(Submitted by gekkogecko)

Fri Feb 11,10:30 PM ET

By WILLIAM KATES, Associated Press Writer

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Cupid occasionally misses his mark, so a local radio station is running a Valentine's Day (news - web sites) contest offering a free divorce. "Everyone associates Valentine's Day with love, and diamonds, chocolate, roses. But what about those people that hate it. This is for those people," said Scott Petibone, program director at WKRL-FM, a progressive rock station heard in Syracuse and Utica.

The station, known as K-Rock, began promoting its divorce-giveaway Monday. By Thursday, the station received over 100 entries, Petibone said. A winner will be selected on Valentine's Day.

Although some contestants are offering explicit explanations of why they want a divorce, Petibone said none is necessary. However, the divorce must be uncontested.

"We're not looking for the most horrible stories or the most vicious couples," he said.

The free divorce will be handled by lawyer Brad Margolis. A divorce without custody issues, where both husband and wife want to split and agree on how to divide their assets, costs at least $1,390 - about $1,000 in legal fees and $390 in state filing costs, he said.

"That's a lot of money for a paper-pushing exercise. In a lot of these cases, people just want to make legal something that is already done," Margolis said, noting the national divorce rate is over 50 percent.

In Syracuse, some clergy called the contest tasteless.

"A divorce is a death, the death of a dream," said the Rev. Joseph Champlin, rector at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. "You wouldn't make a joke out of someone who died, would you?"

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