It's not uncommon for two people to decide to call it quits in their marriage. Maybe they found out they weren't a good pair, fell in love with someone else, or the love just died one day. No matter what, these people ended their marriage for one reason or another. Sometimes, those reasons can be a bit whacky.
Divorce lawyers on Reddit share the strangest reason a couple got divorced. Content has been edited for clarity.
Some Good Plants
“My aunt was dating an unemployed dude for a while. He was staying in her house rent-free. They got married and were getting ready to go on the honeymoon when the new husband tells her he’s not going because he has to take care of his plants at the house. Big fight. Aunt goes on the honeymoon with her sisters instead.
She comes home and tries to kick him out of her house, but he refuses to leave. She tries to get the police involved. Dude is live-streaming on Facebook how he is being trapped in his own home. Police tell my aunt there is basically nothing they can do, but she can file for eviction after a divorce. Dude gets to live in her house with his precious plants for like three months until everything legally gets worked out.”
“They Never Lived Together”
“I knew a guy from a high school job who divorced his wife of two months because she would sleep with a nightlight, but he could only sleep in total darkness. They apparently never lived together until after getting married. He hated her nightlight so much that he would often sleep on the couch instead, but sometimes he would claim the bed for himself and lock her out of the bedroom for the night.
This was an eccentric late 40s man working at a Burger King who acted like all the other high school coworkers were his best chums, and often told us these weird stories. I’m glad I don’t work with him anymore.”
Not What She Wanted
“I was a legal assistant when this case came in, but this lady divorced her husband of two months because he got her an iPad case for her birthday instead of the expensive jewelry she wanted.”
This Raises A Lot Of Questions
“I heard of a woman that had her marriage annulled because the groom insisted on bringing his mother on their honeymoon. Then, on the honeymoon the bride discovered the reason he wanted to bring his mother was to feed him from chest. Yes, the groom, a grown man, was still doing that with his mother.”
Not Good Friends
“I do my student practice at my family’s law firm. Young woman filed for a divorce because her husband had one drink during weekdays after a day of work. The guy wasn’t violent, doing illegal substances, or anything like that. He was just a normal, polite guy who liked to have a cold one after 10 hour-shift. They are very good couple and argue so rarely that this woman’s friends told her to write down everything he did to upset her and re-read it every day, so she had reasons to be angry about.
My mom (lawyer) set the woman straight, told her he’ just doing what all guys do and to find herself new friends instead of ones ready to sabotage their marriage.”
She Didn’t Pay Attention
“Divorced guy here. I divorced my ex-wife because she decided to be a ‘Super Christian’ that spent hours each day lying on the floor speaking in tongues. Also, she would have random conversations with former deceased relatives while doing mundane daily activities.
The final straw was when I came home from work and my two-year-old daughter was in the fireplace eating ashes two feet away from her while she laid on the ground, chanting and speaking in her made up language.”
They Did It On Purpose
“Friend of mine divorced his then wife, because she would only speak French when her family would come over. She was Spanish, as was her family.
To add, her family spoke English, French and Spanish, he could only speak Spanish and English. After a while, she got bored with being married to him, her family basically talked trash about him whilst he was there.
It was only when he recorded a conversation whilst they were there and got it translated he found out what was going on.”
An Interesting Ritual
“I’m an intern, but the judge I work for used to do divorce work. He has some crazy stories but this one is probably the most outrageous, though the divorce was pretty justified. Every morning, this couple would sit in the bathroom together while one of them had their morning dump. One would sit on the toilet, and the other on the rim of the bathtub.
This particular morning, the wife was on the toilet and husband on the edge of the tub. They started to argue about their relationship so the wife reaches down, pulls her tampon out and flings it at husband. I’m told the tampon stuck for a brief second to his forehead before sliding off. He filed for divorce that same day or the next.”
He Wanted To Try Something New
“I worked for a law office where the owner would talk about the man who sued for divorce because his wife would no longer allow him to use a loaded weapon as a… ‘marital aid.’ She had apparently agreed to it at some point, and was fine with the weapon as long as it was empty, but that just wasn’t good enough for him.
