"Till death do us part" simply isn't always true. From cheating spouses to conniving exes, divorce is a messy, emotional time—and it seems to bring out the absolute worst humanity has to offer. Here are Redditors' most horrific divorce stories.
1. Cheaters Never Prosper
I knew my ex wife was cheating but didn’t tell her that I knew. Took her out to dinner and I casually asked questions about who she had been spending time with while I was at sea, she barely worked so she had to spend her time doing something. She failed to mention the guy that had been staying at my house for nearly 2 months, the guy she had to call the authorities on just to get to leave because I was coming home in 2 days.
Soooo I slid her a copy of the official report that was filed for the incident and watched as she crumbled over the fact she had been caught, and I didn’t have to say a word.
2. Keeping a Tally
Upon my return home from Afghanistan, my new wife of less than a year admitted to me that she had slept with 23 different guys while I was gone. Needless to say, our marriage ended real quick…
3. Enjoying the Music a Little Too Much
I work as a clerk at a family courthouse. One bride slept with the DJ who was working at her wedding. This literally happened during the reception. It was a new record for our office pool. The divorce was about two months after the wedding, when the husband was finally told about it by the maid of honor.
4. Now That’s What You Call Commitment
A woman in my town is a Principal at a local elementary school. She is in her mid 70s (at least). I asked someone why she doesn't retire and they explained that she and her spouse went through a very contentious divorce about 15 years ago and she has to give him a portion of her retirement so she has decided to NEVER retire so he gets nothing ever!
5. Subtle, But Effective
My ex-wife gave me all my Blu-Rays back, which was nice. A year later I realized she had removed one disc from each of the Trilogy box sets.
6. Meeting Expectations
My wife started to feel "trapped" just a few months into our marriage—as in, my expectation of monogamy was too much for her to handle. So she discovered polyamory, decided that she wanted to be polyamorous with her boss, and retroactively decided that our marriage was an open one. She was pretty surprised when I divorced her.
7. A Slight Change of Plans
A relative of mine was forced into a shotgun wedding because he accidentally got his girlfriend pregnant. Then the bride had a miscarriage, so they got a divorce a month later.
8. The Road To A Quick Divorce
My cousin and her first husband got divorced after about a month because one of them lived in Houston and the other in Dallas, and they had never really agreed to how they were going to deal with that little problem. I'm sure there were other things going on behind the scenes too, but that was the official story.
9. A Slightly Important Detail to Leave out...
Years and years ago, my uncle's girlfriend planned a wedding for the two of them, sent out invitations to all of their friends and family members, and then didn't even bother to tell him about it until the week of. As in, he was not even aware that they were getting married, let alone that everything had already been planned and arranged.
I don't remember the whole story about what made her decide to do this, but he ended up going through with the ceremony just to avoid the embarrassment. He then quietly got the marriage annulled and broke up with her immediately after.
10. Setting an Example for the Baby
When I got home from work, she would be going to work and I would be hanging out with our baby. Around the time he was one and a half, she started going to the bar with co-workers. I was fine with it because it wasn't often, maybe one night a week, and she came back home by 12. It quickly got up to coming home between 2:30 am and 4 am, plastered, four to six times a week.
She started mentioning this one co-worker a lot and how cool he was. My paranoia got the better of me and I checked her phone one booze-induced coma night and she had been trying to get said co-worker to meet with her at an abandoned gas station a few miles up the road while she was on her way out.
I approached her and asked what she planned to do when he showed up, "just hang out!" to which I replied, "While you’re drunk, at 2 am, behind an abandoned gas station..". She never admitted to it, but that, a lot of not-even-subtle clues and people I knew seeing her out at the bar gave me all I needed to know.
11. Getting Straight to the Point
I know two couples who got married for the sole purpose of being able to hook up with each other, since they were both very religious and didn’t believe in premarital relations. Both marriages lasted a combined one year.
12. Choose Your Partners Wisely
I'm a divorce lawyer and I currently have a client who makes a sizeable salary, north of $200k/yr. His spouse has separated but will not leave the matrimonial home, despite her overtures that she wants to become independent. She has actively depleted the joint bank account of hundreds of thousands of dollars, which she has siphoned into personal bank accounts.
