avoid obscene and harassing calls, or the unwanted attention of estranged spouses and others who might pose a threat.

"Now we're looking into the life styles of spouses, estranged spouses, ex-spouses, bisexuals and drug users.

Lawyers for Shulamith Orvieto, the estranged spouse who brought the complaint, called such charges "absurd and baseless."

The detectives move to and fro, talking of anything from estranged spouses to a possible cover-up on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

It often stumbles across evidence of wrongdoing in unrelated investigations or gets tips from a spectrum of sources - from disgruntled employees to estranged spouses.

Brooke had not been one hundred per cent sure what she wanted when she accepted Bruce's invitation to come home, but meeting estranged spouses certainly wasn't it. '

At Valencia in 1549 Antonio de Araoz effected a reconciliation between estranged spouses - the duke and duchess of Calabria.

He said that while most clients wanted to hide money from the I.R.S., some also wanted to conceal money from estranged spouses or creditors.

All sense departed me, and I left the Biltmore, leapt into a taxi, and headed for the bode of the estranged spouse on Fifth Avenue.

So if an estranged spouse files first, claiming exemptions for the children even if they live with the other parent, it can be a headache to straighten out the mess.

She and Geoffrey Palmer (Lionel) had previously played estranged spouses a decade earlier in Carla Lane's series, The Last Song.

The Dobsons introduced a more nuanced, psychologically layered writing style, and included timely storylines, including a complex love/hate relationship between estranged spouses/step-siblings Roger and Holly.

There, her husband is manipulated by his ensign Iago into believing she is an adulteress, and, in the last act, she is murdered by her estranged spouse.

People here supported Mrs. Rich because of the particular circumstances she found herself in: she and her future husband were estranged spouses struggling through divorces that dragged on for four years.

In October 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, stood up and walked away from an interview with Stahl, because she asked him about his relationship with his soon-to-be estranged spouse.

The estranged spouse squeaked her objections, and the assistant D.A. said something that sounded like a demand for the death penalty, but I did not linger for a change of His Honor's mind.

It was the buyer, not an estranged spouse, who drove down the price on Siri von Reis in a kind of nightmare scenario that shows how even a hard contract can fall apart in a sinking market.