He wanted to stick a loaded weapon in her lady parts as part of their loving making routine. She had apparently agreed to it at some point, and was fine with the weapon as long as it was empty, but that just wasn’t good enough for him and he thought this was reasonable grounds for divorce.”
Bit Of An Overreaction
“Once had a heavily pregnant client that attacked her husband (of less than a year) with an iron. Said client was now sitting in a police cell, sobbing and insisting that her husband deserved it and she wanted a divorce.
I asked what he had supposedly done, assuming he’d cheated or something similar. Turns out she’d checked his phone and found a single adult film site in his browsing history – from over two years beforehand…
Not the most pleasant thing to discover, but hardly worth battering him half to death and demanding a divorce.”
“Get A Lawyer”
“I observed while I waited on a circuit court hearing last year. A man and woman of modest means had been sleeping in separate beds for a decade. She wanted to make some repairs on the house but, with their combined income, the couple earned about $1k per year more than the limit (to receive about $4k in assistance). She initiated the divorce proceeding in pro per but found out she only needed to have him out of the house so she filed to eject him from the premises. …which brings us to the day’s proceedings.
To succeed on her motion to have her husband (who, unlike her, was represented by counsel) forcibly removed from the property, the woman had a hefty burden of proof. In the very beginning, she conducted herself admirably. She asked relevant questions (of her own husband on cross-examination) that comported with the rules of evidence. Not even 45 seconds later… this wife was berating her husband on the stand about how he was a heavy drinker, came downstairs undressed once when her friend was over, and, was causing her mental trauma by his accumulation of drink returnable cans.
Mind you, the cans caused no such trauma. Needless to say, the judge reigned her in. She couldn’t keep it together after that and almost had to argue her motion in contempt. Moral of the story: get a lawyer.”
She Thought She Was Helping
“A lawyer in my old office represented a woman whose husband left her, because she got involved in a romance scam that started as a pen pal. It was a weird marriage. He was clearly a closet gay who married her for her money because she was ugly as all heck. They kept separate lives for 30 years.
She began corresponding with someone she believed was a 3 star General serving in Afghanistan. It went the typical way scams like this do: she fell in love and he needed money to move from Afghanistan back to the United States. She eventually would transfer him about $70,000 over the course of eight months.
Even when my friend brought me into the conference room to lay out the case as being a scam, for which I had piles of proof for, she continued to transfer money including a $8,000 transfer the day after.
The judge ruled she owed her husband dollar for dollar what she gave the scammer, so $70k plus he issued a temporary restraining order barring her from transferring marital assets. My friend dumped her as a client when she showed interest in appealing the TRO and trying to expedite her divorce so she could ‘marry’ the scammer.”
He Took A Quick Break
“When I was working at the DA’s office, there was a woman who had slept with her son’s 15-year-old friend. The awkward part was that the husband was the high school baseball coach for both of the boys. My job at the time involved going through the evidence, including all of the text messages, where they eventually decided upon divorce. The only thing I really recall is that the husband interrupted the text conversation about the affair to say ‘BRB. I’m going to get a McRib.’
The texting resumed about 40 minutes later.
Needless to say, criminal law is weird and I decided to pursue another specialty.”
“Makes Me Mad To This Day”
“After law school, I interned for an attorney. We had a client who was socially inept but brilliant at his work. He spoke at a conference in Vegas where some colleagues later took him to a female dance club. He meets a dancer, they get married in the course of three weeks.
A few short months later, she goes back to Vegas for a visit and sees a ‘doctor.’ She’s declared disabled from an illness which carries no concretely measurable symptoms, and she can no longer do any work of any kind. Not long after, she files for divorce, leaving our client on the hook for supporting her. I’d like to say it ended well, but this woman and her supporting team of professionals/crooks had covered all their bases and knew every line to say, and exactly how long to wait to file each part of their scam. Makes me mad to this day.”
All For Himself
“I have a friend who specializes in family law. In one of his cases, the wife wanted to divorce husband because he kept taking their dogs for walks while she was at work, making it (unintentionally) so they’d rather cuddle the husband instead of her after a long day.”