She uses the money to finance her lifestyle of expensive yoga classes, buying luxury purses and shoes, eating at fine dining establishments and spending recklessly to deplete her net family property. She was literally taking every penny that he deposited from his paycheque on the advice of her lawyer, which she then used to pay for her lawyer.
He was literally financing opposing counsel. That has now stopped. She will not allow him to see the kids when he comes home from work, or even read them bedtime stories. She refused to allow him to take his sons to see their grandfather in hospital, who passed on shortly thereafter, and she continues to alienate the children from the paternal aunts and grandmother.
She has no extensive family that still speaks to her. Both her and her counsel are bloodthirsty. Even though they signed a prenup, she wants to take half of the $2.5 million home, wants full custody of the kids, and wants him to pay her $8,000 a month in spousal support. She could work full time earning as much as $95,000/yr, but she'd rather live life like a real housewife.
I just took this file on, but it has the makings of a nasty divorce already. I want nothing more than to take her and her counsel down hard. Files like this make my blood boil, because sometimes other lawyers take stupidly aggressive positions to force the matter into litigation. Perhaps, I'll provide an update in the near future.
13. The Joke’s on You!
Some friends of mine who had been dating for a few months got married in Las Vegas as sort of a drunken joke. The girl then found out that she would lose a lot of her trust fund if she got married. A gaggle of four lawyers were flown in and got a very quick retroactive annulment on her behalf. The marriage lasted a total of a whopping four days, although legally it was declared to have never happened at all.
They dated for three more years after this incident, and then eventually broke up.
14. Nothing to Lose
My dad basically appealed custody over and over, bringing in new friends to back his character. This forced my mum to seek a barrister/lawyer to defend herself. My dad is/was a massive problem gambler—had no permanent home whatsoever and was pretty bad at practical life stuff (nutrition, education, etc.).
This forced my mum to dig into all her savings to pay court fees to keep a child anybody with a sound mind would know is much more capable than my dad. So in the end my dad basically made my mother bankrupt trying to get custody over a child he wouldn't have been able to raise.
15. When the True Colors Came out
He became a totally different person after we got married. He became very controlling and manipulative. I was expected to do all the chores and make dinner every night (this after working a highly stressful 40 hour/week job). He became verbally and emotionally abusive to me. Constantly thought I was cheating on him.
If I had anything other than a smile on my face at all times I was ridiculed. Everything that happened was always my fault. He was never wrong. He was always the victim. I didn't want to go home because I didn't know if I was walking into Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. Had him go to two different counselors and didn't make it more than two sessions with each because he didn't need therapy.
I decided to stop it all when I started to become depressed from the constant stress. I am a normally very happy positive person and I became a walking bunch of nerves. I couldn't get past the belief that anyone who truly loved me would never treat me like he had been. Have been divorced for six months now. Although I get lonely sometimes, I would still take loneliness a thousand times over being back with him.
EmpowHER
16. There’s Always Collateral Damage to Marital Strife
My dad and his second wife did not even make it a full four months before she left and I never saw or heard from her again. She said that she was going to give me an old Nintendo 64 for my birthday. She never did…
17. A Less Than Ideal Family Situation
My mom was a real piece of work in this department. My mother is mentally unstable and was very abusive to me as a child. When my father finally moved out and asked for a divorce I was luckily old enough (13) to legally decide who I wanted to live with. I, of course, chose my dad and that enraged my mother.
By court order, she was allowed to live in our four bedroom house while me and my dad had to move in with my aunt into a two bedroom house. We lived there for four years while my mom did everything she could to slow down the divorce proceedings. During this period my father was court ordered to pay the mortgage and utilities on the house my mother was living in.
She would leave all the lights on and crank the heat with the widows open just to drive the utility bills up. She once left the garden hose on for a week into a drain to even make the water bill outrageous. When it was finally all over and she had taken my dad for as much as she could she decided to sue him for my college fund.
I called her and told her if she went through with it I would never speak to her again, she told me if I wanted it I needed to move in with her before I turned 18 so she could get child support from my dad. I refused, she won the case for the money and my dad had to use most of what was left of the fund to pay for her lawyers costs.
