Divorce sucks, plain and simple. But not all divorces are equal, and sometimes the reasons for separating are…questionable at best. It’s important to put your happiness first, and there are plenty of good reasons to get a divorce, but these are definitely not those reasons. These Redditors came together to share the dumbest and craziest reasons for divorce they’ve ever seen.
Crazy Divorce Stories
1. Get. Off. The. Elephant.
The kid got one elephant ride too many. Mom and dad agreed before dad took daughter to the circus that one elephant ride should be plenty. Mom later finds out that dad let the daughter have two—not one, as agreed, but two—elephant rides. As mom would describe it, “He's doubling down again, trying to get her to hate me. I know it. Why the heck else is someone letting their kid ride an elephant halfway around the whole dang town. Everybody knows now.”
2. Yes, Mum
I've had a lot of younger male potential clients come in for divorce consults…with their mother. Then, during the consult, the mother does 98% of the talking, and it's clear who actually wants the divorce. I'll usually escort Mom to wait in the lobby while I talk to the son directly, and most of the time he's just there to appease his mother. On a related note, I once had just the mother call for a consult because she said explicitly she wanted her son to get a divorce.
I politely informed her that's not how divorces worked.
3. One Lump or Two?
I had a client file for divorce because every morning his wife would ask him how he takes his coffee...for seven years.
4. The Forbidden Dance
She saw a picture of him contra dancing that he’d posted on Facebook. She knew he went contra dancing. That part wasn’t the surprise. In fact, I’m still confused about this one.
5. The Pee-Pee Man
Not a lawyer, but I have I’ve been aching to tell this story for a while. 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 thing where he got 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. The 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. Oh, I forgot to add, he also asked her to make animal sounds while she stood on top of him.
6. A One-Square Household
My boss just got divorced. His wife was telling people one of her 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.”
7. Wrong Vibe
Because of her last name. After 10 years of happy marriage, she decided that she didn’t like her last name anymore—she took her husband's last name after the wedding. Our law system does not allow people to change their last name if there are kids involved, so she filed for divorce.
8. Only on Cam
I represented an adult actress/webcam model who filed for divorce from her husband who also did the adult/webcam model business. He would do videos on the side because the pay was better. She was hesitant about it but dealt with it because the pay was decent. Both sides had an agreement that it wasn't cheating as long as it was for work. One day she came home early and found her husband in bed with two men, but they were not filming.
That was too much for her. Needless to say, the old conservative judge couldn't wrap his head around this one.
9. Getting Virtual
Lawyer here. One of mine that sticks out is that the husband and wife both played some sort of online role-playing game, sort of like The Sims I think, but a little more elaborate and adult. Maybe Second Life. I don't know anything about online games. The wife got heavily involved with the game, like 10 hours a day, and wouldn't reduce her time playing no matter what he said.
What tipped things over the edge however was that he set up a fake profile/ avatar and went online to stalk her in the game and found her avatar doing it 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.
10. That Escalated Quickly
My friend’s parents divorced because his mother wanted a horse. His father argued that they can't keep a horse in a sixth-floor apartment and don’t have enough resources or money to rent a stable. Then she hooked up with her son’s math teacher and got into illegal substances. I feel sorry for everyone involved.
11. A Real Man
My dad was a divorce lawyer. He had a client who wanted to divorce her husband for two reasons. The first was that he did not have enough hair on his chest. The second was that he did not drive fast enough. Keep in mind this was in the 70s, when chest hair was a bit more important.
12. Now or Never
I have a friend who used to be a security guard at a courthouse. He said one time he had to watch over divorce proceedings between an 80-year-old man and his 40-year-old Vietnamese wife. She said, in broken English, she wanted to divorce him because he couldn’t "satisfy" her anymore. During the beginning of the case, she would yell mean things about this guy and the judge had to constantly tell her to be quiet.
The old man never said a word. Eventually, the judge said we will have to continue on a future date. She immediately said "then forget it," got up, and walked out of the courtroom.
13. Facebook Official
A lawyer I know got a case because the husband didn’t change his Facebook status to married quickly enough after the wedding. It was like two weeks. The judge laughed at the lady and made them get marriage counseling. The lawyer pocketed north of $1,000 just for that.
