Jaded For Java
“I had a client file for divorce because every morning his wife would ask him how he takes his coffee…for seven years.”
Too Much TP
“My boss just got divorced. His wife was telling people that one of her main reasons was the amount of toilet paper he used. She was a super coupon-clipper thrifty lady, and would listen when he went to the bathroom to see if he was using ‘too much tp.'”
RPG Revenge
“I remember a case where the husband and wife both played some sort of online role-playing game, I think it was Second Life. The wife got heavily involved with the game, like 10 hours a day, and wouldn’t reduce her playing time no matter what he said.
What tipped things over the edge was when the husband made a fake profile to stalk her in the game and found her avatar getting busy with some random guy’s avatar.
Nothing ever happened in real life (neither of them were exactly oil paintings to look at), but that was enough for the guy to initiate a fairly acrimonious divorce.”
Guantanamo Grossout
“I had a soldier stationed at Guantanamo Bay that met a local, and fell madly in love. They decided to get married so she could come with him back to the states once his tour was done.
She was working on American dishes and was making spaghetti. He comes home from work one day, and she’s making it. She puts the meat in, puts the canned sauce in, and then pulls an unlabeled bag out of the freezer and adds it to the sauce.
At this point in the session, she’s hysterically crying with broken Spanglish. She’s trying to explain that she didn’t know any better. Through the hysteria, he informs me her mother and grandmother told her if she wanted to keep her man, she needed to put her menstrual blood in his food. It was so hard to keep my composure. I was trying hard not to gag.
They both described that they were madly in love, but he couldn’t let it go. They ended up getting a divorce. Having done this for 14 years, I have found it 100% accurate that truth is stranger than fiction.”
Degenerate Gambler
“I had a client file for divorce because he owed his bookie $70,000. He didn’t want to leave his wife, but he figured he would get half the house in the divorce, which was worth $700,000, so he could pay his debts. He had already blew through their life savings gambling, and was pretty much the worst guy. He never told me he was involved in illegal stuff or how much he owed… but kept saying to me he needed $70,000 to pay his ‘friends’ back ASAP. The wife’s lawyer ended up telling me he was involved with some thug bookies who threatened him.
Even worse was that his wife actually paid his fees since she was the ‘monied’ spouse. She was still working, and he was retired.
I felt bad for her; one of the rare cases where I really disliked my client. We asked the judge to relieve us from representing him.”
New Girl Shakes Things Up
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“There was this one couple who decided that to spice up their marriage they would try having threesomes. Now, you might think to yourself, ‘well, no one ever told me swinging saved their marriage, but maybe this could work!’
And maybe it could. But not in this instance. In this instance, they jointly found another woman they were both attracted to (wife was bi, husband hetero). They started off playing with her together a few times a month. Then, one night, husband just wanted to watch while the ladies played. Then the reverse. Then occasionally, they agreed it would be ok to sleep with this woman without the other spouse present.
Everything came to a head, however, when wife was sleeping with mistress and in the middle mistress called out husband’s name. She wasn’t thrilled but didn’t take major offense. She did, however, take major offense when a week later husband said mistresse’s name instead of wife’s. That was when she learned that her girlfriend and husband liked each other more than they liked her. The next day, she came to me.”
Lotto Duper
“One morning, the husband needs milk for the coffee and runs to the corner store. He also buys a lottery ticket and has a funny idea to play the numbers that had already won the night before to play a prank on his wife.
He goes home and puts the ticket on the fridge, thinking she will have no reason to pay attention to the date. Hour later, wife gets up and makes some coffee, and he yells from the living room that he hasn’t checked the lottery numbers yet, and for her to see if they won anything last night.
He hears her use the laptop to check the numbers, and then she is quiet for a minute. He said he had this big grin on his face waiting for her to start yelling that they won and thinking how funny it would be.
She yells from the kitchen that they didn’t win anything. She heads back upstairs, and 15 minutes later she comes through the living room with both their elementary age kids in tow and says she forgot to tell him that she had to go to her mom’s for the day and was taking the kids with her.
He was shocked. Went and checked, lottery ticket is gone, not in trash or anywhere else. He realizes she thinks they won the lottery and is trying to run off with the winnings. She won’t return calls or talk to him, and when he calls the house, the grandma confirms she’s there and puts the kids on the phone, but that’s it.
She finally shows up with the kids a couple days later, walks in the house, says, ‘Eff you!’ and goes into the bedroom in silence. The kids confirm that mom thought she had won a ton of money. Realizing what kind of person she is and that she also isn’t very smart to think she would have gotten away with it, he divorced her.”