18. Off to a Great Start
My husband decided to start having an affair within three months of our marriage. I found out about six months later. He still maintains that he did absolutely nothing wrong, because he had just thought that it would be long over before I ever found out. Oh, and we had a 6-month-old baby at the time. What a catch of a man!
I started the divorce proceedings at the first possible moment after waiting the one-year minimum.
19. Absolutely Awful
The husband was severely screwed over by the wife purely because she could. She divorced him in a no-fault state, providing her with immediate out-of-pocket support from him until the end of the divorce, as well as all bills paid. Now this doesn't sound so bad... if the wife wasn't an abusive, vindictive, bipolar monster.
He's a gentleman, you know... the good husband type. But she just kept at it, arguing with family, hurting children, attempting to end take her own life with sleeping pills, the works. The woman was an absolute train wreck. The worst thing was, there was nothing he could do about it. No one would really help him out of the mess.
Due to the laws of the state, despite firing four attorneys, and telling all of them "oh just send the attorney costs to my husband, have him pay," the court just shrugged their shoulders. The divorce carried on for nearly four years because the state did not require a settlement be made, so she just kept declining all of his offers while continuing to bask in free income.
It even got to the point where he was offering half a mil over the next four years and she said "go screw yourself". Over those four years his appearance and personality was like that of a president serving a term. It was absolutely awful to see.
20. John McCry
My mom and dad split when I was 4 years old. When they finalized the divorce, it was a week before Christmas when I was 8. My dad got custody and after Christmas dinner and stuff, he put me and my sister to bed. An hour or so later I could hear my dad crying. I went out to hug him. He was watching Die Hard on TV. I sat and watched with him. So now every year, we watch Die Hard together.
21. The Price of Admission
One of my friends from college filed for divorce just 10 months after her wedding. They were never really a good match for one another, and everyone except for the two of them was always able to see that from a mile away. Honestly? I think that she just wanted to have a wedding and be a "princess for a day" in front of all her family and friends. Once she realized that she actually had to then keep the guy around, she quickly started having second thoughts.
22. Second in Command
Phone dinged, I checked it, (same phones no case both charging next to each other.) The text said, "I miss you too" and was from a girl he was dating when we were separated. Fast forward a few months to when he deploys. Check his email because at this point I know something is up. Find emails, so I contact the mistress.
She was very transparent with me and told me that basically, they were dating before he even met me, which means he courted me, asked me to marry him, married me then we had a child together all while he was still seeing her. We separate for a year, he dates her exclusively, we get back together, and he maintains a relationship with her. All of this without me knowing.
I found this all out while I was a month away from birthing his second child and he's getting shot at in Afghanistan. We decide to work through it, but I never could get over the fact that he cheated on me for four years and had no problem hiding it from me, and only came clean because I found out, as in, he had no intention of coming clean.
When he returned home he confessed to many other times with other people. After three subsequent years of him refusing to go to counseling so that we can ACTUALLY deal with it, he tells me he wants a divorce (a month before we are supposed to get a permanent change of station to Alaska). Moved back home with the kids, filed for divorce and life is amazingly better now. Screw that guy!
23. A Honeymoon They’ll Never Forget
A relative of mine had a marriage that lasted for less than three weeks. They had been together for a couple of years and had even gone to premarital counseling at their church for a few months to get ready for the big change. Their wedding was super lavish and it was clear to everyone that a lot of prep and money had gone into it.
At their wedding, they announced that they were expecting their first child. Everything seemed great. Unfortunately, the whole thing blew up as soon as the wife discovered that he had been cheating on her for almost their entire relationship, and with multiple different women. She found this out while in a foreign country on their honeymoon, four months pregnant.
I know from her mom that she had complications in her pregnancy that they attribute to the stress of all of this.
24. Raise the Roof
My cousin showed me a picture of her hooking up with the male stripper at her bachelorette party.
25. Worth It for the Souvenir
My marriage lasted just a little over a year. I’m a soldier, and I had married my girlfriend of four years right before getting deployed. She didn't have any job or hobby to keep herself busy while I was gone. Unfortunately, she ended up getting into illicit substances during that period of time, and then I got her pregnant during my two week leave in the middle of the deployment.