14. Adulting? Nah
My dad stated in court that he was divorcing my mom because she was always asking him to take out the trash or mow the lawn or calling him at work to ask him to pick up milk. You know, adult stuff like maintaining a home and family. Her lawyer turned to her and just said, “You’re dodging a bullet here. Someday you’ll be glad he left.” It turned out that he was cheating on her.
My mom made a very good life for herself. At 71 years old, she can afford a house-cleaning service and pays someone to maintain her lawn. Karma.
15. Morning Dump Disaster
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.
Think that’s gross? Just wait. This particular morning, the wife was on the toilet and husband seated 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 the 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.
16. Monstrous Behavior
Not a divorce attorney, but there was a case in Kuwait where a woman wanted to divorce her husband because he ate hummus with a fork.
17. Down to the Second
So back in the pre-iPhone era, there was a newly married couple in my apartment building, maybe 3-4 months into their marriage. I come home and hear them fighting about what the exact time is. Like, one was saying it’s 8:15 and the other was saying no, it’s 8:13. So, the next day the guy just walked out and I never saw him again.
Later I found out they got divorced “over some silly fight.”
18. Darkness or Bust
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, as 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 man in his late 40s who worked at a Burger King and 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.
19. That’s My Charizard!
I’m not a divorce attorney, but my former subordinate got divorced over Pokémon cards. At one point during the separation, she came to work to accuse him of taking some of her rares. It got near physical and we had to have security forces remove the spouse so we could get back to work. They were a hot mess.
20. The Power of the Stairs Compels You!
I saw a couple get divorced over failed exorcisms. My client had an inner ear condition that caused chronic vertigo, but symptoms could be treated with medication. The 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 that the only proper recourse was an exorcism. He would hide her meds until she got dizzy and then try various methods of exorcism. This included sweating it out, where he put her under blankets while incapacitated and locked in a room full of space heaters.
He also made her freeze it out—pretty much the reverse, with AC, fans, and bags of ice. He tried to surprise 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.
Note: this guy was some type of executive and they still went out to dinner after the stairs incident. She asked for the divorce at an Applebee’s that night. I have often tried to picture that conversation, as she was adamant that he was a total sweetheart and never acted out of malice or anger.
21. Failed by the School System
When I was a kid, a 15-year-old girl wanted to get married to a 20-year-old guy. Because of her age, she needed her parents to sign off on it, so she begged and pleaded with her parents, who eventually allowed it for when she turned 16. But the guy divorced her after four years because she refused to make love or even kiss like it never occurred to her that was involved.
I suppose this is more of a reflection of the health education she received.
22. The Take-Out Queen
My father’s best friend divorced his wife over her cooking. Apparently, every day he would come home to amazing cooked meals. Eventually, he found out her dirty little secret. It turns out she couldn’t cook at all and was ordering food from different restaurants. She even went as far as dirtying pots and pans to make it look like she cooked all day.
She got away with this for almost a year before he caught on. This was back in the day before you could check your bank statements online, and since she did all the billing, he didn’t notice how much money was missing. She was spending it all on takeout.
23. Swapping Spouses
I had two couples come to me. They had been friends for nigh on 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 all together, 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 a JP and remarried. The husbands swapped houses and they all went about their lives exactly as they had the week before, but each slightly happier.
24. A Wavy Relationship
My grandmother was stepping down into their fishing boat. My grandfather was already in the boat. He was holding the pier to stabilize the boat. A rogue wave came, pushed the boat violently away from the pier, and grandma nearly fell into the water. She accused him of intentionally trying to embarrass her. They barely spoke for three months.
My grandfather refused to divorce "because we're Catholic," but offered to live apart. I was about 10 years old, living with them during this time. Talk about a crash course in small talk.
25. Psychically Set
Staff Attorney for a judge. Not a divorce but a custody modification hearing. The ex-wife wanted sole custody of the kids because the ex-husband was spending all his money on a palm reader/psychic and refused to pay child support. On cross, ex-wife's attorney got him to admit that he was spending all his discretionary income on this psychic.
He said he had spent over $5,000 on "readings" and other services there. Judges frequently chime in with questions in domestic matters, so my judge asked why he was not paying support as his divorce decree required. His explanation was that the psychic could "read" that his children were provided for without his money and that he would be able to repay the ex when he takes the children to Mexico permanently to "seek great riches" there.