Caught On Tape
“I know a couple who got divorced because the bride’s father had bought $15,000 in cash to pay for the reception, but his wallet had been lost during the event… resulting in a small drama. Then a couple of weeks later, both families got together to watch the wedding video, and someone noticed in the background of some footage the groom’s father stealing the wallet out if the bride’s fathers coat.
There was a fistfight, but the only thing that got killed was their marriage.”
“Sad To See”
“I’m an attorney and I almost exclusively handle divorces. Illinois is a no fault divorce state, and I learned very early on that if you ask clients about their reasons for getting divorced they will talk for hours so I don’t bother asking.
However, I did have a case where it was a very contested divorce and one day at court the couple was arguing/yelling in the hallway. Wife was mad at husband for taking the power cord for the TV and husband responds, ‘You’re always deleting my recorded shows!’
The argument lasted a good 20 minutes.
Also, I’ve seen many couples hold each other and cry outside the courtroom after the divorce decree is entered. I’m not sure why they would get divorced if they were both so sad about it, and again, I’m not going to ask, but those are always sad to see.”
Did He Even Care About Her?
“This happened about seven years ago.
The wife was kidnapped in Mexico and he refused to pay ransom. Eventually, her family managed to pay and she was left on the side of the road. It is not outrageous as in petty but outrageous as how absurd that is.
I don’t know how much they wanted as ransom. But it was substantial, as the conversation between her family and him was how he had it liquid and they had to liquidate investments to get that amount. She may have told me, she may not. Something in pesos and I didn’t know the conversion rate, it was all a random number to me.
He wasn’t with her on the trip. She was travelling with cousins and went downstairs alone to get ice cream and wait for them to get ready.
I do not know all the details. She was extremely distraught talking about it and it was not necessary to pry. It was clearly traumatic and even though I had a million more questions, I left it alone.”
Did He Think These Would Work?
“One of my clients had an inner ear condition that caused chronic vertigo, but symptoms could be treated with medication. Her husband was an evangelical who was convinced his wife had become possessed, and that her vertigo and general crankiness with his methods were evidence of demonic possession. He also thought the medications she was taking was enabling the devil to hide inside her, and the only proper recourse was exorcism. He would hide her meds until she got dizzy and then try various methods of exorcism. This included:
Sweating it out (put under blankets while incapacitated and locked in a room full of space heater).
Freezing it out (pretty much the reverse with AC, fans, and bags of ice).
Surprising it out (he would jump out and scare her like it was the hiccups, but instead of yelling ‘Boo!’ he would recite the Lord’s Prayer or Psalms).
The final straw was that he tried to ‘surprise it out of her’ by pushing her down the stairs when they were heading out for dinner.”
“She Got What She Needed”
“My great-great-grandparents had an interesting case. He was abusive, like ‘sell her out to different men for dirty deeds and then beat her for infidelity’ levels of abuse. This was the 1910s, though, and in our state you couldn’t initiate a divorce for cruelty. In fact, the only possible grounds for divorce was infidelity.
A few times, she tried just leaving him anyway. Once he came home from work and she, plus all eight of their kids, were just gone. But he always found them, and since they were still married, he had every right to grab the kids and go back home with them.
Finally, she moved out and went to live with another man. She flaunted the new guy around town until her no-good husband got embarrassed enough to sue her for divorce on the grounds of infidelity.
Although she couldn’t read or write, she put her X on those papers the minute he served her. It was a major local scandal (very Catholic community, divorce was rare), but she got what she needed to be safe.”
It All Lead Up
“My client was the outrageous one, so my heart went out to his poor wife. He had OCD which manifested primarily financially, so he made their lives a penny-pinching nightmare.
Examples: he was obsessed with avoiding unnecessary driving (wear and tear on the car, gas expenses), so he cut the whole family’s hair at home and never let them eat at a restaurant or go to the movies. Weirdest of all: he kept one toilet paper roll on him at all times and you had to get one square from him before you could go to the bathroom. He never gave more than one square.
Wife finally got fed up and left him when he gave her bangs during an in-home haircut, and their daughter was so traumatized by the toilet paper thing they couldn’t potty train her.”
A Collector’s Item
“I had a client incur about 20 additional hours of billable hours because he and his ex-wife were battling and went to trial over their Star Wars Collection. This was the only issue at trial, they were able to work out custody, child support, the house, but the Star Wars collection went to trial.