She felt so trapped by all of this pressure that she had talked me into agreeing to give up our child for adoption once she was born. I was so blindly in love with her that I would have agreed to darn near anything that she suggested. She ended up leaving me a week after our daughter was born and canceling the adoption, taking our child back from the adopting parents.
To make a long story short, she then soon got back into substances—which I’m pretty sure she wasn't on while pregnant with our daughter—and had two more kids with whoever her dealer was at the time. After a while, Child Protective Services ended up stepping in and giving me full custody of my daughter. Not a day goes by when I don’t look at my daughter and wonder what in the world I was thinking when I agreed to my wife’s original plans.
I'm so glad to have this wonderful, crazy, little girl in my life.
26. I Guess She Saw It Coming
My former next-door neighbor got married not too long ago. Less than two months later, she moved out and said that he was abusive and had a drinking problem. Then, just a couple of weeks later, he fatally shot their new neighbor through his front door after an escalating feud involving the neighbor's dog allegedly getting shot by a bow and arrow.
27. Hogging the Attention
I used to work at a wedding venue. At one wedding, the groom was from Arkansas, and the bride had specifically asked that there be no "Call of the Hogs" during the wedding speech. For those who don’t know, "Call of the Hogs" is a traditional cheer that’s popular at the University of Arkansas, and it has become a fairly common custom for many alumni to perform the cheer at their weddings.
In spite of the bride’s clear request to the contrary, one of the groomsmen proceeded to do the cheer during the ceremony anyway. The bride was absolutely furious and started storming back towards the bridal party. Before she was able to make it away, her would-be husband smacked her across the face in front of everybody, and said that they were going to be getting this marriage annulled the next morning.
Honestly, she might have not dodged the smack, but she definitely dodged a bullet.
28. Not What He Signed up for
When I worked at a college, I saw this one couple get married because the girl was pregnant and she wanted to have the baby in wedlock. They quickly got an annulment three months later when the baby was born a different color than either of his parents…
29. You Make Me Feel So Young
My next door neighbor got married when she was 19 years old, and got divorced when she was 20. Her parents had gotten divorced while she was dating the guy, and so she moved in with him a couple of months into the relationship. They had been together for less than a year before they decided to tie the knot. Super young couples together for such short periods of time almost never work out.
She didn't learn her lesson though, because she got engaged to someone else barely a year later. Not surprisingly, though, they called it off and broke up before actually getting married in the end. Sadly, that's actually the happy story of their family, because her younger sister got pregnant at 16 to a guy in his 30s, and then a couple of years later got pregnant by him again and married him.
He's currently in prison for statutory assault of a 13-year-old. It happened while they were together, but they're still married with two children and she defends him on social media all the time.
30. Whoops
My dad divorced his first wife and promptly took his name off of all the credit cards. She proceeded to buy all kinds of stuff, thinking she'd stick him with the bill. She was not happy to hear she was the only one on the account.
31. He Can Take It, But He Can’t Dish It out
A guy and a girl met on vacation and had a brief romance, then decided to keep it long distance for the next few years. There were a ton of red flags right from the start, but it all got exponentially worse the second they got married and moved in together just a few months ago. Basically, he didn't do anything around the house, and he also didn’t work—she earned all of the money and paid for all of his stuff.
On top of that, he then squandered her money on a regular basis, even when she specifically asked him not to. She actually had to put a limit on his phone contract at one point because he just would not take any of her requests seriously. I don't think he had planned to leech on her, I think he's just an inconsiderate jerk. They're currently waiting it out because she's too nice to send him back, but I have a strong feeling that this guy won’t be around too much longer…
32. A Turn for the Worse
She told me that the voices were telling her to hurt the kids. It broke me. This was after four years of treatment for schizophrenia. She wasn't getting better, only worse. I had to divorce her.
33. Things Are Seldom as They Seem
One week, a couple of friends of mine seemed like the perfect, happily married newlyweds. Then, next thing I know, the wife has shared a pic of herself on the beach in a wedding dress being lifted in the air by some Goth-looking long-haired dude, described in the caption as her new groom. No idea what happened.