Which my judge read as: "my psychic told me to kidnap my kids."
26. Sliding in the DMs With Divorce Papers Like
This case appeared in one of my casebooks in law school. It’s called Baidoo v Blood-Dzraku if you want to look it up. 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 apparently the place he told her he worked at 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 (for obvious reasons) but for service to be considered valid, the defendant has to be physically handed service papers. Since she couldn't find 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.
27. From Nothing to Millions to Nothing Again
Back in 1996, a woman filed for divorce, seemingly out of nowhere, to end her marriage of 25 years. Two years later her ex-husband received a letter in the mail that made his blood run cold. It was about her lump-sum lottery winnings. It turns out that 11 days before filing for divorce, she had won $1.3 million dollars in the lottery.
She didn't disclose this at all during the divorce proceedings in an effort to keep the winnings all to herself, as he would have received half under California law. When the ex-husband took this to court, the judge said she had violated state asset disclosure laws. Even better? The judge gave all of her winnings to him.
Her lawyer apparently said that if she had said something during the divorce, it's possible she might have been able to keep all of it or come to some agreement, but because of what she did, she lost it all.
28. Dream Wedding, Nightmare Marriage
My husband's first marriage lasted six months. He found out she had been sleeping around with several of his friends and one of those friends finally felt so guilty that he fessed up. The husband actually wanted to work it out if he could, but when he tried to talk to her about it, she locked him out of the house and told him she wanted a divorce.
He finally asked her, "Why did you marry me?” Her response? Because he was the only one she was sleeping with who could afford her dream wedding. Yup, the woman married him because she wanted a wedding and chose the person who could afford it. Mind you, he wasn't wealthy by any means. He just wishes his "friend" had felt guilty about say, six months earlier.
29. Couldn’t Resist the Triple Word Score
I was living with and engaged to a guy and we broke up after a weeklong beach house vacation with my family. Why? Because I beat him in front of everyone else playing Scrabble. He was a doctor with a huge ego and said that I was supposed to let him win to make him look good. After a week of the silent treatment when we got home, he moved out.
It was all okay because he was a gambling addict anyway and that was bothering me, so I was sort of pushing his buttons, I think. He wasn't as angry when I confronted him about his gambling problem, so it's funny to me that the last straw was Scrabble.
30. The Square-Keeper
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. The wife finally got fed up and left him when he gave her bangs during an in-home haircut. There was also the fact that their daughter was so traumatized by the toilet paper thing that they couldn’t potty train her.
You better believe that he HATED paying his divorce lawyer bill. He was also an old-fashioned mega-Catholic who considered divorce a deadly sin. He viewed my whole job as an expense that was not only unnecessary but also sinful.
31. Funny Not Funny
A friend woke up really early one morning, because middle age. So while he makes coffee, he checks the lottery numbers and sees that they didn't hit a single number. He realizes he needs milk for the coffee and runs to the corner store. He starts to buy lottery tickets for the next drawing and comes up with what should have been a funny idea.
He buys another ticket with their regular numbers and also plays the numbers that had already won the night before. He goes home and puts the ticket on the fridge where the other ones were, thinking she will have no reason to pay attention to the day they are for. One hour later, his wife gets up and makes some coffee.
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 they won and thinking how funny it would be.
I actually think fake winning lottery tickets, and the prank he was pulling, are mean, but that is beside the point. 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. She says she forgot to tell him she had to go to her mom's for the day.
Then she just takes the kids and leaves. He was shocked. He went and checked, and the lottery ticket was gone, not in the trash or anywhere else. He realizes that she thinks they won the lottery and that she’s trying to run off with the winnings. She won't return his calls or talk to him and when he calls her mother’s house, the grandma will confirm she is there and put the kids on the phone, but that is it.
She finally shows up with the kids a couple of days later. She just walks into the house, says “eff you,” walks into the bedroom, and won't talk to him. 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.
Probably not a ridiculous reason to divorce someone, but ridiculous behavior that would cause you to divorce someone.
