Now, I don't know how accurate this information was, but I have a dear friend who is English and married an American service man. Her mother made her promise to become an American citizen so that if they ever divorced while living in the U.S, he would not have more rights to keep the children they might (and did) eventually have than she would have as a non citizen.

I loved them both dearly but oh - such an contentious marriage! If he said left, she insisted right. If she said up, he insisted down. Pick, pick, pick!

She did become an American citizen for those reasons, they never did divorce, they eventually just quit quibbling and settled into liking each other as much as loving each other.

I was very glad to see it, but it took 15 years to accomplish, my own DH swore that they just used up all the contentiousness between them and all they had left was smiles!

I figured that was as good an explaination as any I could come up with, except for maybe they finally just grew up after child number two, and decided it was more fun to be happy than angry all the time. I really like them both, individually and now as a couple.

We have kept in steady touch almost every month for 25 years.

How could she? Is it those brown cows? How the hubby looks in Leiderhosen?

I wonder how this will play out with her constituents.

I'm going for Marshallz's simple explanation... why, it's to hide the embarrassingly large amount of cash stashed, my dear... so the contribution to US revenue is considerably lighter.