34. Revenge Is a Dish Best Served...Cheap?
Not me, but a guy I worked with 10 years ago. I worked with a guy who really stuck it to his ex wife. When I met him he was working in a sporting goods store making 8 dollars an hour. He was not really like the other retail monkeys. He was older, well groomed, well spoken, clearly educated, all of that stuff.
One night after work he gets into his car, and I couldn't help but notice that it was a very very nice newish Jaguar. I asked him how he could afford it and he explained it to me: He had been an SVP at a well known fortune 50 company, pulling in 300k with bonuses and stock options. He was married but the marriage fell apart and in the divorce, she demanded that she get the house and 40% of his wages.
He and his lawyer somehow managed to get her to agree to let him keep the house in exchange for 75% of his pay. As soon as she took the settlement he quit his job and looked for a minimum wage job. He said to me that "She gets 75% of nearly nothing now". He had other money stashed away, so he didn't even need the job and he had the house and its equity as well.
Also, no kids, so there was no child support. Just alimony. She was furious of course, and tried to re-sue him but failed at least once and when she claimed that the settlement was not keeping her in the life style she was accustomed to, he simply told the judge that the divorce was really hard on him and he could no longer do his old job as a result.
At least at that time, she did not manage to get out of the deal. Not sure how it all ended. But I thought it was brilliant if not crazy-level spiteful. He was a good employee too...good with customers, showed up on time, no absenteeism or anything like that. He claimed he loved each payday because it reminded him how little she was getting.
35. Honesty Is the Best Policy
I was married for six years and caught my husband cheating. His response was to just shrug and say, "I got nothing". That was it.
36. For This Couple, It’s the Least Wonderful Time of the Year
My friend married this woman after years of dating. They had only been married for about six months when, on their first Christmas as husband and wife, he bought her a present and she got him nothing in return. Later that night, she left their house without an explanation and didn’t come back until the next morning.
Apparently, she had made an account on some dating site earlier that day, met a guy, and slept with him that same night. She came clean to my friend the next day, and that was the end of their six-month marriage.
37. Lawyers Can Go Mad, Too
I worked at a firm that was subpoenaed as part of a divorce between a partner at the firm and a partner at another major firm. The woman issued more than 70 subpoenas to banks, firms, investment companies—you name it—because she was convinced he had squirreled away $20+ million overseas behind her back.
It got so bad that she dug up receipts from 25 years ago to try to put together this grand conspiracy puzzle. In the end, after she racked up $1.5 million in judicial fees, and seven different lawyers, the judge said this is ridiculous—there was no conspiracy, and you are not entitled to a portion of this phantom $20 million.
Mind you: this was a major firm partner who was acting this way. She made millions per year in her career. But she apparently lost her mind.
38. Now That’s Just Cruel
My ex and I separated before the divorce. She agreed to watch the dog while I found a new place. She had the dog put down instead.
39. A Very Worldly Woman
A girl who I went to high school with has four kids from her first marriage. They got divorced when they were in their early 40s, and she then decided that she wanted to get married again. She wanted a religious family man, and she somehow became convinced that Nigeria was the place to go to find that kind of a person.
So, she starts chatting up Nigerian guys all over Facebook. When she finally found one that she liked, she arranged to fly over there. She then actually went through with marrying this random guy she had only ever spoken to a couple of times through social media via her Facebook husband search. After a few months of her sending money to him upon her return home, she is unable to afford to do so one month because she has four kids to worry about.
He freaks out, and they wind up getting their marriage annulled. But wait! There's MORE! A year later, she's on her way back to Nigeria again because she has found another guy to marry online. This time, she goes over there once to visit, comes home, and then basically tells the guy, "I am not giving you any money until we have been married for a year".
She goes back over again within six months to marry him. A month after getting home, she finds out that she's pregnant. All is well, but she now realizes that she will not be able to send him any money, because she now has four kids to take care of, as well as TWINS along the way, who obviously have to come first. He gets upset and they quickly wind up divorced.
She later finds out that he had been chatting up other women from around the world online, and getting money from all of them, the entire time that they were together. She also found out that he was only planning to use her to get a Green Card so he could move to the United States. I honestly don't feel bad for her.