He Needs Out
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“Hopefully soon-to-be-former Divorce attorney, I’ve seen tons of crazy reasons for people to get divorced. Some of them stupid, some of them make perfect sense. I had one person get divorced because her husband wouldn’t take her out to the movies anymore. I had one client who looked through her husband’s phone and found out he was hiring male “company” while he was on business trips. One female client got a divorce because she hated how things would go down in the bedroom with her husband. Her last relationship before she got married was pretty intense and I guess her husband just didn’t match up. I’ve had a few clients who were teachers get divorced because their spouses found out they were having indecent relationships with students. All of the teachers were female. One divorce involved an elderly couple who had both recently been widowed. They had both been married to their individual spouses for over 40 years. They married each other out of loneliness. About two years into the marriage, they realized they made a huge mistake. They couldn’t stand each other. It was weird seeing eighty-year-olds complaining about the same thing you see kids arguing about.”
Next Level Mama’s Boy
“There was once a woman that had her marriage annulled because the groom insisted on bringing his mother to their honeymoon. Then, on the honeymoon, the bride discovered the reason he wanted to bring his mother was to breastfeed him. Yes, the groom, a grown man, was still breastfeeding.”
Tricking The Troop
“Husband signs over power of attorney to his mother before leaving for deployment. As soon as he was out of the country, mother files for divorce of the wife because they never got along.
Dude is in the middle of the desert and didn’t know until he came back three weeks after the fact. Back then it didn’t matter if he was deployed or not, just as long as he received the papers before the court date. He didn’t show in court, and she got everything he owned along with custody of their three daughters.
Thankfully, after 9/11 the laws changed so that a soldier couldn’t be divorced if they were overseas. Spouse could still file, but the court system wouldn’t set a date until after that soldier had returned.”
Wife Swap
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“I once had two couples come to me. They had been friends for nearly 15 years.
Husband A decided he liked Wife B more than Wife A. Wife A decided she likes Husband B more than Husband A. The reverse was also true, and Husband B preferred Wife A, Wife B preferred Husband A.
The couples had near identical assets in terms of value. They came to me altogether, and I drafted two sets of paperwork. Two default judgment hearings were set on the same day. The judge signed all the papers the same day.
A week after that, they all went to get remarried. The husbands swapped houses, and they all went about their lives exactly as they had the week before, but each slightly happier.”
Wicked Wife
“My mother in law divorced my father in law so that she could have a ‘fresh start with her dream job of teaching blind children to read.’
Turns out, what she meant by that was destroy her husband’s pastor career by telling everyone he was abusive, and get married to the guy she’d secretly been carrying on with. He’s a convicted child violater and she has grandchildren. She’s in a state of complete denial.
My spouse and his siblings have never indicated to me that they were ever abused. They never indicated that their mother abused other kids either.
I personally think she’s got a personality disorder. Her father apparently was abusive with a drinking problem. Her mother, after divorcing, was a foster parent to many kids with disabilities. Additionally, her mother will not discipline with real consequences — just a slap on the wrist, and then back to enabling poor behavior.
My mother in law absolutely thrives on positive attention. She loves being seen as the hero, to the point where my spouse and his siblings have told stories about her exaggerating stories to make her look like she saved the day.
I think she married a pastor so she could be seen as the pastor’s wife. She spent years as a paraprofessional for kids. I think this, along with wanting to teach blind children, is so she could be seen as selfless.
As for being married to an offender…I think it goes back to her father, and also secretly her self-identifying as a broken person. Maybe she thinks she can ‘redeem’ this other broken father with her family? Maybe she sees her father in him?
Any time we’ve tried to really talk to her about her choices, we get a DARVO response, which seems to be classic personality disorder behavior.”
It’s Not Me, It’s You
“Husband and wife were married for 15 years, and husband started being less and less intimate with her.
He cheated on her with another woman, and his rationale was that he didn’t know if he was impotent or if it was just his wife, and wanted to find out.”
Gold Digging Demon
“The woman would get married just for the ‘fancy parties’ (receptions), ‘money/gifts’ (wedding gifts), and ‘vacations’ (honeymoons).
She would get married, and, immediately upon return from the honeymoon, end the marriage so she could go find the next guy. In 7 years, she’d been married 4 times.
This was in New York City, so the guys wouldn’t know, and it’d be a totally different group of people, none of which are related. I suppose that nowadays it’d be easy to Google someone or look up marriage records, but back then that wasn’t common.
The only people that did know of her scheme were her friends, and only one or two of them would be invited to the ‘wedding.’ The gifts were most likely secondary in her mind, with the big receptions and honeymoon travels in different countries being the main attraction.”
Wigged Out Wife
“My wife divorced me because I had her arrested for domestic assault. She’s in childcare, so it was absolutely imperative that she controlled the narrative. Apparently, I’m a liar, the cops are liars, the children are liars, the baby gate smashed itself over my back, and the video of her doing these things is fake.
So I got divorced for hanging out with all these liars. There is an extremely violent woman out there that watches babies. She was deemed not a threat to kids and only a threat to me. I’m certain that she had borderline personality disorder.”
Puppy Love
“Wife wanted to divorce husband because he kept taking their dogs for walks while she was at work, making it so they’d rather cuddle the husband instead of her after a long day.”
The Ultimate Ghost
“I have to talk about the case of Baidoo v Blood-Dzraku. Basically, a couple got married but never lived together. Shortly after marriage, the husband dropped off the face of the earth, and the wife had no way of contacting him.