Wikimedia Commons, Santeri Viinamäki
32. Wearing a Dodged Bullet
The husband was running a perfectly law-abiding weapon store, where of course everyone with a license to possess a weapon could buy one (e.g. hunters, police, etc.). After a state inventory audit, some of his stock wasn't registered appropriately, so he was charged with some misdemeanor of unlawful possession of arms, etc.
Now his wife freaked out and asked for a divorce. The poor guy tried to convince her that it was only a logistics error and that he wasn't a criminal overlord etc., but she wouldn't hear of it. The funniest part of the story was that when they were at the divorce court, she accused him of wearing a necklace with an actual bullet, which of course was a decommissioned and harmless bullet.
The guy responded, following my instructions, "I have to market my business somehow, you know," and everyone, including the judge, laughed. Of course, all charges were eventually dropped and they divorced—let's say favorably for both parties. But I still like to say that he dodged a bullet; this lady didn't trust her hubby at all!
33. Because I Got High
Paralegal here. I still remember an early case I worked on. This man divorced his wife for her bingo addiction. She went to bingo 10 to 12 times per week. She was 82, he was 86. But that wasn’t even the all-time greatest case. That went to this 20-something couple, who wanted to divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences.
What was behind it? He kept taking from her weed stash when she wasn’t home.
34. Cheapest House on the Block
I’m not a lawyer, but I did spend six months costing legal aid cases for solicitors in the early 1990s. This included very many divorces. The most notable one was a woman who was 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.
But that wasn't what made it notable. 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 £5. She asked what it was for. It was her share of the house. He'd sold it to his sister for £10 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.
35. Going Mormon
My cousin, well she’s got quite the problem. She can’t seem to be happy being single and has an intense desire for that fairytale happily married life. A few years back, she starts talking with this Mormon bloke and claims to be in love with him, has met him lots of times, spends hours on video calls with him and the like.
After a few months, he proposes, and she sorts out her first passport, leaves her son with an ex-boyfriend—he was as close to being this kid’s dad as possible—and swears up and down to the rest of her family that she isn’t going to get married. The first time outside the country, possibly the first time she ever met this guy, as she lies to us about this stuff a lot. She gets married.
Before this, she converted to Mormonism and told us how she feels so connected to them, which she hasn’t felt for so long. She never goes out, so it’s kind of hard to feel connected to anything. But? She still drinks wine and smokes. She spends a while talking about being happily married and how she imagines her dad would be so happy for her.
Spoiler alert, he wouldn’t be by any means. He hated religion and Americans, and this guy was super religious and a yank. Her father would be rolling in his grave. About a year later, she’s in the process of getting the unconsummated marriage annulled. Straight up annulled, no divorce, just throwing the friggin’ thing away.
There was also the time she got catfished. One of the pictures was featured on gay blogs for years and was of a bodybuilder who was not only fairly local but actually married with a kid. She claimed to have seen the guy, who said he was a former soldier, firefighter, and a model. He did have a connection to the fire service, but he was far from a sculpted Adonis he pretended to be.
I think she still spoke with him for a while after discovering he was using stolen photos.
36. A Big Pile of Dirt
I am a lawyer that handles quite a few divorces (among other things), and I've seen all sorts of reasons for marriages ending. The only thing that is consistently true and relevant to this question is that it is NEVER for just one reason, and it is NEVER one-sided. In fact, I've started telling potential clients in our initial interview that I am well aware that I am going to uncover some dirt on my client in the process.
I don’t say it to scare them, but to put their mind to ease that I've seen worse. The fact that you haven't been 100% an angel up to this point doesn't scare me, and I'd rather find out about it from my client beforehand, then later on from their spouse at the worse possible moment. All this is just to say that when you hear about people divorcing over one stupid argument or mistake, usually that's just the straw the broke the camel's back.
That said, some of the lighter straws I've seen included a guy who was 100% convinced that his wife (our client) was actually a lesbian in love with his sister and just using him as a cover. He also claimed that she was screwing me to pay for her legal fees, and was also hooking up with every male whose phone number was in her call history.
There was a woman who divorced my client because he was "too sad" after his father passed on last year. My client had to break down her door to get his father's ashes a few weeks after he left the house and she refused to let him back in or give them to him. Then there was the woman who claimed my client was emotionally abusive towards her, because he refused to yell at her.