I do, however, feel bad for her six kids who have had to witness their mom repeatedly making such outrageous and stupid decisions. I have no idea how the heck she was able to afford all of those expensive plane tickets halfway across the world. Either way, she has since given up on her grand Nigeria strategy. Instead, she now has her sights set on Jamaica.
So, I am pretty sure that, before too long, we'll all be invited to see a shotgun wedding in Jamaica. Can’t wait!
40. His Bark Was Bigger Than Her Bite
My uncle had married someone after just three months of dating them. He had two dogs and two cats. On their first day living together, she demanded that he get rid of the dogs and replace them with two new ones of her choosing. They were divorced within two weeks.
41. Life Turned Upside Down
During divorce proceedings, when we didn't live together anymore, my wife went to the authorities and filed a frivolous report saying that I "threatened" her. In the report, she wrote my apartment's address as her place of residence. A court immediately issued a restraining order against me, prohibiting me from being in my apartment (that I rented).
While the restraining order was active (several months) I had to live in hotels and Airbnbs, which of course is 2x-3x of normal rent, without having access to my clothes and other stuff. I also was paying the rent for the apartment that was empty all that time (she never actually went there during that restraining order, even though she claimed it as her residence).
The restraining order was lifted as the case was dismissed after she never provided any evidence or even testimony to DA. I didn't sign lease extension in time during this process because I had no information how long the restraining order will be for; even though it was lifted right before my lease expired, I ended up having to move (and pay a broker fee).
Of course this also delayed divorce proceedings because we couldn't communicate while the restraining order was active. Besides that, she refused to sign tax form for "married filing jointly". I ended up filing as "married filing separately," which meant quite a few thousand dollars extra in payment to IRS. This was the biggest case of "screw you over without any gain for me" that I have seen.
42. Going All out, Without Being All in
My neighbor’s daughter got married and threw a huge wedding day bash for everyone that she knew to attend. She spent a total of about 50 to 70 thousand dollars on the event. Then, not even two weeks later, she got divorced. She had been cheating on her husband throughout the engagement, but still wanted to experience her "special day".
I heard later on that she had asked her mom whether she would actually have to live with her husband after they got married. That definitely should have raised some red flags.
43. That’s Quite the Back Story
My parents' divorce seemed simple: dad cheated on mom, mom gets custody of me. Dad didn't like paying alimony and child support to the tune of $2k a month after he gave up rights. Dad had great idea, pay a hitman $15k to kill soon to be ex-wife. Dad goes through with it, idiot actually pays undercover cop the money.
Dad then flys back to Canada (home) and wait for results. International task force is formed to try and detain him. Geraldo Rivera covers story, idiot dad gets apprehended in Toronto and flown back to California. In this process I was three in care of family back down south, mother in protection by the authorities. Dad's family, apparently wealthy, gets good lawyer and he is charged with 17 felonies.
He gets 18 months. After all of this mom still had to sue for divorce it took two years. Mother is ok, is bipolar now and had to move out of state. I moved back after the army. Father is out just not allowed in country, never met him. Have talked four times. Found out when I was 18, after issue in the army.
44. Having Second Thoughts
I’m not sure how long it took for the divorce to technically be complete, but I once went to a wedding where the bride didn't go home with the groom afterward. There wasn't any cheating, she had just decided over the course of the evening that she didn't actually want to be an army wife and live that kind of potentially hectic lifestyle.
They were together since long before he enlisted, so I think that part of it was that she just wasn't ready to move away from her family. It did suck, though, that she waited until that day to finally tell anyone about how she felt.
45. Does the End Justify the Means?
My ex-wife, the mother of my three kids, when I caught her cheating: "My boss offered me a higher position in his new company if I slept with him. I had no choice!"
46. Making Some Repairs
A friend of mine bought a house in a small town with his new wife, and he continued to commute one hour each way to work in the nearest city. She worked part-time in the small town. Around the 10-month mark of their marriage, she cheated on him with a local mechanic. That was about five years ago. She's still with the mechanic to this day, but he doesn’t want to commit.