She didn’t know any of his family, and the place he told her he worked had never heard of him. He disconnected his cell phone, and she even hired a private detective to try and locate him with no success.
Finally, she tried to file for divorce, but for service to be considered valid, the defendant has to be physically handed the papers. Since she couldn’t figure out where he was, she couldn’t even get divorced from him.
She had to sue in court just to get permission from a judge to allow service through Facebook because that was literally the only means she had of contacting her husband.”
Psychic Crisis
“Most notable one was a woman divorcing her husband because he discovered he could talk to the dead on their honeymoon, and then later spent all their money on spiritualist groups.
During the divorce, the woman left the house. At some point, her husband approached her and claimed that as he was letting the house fall into ruin, it would be better for both of them if he sold the house and split the proceeds with her. She agreed to this without consulting her solicitor.
A few weeks later, the husband gave her a big sum of money. She asked what it was for. It was her share of the house. He’d sold it to his sister, and kept living there. When she went to complain to her solicitors, she found they’d done the conveyancing for him. He’d deliberately used his wife’s divorce solicitors, and nobody at the firm had realized.”
I Guess That’s One Way Out
“I know of three different incidents where the reason for divorce was more or less the same. In each case, the woman married a well-off guy, went off to live/study abroad, and then ditched the husband to live a more independent life.
They all came from educated, modern, somewhat affluent Asian families, but for some reason, the women felt compelled to get married in order to be able to go abroad. Then, once they managed to go abroad, they left their husbands. It’s pretty messed up that they feel like that’s their only avenue to fulfill their dreams.”
The Hot Dog Happening
“Throughout my career, I’ve read many divorce decrees, but there was one in particular I will never forget. The header referenced the ‘hot dog incident’ as one of the many reasons for divorce.
There was no explanation as to what occurred in the incident. This was a few years ago, but it still bugs me. What happened during the hot dog incident??”
Foot Rub Freakout
“Wife asked him to rub her feet, and he said no. She told him to get the heck out. He was super excited, and said, ‘Ok bye, you will hear from my attorney.’
Obviously, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it makes me laugh every time someone asks why they split up: ‘No foot rub for you!'”
Third Times The Charm?
“A certain faith allows for divorce if the word is simply said three times, and one of the parties felt that they had legitimately divorced by doing this.
The husband went to his country of origin and married a younger, prettier woman. Whenever she did or suggested that she do something he didn’t like, he’d threaten to say divorce three times.
While initially it was believed to be trivial husband and wife stuff, he pulled this on her wanting to go to English classes, and eventually, friends and family stepped in to tell him that such threats weren’t acceptable in America and that saying divorce three times does not make it official in any capacity.”
King Of The Links
“There was a woman who got divorced by her husband because she couldn’t outperform him on the golf course. We all think he was cheating and just wanted an excuse, but she did say he would often yell at her in public while golfing and mock her for her ‘attention to detail,’ whatever that means.
He would also force the family to go golfing on most weekends, so it’s hard to say if that was the real reason or not. She doesn’t even like golf, but was, and still is, afraid to tell him that.”
Get On With It!
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“The wife took too long to tell a story. He was actually having affair #4795809374, and that came out shortly after. But this was one of the main reasons he gave when they did a counseling session together.”
Pretty Ticked Off
“It wasn’t the reason for filing, but the guy didn’t think his wife should be able to divorce him because she had Lyme disease. He thought that having had this impaired her mental facilities, and therefore she was not in her right mind to make the decision.
We were just dealing with the litigation regarding the kids, and every so often we would get calls from him going on and on about this.
Yes, Lyme disease can be bad, but in this case, it was a year or so prior and was treated right away. We’ve met her, and she definitely was in her right mind.”
A Scheme And A Half
“One of the two had a problem with the IRS. Divorcing would shield some assets, as long as they were awarded to the other party in the divorce. I don’t know how it was supposed to shield assets, and the client said they lived apart a lot.
I didn’t want to look into it too deep, in case I ended up in some sort of fraud. I made my client give me enough info that it was plausible that they could divorce.
I recall a lot of elderly veterans choosing to divorce their longtime spouses back around ’07-’12, mostly to do with benefits that would get cut if they were married.”
One Sketchy Student
“Husband and wife were going to schools in the same town, but not the same school. One day, months after they were married, she didn’t have classes and decided to surprise her husband by visiting him on campus.
But when she went to the office to find where his class was held, she finds out he’s not even enrolled. We still don’t know what he was doing or what he did with the ‘tuition’ money (most likely gambling) because he refused to ever say.”
Territorial Toilet Time
“The couple was in the process of filing for divorce. Papers were served and lawyers were involved. But the husband put down for one of his reasons things were irreconcilable was that she would use his bathroom all the time. Luckily they worked through that issue and are still together.”
Not My Munchies!
“Client filed for divorce with his wife because she kept eating his food.”
Divorced, You Are
“The husband kept making terrible Star Wars puns. ‘Divorce is strong with this one.'”