There’s no doubt in my mind that divorce lawyers probably hear some of the most bizarre details about people’s marriages.
A while back, Reddit user dankph asked: “Divorce Lawyers of Reddit, what’s the most outrageous reason someone filed for divorce?” And the stories range from painfully petty to jaw-on-the-floor-shocking. Here are the most interesting ones:
Some responses also came from this thread because they were just too good to ignore.
1. “I worked in matrimonial law for a year and a half before I had to leave because it just overwhelmed me with how awful humanity is. I’ll never forget filing papers that described her soon-to-be ex-husband’s behavior, including: ‘masturbates on the living room couch without closing the door and leaves sticky tissues everywhere’ with further description of their three young children potentially walking in on him.”
2. “A woman was divorcing my client because he was ‘too sad’ after his father died 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.”
3. “I used to work as a file clerk for a divorce attorney. Our client was trying to get full custody of her child because her husband was ‘dangerously neglectful of their son.’ How was he being dangerously neglectful? By serving spaghetti (instead of turkey) for Thanksgiving. I wish I were making this up.”
4. “He got drunk at the wedding, which she did not like, so she decided to divorce him right after the honeymoon (which she went on without him). Moreover, this was all an elaborate scheme of divorce robbery because the guy was loaded, and so was his entire family. They were loaded because they were a family of EXCELLENT lawyers, and he was a third-generation lawyer with all the smarts and experience of his predecessors combined. Let’s just say it did not go well for her.”
5. “Not my story, but a friend who is a divorce lawyer: While a man was having sex with his wife, a condom fell out of her. They never used condoms.”
6. “I represented an adult film actress/webcam model who filed for divorce from her husband, who also had the same job. He would create gay adult content 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…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.”
7. “He said she was trying to put a curse on him or something. I only stood in for this matter once (I think for the pre-trial), so I didn’t know all the ins and outs, but he believed she had seen a witch doctor and put something under his mattress.”
8. “My dad was a divorce lawyer. He had a client who wanted to divorce her husband for two reasons: He did not have enough hair on his chest and he did not drive fast enough.”
“Keep in mind this was in the ’70s when chest hair was a bit more important.”
9. “At my last firm, we did general law, which included probate. A couple did their will with our firm. We drafted everything. They were in their mid-70s to early 80’s and married for 40 years total. Divorced and remarried once. The husband wanted us to put in his will that his kids get his entire estate, but he did not want us to tell his wife. He wanted to have us make a secret will and a fake will. The fake will would be signed with her present, and then he wanted us to shred it, and he would come in later to sign the ‘real will.’ He accidentally copied his wife on the email that had all of this information disclosed in it. Two weeks later, he called us and said he wanted to file for divorce instead.”
10. “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 the husband was on the edge of the tub. They start to argue about their relationship, so the wife reaches down, pulls her tampon out, and flings it at her 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.”
11. “The groom said, ‘I didn’t like her anymore,’ just two days after being married.”
12. “Because the wife spent $42,000 on psychic hotlines.”
13. “The husband taught the parakeet certain cuss words for his wife. The bird lives with him now.”
14. “I still remember an early case that I worked on where the man divorced his wife for her bingo addiction. She went to bingo 10 to 12 times per week. She was 82, he was 86.”
15. “My boss’s wife just filed for divorce because he used too much toilet paper. She was a super-thrifty coupon lady, and would even listen when he was in the bathroom to see if he was using too much.”
16. “The clients were two 20-somethings. They were irreconcilable because he kept smoking her weed stash when she wasn’t home.”
17. And lastly, “One that sticks out to me was when the husband and wife were both playing an online role-playing game like The Sims, except more adult. Well, the wife got very heavily involved in the game, spending 10 hours a day playing, and she wouldn’t stop. The breaking point was when the husband set up a fake avatar to see what she was doing and found her avatar having sex with some random guy’s avatar.”
Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
Divorce attorneys, what’s the wildest reason YOU’VE had clients split up over? Let us know in the comments, or, if you prefer to remain anonymous, leave a submission in the form below.
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