Given her track record though, maybe a commitment wouldn’t be as big a deal as he thinks.
47. A Long Distance Divorce
The shortest-lived marriage I have ever been aware of was my own marriage in 2004. I kissed my wife goodbye for a three-month deployment to Pakistan in March of that year. I never saw her again. After two months of being there, she told me that she wanted to leave me. At the time, there was a loophole in divorce law that one website was exploiting.
It was called Quicksimpledivorce.com, and it basically meant that lawyers in Guam were legally allowed to process uncontested divorces way quicker than it would ordinarily take anywhere else. So, I paid them $800 and sent her the paperwork. We were living in Germany at the time, and she had already signed everything and left for the US before I even made it back home.
The divorce was finalized in August of 2004. What caused it all? I don’t know really, but I honestly feel like she may have been somewhat unhappy even prior to my departure. We had only been married for less than a couple of years, and we kind of rushed into the marriage back in 2002 when I first received orders to go to Germany.
48. Hitting Where It Hurts
My in-laws are mega into food and wine, as in they literally travel the world on food tours, are part of clubs, etc. They told me about a nasty divorce where the husband was the vino aficionado, not the wife, but the wife was ticked off about getting divorced. The husband got all the vintages in their extensive cellar.
However, before he was able to collect them, the wife soaked every bottle to remove ALL of the labels. So technically the vintage was not damaged, but the husband had no way to know what he was drinking for aging and pairing purposes (which is a huge deal to wine drinkers). So I think she got the last laugh on that one.
49. Keeping up Appearances
My cousin married a pregnant woman. Almost immediately after she gave birth, she divorced my cousin and told everyone that he was abusive to her—but I’m pretty sure we all knew that she just didn't want anyone to know that she had gotten knocked up out of wedlock by someone other than my cousin.
50. A Long Road to a Happy Ending
I got married for all the wrong reasons. My dad had just passed on a couple of years before, and my mother and sister collaborated in an act of epic insanity that defies explanation later that same year. I was left completely alone. I was a mess. To shorten a ridiculously long story, I fell head over heels in like with a girl I worked with at the ripe old age of 19.
She was smart and stubborn and genetically incapable of backing down from an argument. We became really good friends. If either of us had possessed any brains whatsoever, it would never have progressed beyond that. But we were young and extremely stupid (redundant, I know) and one day she gave me an ultimatum: either we got married, or she was leaving me forever.
Inadvertently, she pressed the button that was installed by my family a few years before. I was too much of a coward to tell her off, so I spent the next ten years married to her. It wasn't all bad, not at all. We had a lot of things in common, and shared lots of interests and curiosities. But in the end, there was no love.
There was no mutual respect. I wasn't attracted to her. I'd be willing to bet that during the final three years of our marriage, we didn't sleep together more than ten times. I was unable to give her what she wanted from the relationship. I didn't want children, I disliked most of her family and towards the end I was drinking a LOT.
I never got into trouble with the law or with my job, but I would come home every day, put on headphones, and get snot-slinging intoxicated. She was unhappy with the amount of money I made as a computer technician, while she was raking in money hand over fist in her real estate job during the bubble just before the collapse.
She derided me for "not pulling my weight," and when I got laid off it became even worse. She made her parents a bigger part of our life. I got lots of lectures from her parents. Side note: Her dad was notorious for leaving the bathroom door open while using. the facilities. Eventually, we both started cheating on each other.
She was always the smarter half of a pair of idiots, so she eventually filed for divorce. I was so stupid that I probably would have stayed unhappily married, inebriated, broke, and cheating forever. She did me a huge favor by filing for divorce, even though the particulars screwed us both much harder than she intended the divorce to entail.
51. Some People Are Heartless
I witnessed a really bad separation. The wife filed a restraining order on the husband (this is very common, and wasn't a terrible guy but he wasn't great either). A year into the divorce, his mother was dying, and he asked his sister to speak with his ex-wife and ask to bring the kids to see her in the hospital before she passed on.
The wife never did. Instead, she went to the court and said he violated the restraining order by trying to contact her (you can't contact someone through another party). He admitted it and explained the situation, but was found in breach of the order anyway. His mother passed on while he was locked up, and the wife never brought the kids to see her.