His worst crime? He sat in silence ignoring her when she screamed at him. He had all this recorded, time-stamped for the dates and times she insists the incidents occurred, and she's listened to them and his complete silence as she goes on tirades. She insists this proves her point that he was "emotionally distant and abusive.”
37. Surprise!
I heard this one while moving for deployment. This guy signs over power of attorney to his mother before leaving. As soon as he was out of the country, his mother files for divorce from HIS wife because the mom and wife never got along. This dude is in the middle of the desert and didn't know until he came back three weeks after the fact.
38. D’oh!
This couple, each of them about 27 years old, went into my friend’s office crying. My friend said it looked like they were crying for hours, so he decided to take them in and hear the case and whatever. Apparently, the woman, who was still crying, had asked the man to buy her cookie dough so they could make cookies for her friend’s get-together.
The woman said he bought cookies from the grocery store bakery, and she flipped out on him, saying that he doesn’t care about what she wants. The man filed for divorce the day of.
39. Who Gets the Millennium Falcon?
Not the most outrageous, but I had a client incur about 20 additional billable hours because he and his ex-wife were battling and went to trial over their Star Wars collection. That’s a lot of money. This was the only issue at trial, as they were able to work out custody, child support, and the house, without a problem, yet the Star Wars collection went to trial.
The judge ended up splitting it in the jerkiest 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 it was 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.
40. A Happy Ending
My mother-in-law divorced my father-in-law after 36 years of marriage which included him caring for her as she dealt with a chronic illness, him being a great father to her two sons from a previous marriage, as well as raising his own son with her (my husband). Her reason for the split was because he didn't pay attention to her.
It was pretty heartless, as he is on the autism spectrum and was working three jobs to pay for her shopping addiction. But she had another dark reason for the divorce. She met a guy at a bar, started sleeping around, got approved for disability, and moved out the day her back pay was deposited—about $20k. Needless to say, my father-in-law was completely taken off guard by this.
She'd never told him anything was that wrong. He thought they were happy. She doesn't talk to my husband or me anymore, because when we found out she'd been cheating on my father-in-law a lot of weird stuff came out. We found out she’d cheated in the first place because she demanded my father-in-law meet the new guy after the divorce.
When he said no, the guy yelled at my mother-in-law for making him look stupid. She told us other things about him that made us worry a bit. She was in a six-year abusive relationship when she was 16 with a guy that almost ended her life. She has scars on her neck from it and met my father-in-law a year after she'd finally left the abusive guy.
We pointed out that the new guy seems abusive and encouraged her to be careful. Divorces suck, but my father-in-law is now happily married to a lady from his hometown in Mexico, while my mother-in-law is no longer with the guy she left him for.
41. Dumpster Divorce
He was frustrated by her hoarding. She was frustrated by his utter uselessness. He filed for divorce, and she was my client. Division of property? Well, her prized possession was a room or two full of scrapbooking 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 scrapbooking 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 scrapbooking 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. I thought it was over, but I was wrong. These two also fought over a toilet brush, as he didn't want to have to buy one when he moved out.
I politely instructed my client to "give him the freaking toilet brush."
42. The Internet Devil Strikes
This is too late to the party, and I'm not a divorce lawyer, but my brother got divorced because he used the internet for banking. They were a religious couple, and she went on a speech that said the internet is the devil. She asked him to stop, but he needed to use the internet for work functions. Aghast that he had an uncontrollable addiction, she took the kids and fled the state the next day.
We thought the whole time that there was a deeper issue and that she was just using the internet as cover, but nope. The proceedings are over, and that's what she claimed in court, when she was going after everything he had and custody. She actually thought it was a slam dunk.
43. Flip-Flopping Through Marriage
Either stupid or brilliant depending on your perspective, but: This husband was getting sick of his wife—and also having an extramarital affair—so he pretended to go bankrupt to try to induce her to leave him. His wife got pretty ticked off at him but decided to try to help him out with his "failing" business instead.
The husband then revealed it was all a ruse and he had just been "testing" his wife, hardy har—he didn't actually want to separate anymore. Then the wife got genuinely ticked off and decided to initiate a divorce, due to his overall deceitfulness. The husband then attempted to hide his assets during the separation process, but their daughter ratted him out because, y'know, screw that guy and all.