The Judge ended up splitting it in the worst way possible, basically giving each side half of what they wanted and then mixing and matching everything else and breaking up ‘collections’.
When speaking about it at a conference, the Judge admitted she did it because if they were going to act like children, she would treat them like children. The thing is, the value of this collection was over $100k, so hardly kids stuff.
Neither side had it in them to appeal (nor was the case law on either side given judicial discretion in property distribution.”
“Shortest Divorce Decree I’ve Drafted”
“He was frustrated by her hoarding. She was frustrated by his utter uselessness.
He filed for divorce, and she was my client. Her prized possession was a room or two full of scrap booking materials. His prized possession was a yard full of junk cars that he never worked on. They had no children and no real assets.
They hated each other more than any two people I’d ever met, and the only terms they would agree to were these: he gets the scrap booking stuff, and she gets the cars. My client also took the house, as he had no income and didn’t want it anyway.
It was the shortest divorce decree I ever drafted. I intentionally squeezed it onto one page, and the judge and I had a good laugh over it.
Once the decree was signed and filed, she hauled all the scrap booking stuff to the yard, and he removed it to the dump. She then called a junk shop I referred her to and had all of his cars removed from the yard.”
What A Twist
“Divorce Lawyer in London.
Had a client who indulged in some recreational substance use. His dealer lives in the same apartment building as him.
Went down one day to pick up some of that sweet, sweet nose candy. When the dealer (female) came to the door, he could hear his wife in the background.
Turns out that his wife also liked the high life and was getting her fix in with the neighborhood dealer. But it doesn’t end there, because they all get on so well they start having parties and hanging out.
Parties become substance fuelled love making sessions. Each week, the husband and wife put their kids to be and head downstairs to the dealers flat for a feast of narcotics and flesh.
A couple of months go by and the wife comes home and says she is leaving him to be in a full time same gender relationship with the dealer!
Dude is now stressed as heck, but he can’t score no more from his dealer who stole his missus!”
This Guy Had A Lot
“In my very first case, my client filed for divorce based on her husband’s physical abuse. I later discovered that the husband had never actually abused her in any way, but she was using made-up allegations to gain an advantage in custody. The real reason she was divorcing her husband was so that she could marry the teenage runaway the couple had taken into their home a couple of years prior. This teen was 15 when they took him (a trans male) in, and the week he turned 18- about a month after she filed for divorce- she came into my office and announced they were in love. Also, she had begun forcing her children, who were all 2-5 years younger than this kid, to exclusively refer to him as ‘dad.’
I ended up dropping her as a client after she refused to stop breaking the law in trying to frame her husband for crimes he hadn’t committed (like hiding narcotics in his car), so I unfortunately have no idea how the case ended.
I had another train wreck of a case where my client filed for divorce from her much older husband (she was mid-twenties and he was in his 50s). She had always been a subservient wife, but the first time she stood up for herself and argued with him about something he had done (I can’t remember exactly what he had done, but he was an abusive piece of trash), his response was to tell her he was going to have her family murdered. The next week, somebody shot her brother several times (he managed to survive), and she finally got the nerve to file for divorce.”
“She Tried To Decline It Respectfully”
“So this girl I went to school with marries this rich guy from Ohio. She moves in with him and they seem to get along well. Six months later, she files for divorce. Up to that point, all I’ve heard from her was how good it was going. Anyways, it turns out our buddy had a fetish for going off on urine. He asked her to urinate on him in the tub. At first, she agrees to it as she thought it was a one time thing. But he kept asking for it more and more. She tried to decline it respectfully but he wouldn’t get any of the hints. She finally used the tub being too small as a reason. Next day, she comes home with two dozen construction guys and their heavy equipment tearing the bathroom walls. A week or so later, they finish up the bathroom. She comes home to a sign left on the fridge with a note to drink up, she got some watering to do.
I don’t know what exactly she put down as the official reason in the paperwork, but that was definitely her biggest reason to walk out of that relationship.
Later, it was discovered he also wanted to bring a horse to do the deed as well and at times. This guy even asked her to make animal sounds while she stood on top of him.”