The wife, therefore, cleaned her husband out during the separation. She got significant spousal and child support, plus two and a half out of three properties. The husband also lost his mistress due to actually being semi-broke, or at least broke for a supposedly rich guy. The wife remarried shortly afterward.
44. Payday Coming
Not necessarily the most outrageous reason, but definitely some outrageous conduct. The saddest divorce we were hired to do, but ended up not doing for reasons that'll become apparent, was a woman in her 50s whose husband had really just let himself go. He was over 400 lbs., just did his third triple bypass, refused to do ANYTHING different, and just smoked and drank all day long while watching TV.
His doctors told him he was going to die in six months if he didn't change his behavior. He told them they were all morons and could get lost. Meanwhile, his wife was this successful woman who made over $10k a month on her HOBBY, while making six figures in her normal job. She lost all respect for him, all desire, and all love for him by watching his decline.
For the past few years, she could barely stand him. It also sounded like there was some verbal mistreatment going on, where he constantly accused her of cheating on him, which was gaslighting her, because he was cheating himself throughout their entire marriage—and spending all his money on illicit substances, the usual.
His accusations ramped up considerably once she lost about 200 lbs. through diet and exercise. We were working on her divorce, and one of her provisions was that he keeps her as the beneficiary on his life insurance, for obvious reasons. She assured us he would agree to everything she suggested in the paperwork if she talked him through it.
One day, we get an email from her saying to halt the divorce. Not because they were reconciling, but because he refused to keep her as the beneficiary on his life insurance if they divorced. So, she stopped the divorce. He was in such poor health that by staying married and keeping the policy, she would inevitably get the benefits within months. Yikes.
In another case, the opposing party (husband) found out that his wife, who was in her late 70s, was terminally ill. He started using EVERY tactic in the book to delay the final hearing so that she would die before their divorce was finalized, and he wouldn't have to lose anything. We just got another where the couple agreed to everything beforehand, signed documents, agreed to dissolution and how to share custody.
Now, the husband has a vengeance boner and wants to trash the dissolution, take everything from her, and take away their kid from her. Why? Because she told him no when he asked for their kid a full day and night ahead of schedule when she had already made plans with the kid.
45. Carrot Doesn’t Come Out
I’m not a lawyer, but this is our morbid family joke. Both of my parents acknowledge that the straw that broke the camel's back for them was a night when my very health-conscious father was making carrot juice in the kitchen after the kitchen was remodeled. He didn't clean up a small spill behind the juicer, and it seeped into the new white countertop and permanently stained it.
Now my siblings and I scream whenever someone mentions anything about drinking juice.
46. Chomp, Slurp, Chew
She was a loud chewer at the dinner table. He developed a complex, and literally needed out as he couldn't bear to eat with her.
47. Nerds Before Birds
I’m not a lawyer, but I was once buying a computer from someone on craigslist. When I got to his house it was full of computers. They were everywhere. There where monitors laying on the floor, and half-built computers laying around, not to mention the fully built computers all over the place. I’m talking expensive gaming computers, not your everyday all-in-one computers.
We got to talking about why he had so many, and the guy said he was just obsessed with them and he confessed that the reason his wife divorced him was that “she said I was too obsessed with my computers.”
48. Little Devils
My colleague handled a case where money was not an issue, but the kids were. Neither parent wanted them.
49. Talking Smack in Three Languages
A 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. Her family spoke English, French, and Spanish, and he could only speak Spanish and English. I guess she got bored of being married to him, and her family basically talked smack about him whilst he was there.
It was only when he recorded a conversation while they were there and got it translated, that he found out what was going on.
50. Blood Pudding, Anyone?
Not a divorce lawyer, but have done marriage therapy. Had a soldier stationed at Guantanamo Bay that met a local. Fell madly in love. They decided to get married so she could come with him back in 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 wildly crying with broken Spanglish. She's trying to explain she didn't know any better. Through the hysteria, he informs me that 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 to hard not to gag. They both said 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.
51. My Hero
My great-grandpa was awful to his wife, but this was in the 1910s and she couldn't leave him—so she planned an ingenious trap. First, she moved out and lived with another man. Then 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, one of the only ways to divorce someone at the time. Although she couldn't read or write, she signed those papers the minute he served her.
Sources: Reddit, ,
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