52. I Guess That's One Way to Deal With Your Problems
The couple separated ten years ago but didn't officially divorce until a couple years ago. She was going to get his house so he burnt it down then faxed her the transfer of ownership forms. He might be getting locked up for arson though.
53. That's Not in the Job Description
It was the night of her company Christmas party. I had to stay home and babysit our five-year-old son (Grandma was supposed to, but she fell and was in the hospital with a broken hip.) I figured my wife would go and then come home early. Turns out, she was planning to stay the night at a hotel so "she could drink and not worry about driving".
I woke up about 3 am just knowing something was wrong (never happened before) and checked "Find My Phone" to see where she was. She was with her boss at his apartment. Pretty much sucked.
54. A Sudden Change of Heart
We had friends from way back when who moved back to their home state. They were on Facebook, but did not post updates very often. One day, there was suddenly a photo of her marrying someone else. Apparently, she had told her first husband (who was totally clueless) that she wanted a divorce just a few months after they got married, and then she was suddenly remarried to someone new less than a month later.
They had been middle school sweethearts. They got married right after high school. He joined the army and she was going to follow him around the world. Then, seemingly completely out of the blue, it all just changed one day as if none of that had ever happened. Apparently, she wanted to live a stable life and had had enough of the stress of the army, even after such a short time.
55. Crash Landing
I did some consulting work for two divorce attorneys when I was in grad school. Their client was a career airline pilot. His wife worked part time so there was a huge income disparity. It was an ugly divorce. During the process but before the final decree, tax time rolled around. Well, he found the perfect way to get revenger on his ex.
The wife's attorney calls my guys and says, "Her accountant just called. If they can just share their W-2's and file jointly, they each stand to save about $8,000 over married filing separately". My guys took that info to the husband. He says, "Screw her. Losing $8,000 is going to be way worse for her than it will be for me". Cold as ice, man.
56. Too Much to Handle
My ex-wife and I lasted about seven years together, but her first marriage to someone else had ended pretty much right at the one year mark. They were both 19 years old and she was pregnant, so they got married and tried to make their life work on her husband’s $8-an-hour income—with her as a stay-at-home mom with no money, no car, and no friends in the same stage of life that she was in. Day in and day out, the stress drove them apart until they just couldn’t take it anymore and got divorced.
57. Always Put the Seat Down
Came home from working a double shift and found the toilet seat up. Either my wife didn't pee for 20 hours straight or there had been another man in my house. I suspected it was her "gay" friend from work. I also knew that said friend was trying to sell his house, so I called the real estate agent and asked the see his place.
Right inside the front door, I recognized one of her jackets hanging in the mud room. Proceeded to the living room and bam...right on the mantel was a picture of my wife and this guy. Right there. We divorced shortly after. She ended up marrying this guy...then cheated on him...and now they are divorced. Didn't feel bad for him at all.
58. History Repeats Itself
A former friend of mine from back in high school is now in the middle of attaining his second divorce. His second wife was a woman with whom he had cheated on his first wife, while she had also been married to someone else. They had both left their first spouses to be with one another, so obviously they are lovely people.
Apparently, this second divorce is now happening because she recently cheated on her second husband, i.e. my friend, with her now current boyfriend, who she plans to marry soon. This is the second time she’s cheated on her husband, and I’m curious as to whether she’ll cheat on her current boyfriend as well once the two of them tie the knot. Perhaps with one of her ex-husbands? As they say, old habits die hard!
59. Tragic Ending
I saw how divorces can get ugly. My neighbor brainwashed her kids to think their father had molested them, etc... so every-time he came to get his kids they would make it hard (run around the car is one example). Well, one day I came home early from college and the son shot his dad in his car. 10 years old, took his dad's life. They found out that mom was supplying the son with Prozac (not prescribed to him) and she was brainwashing him. They still live next door, and the kid got out at 21 I think.
60. A Very Close Call
My buddy’s dad was diagnosed with colon cancer. He starts going to chemo and his wife starts going out with some other guy. His sister found out his mom was cheating on his dad, so she told my buddy and he sat his dad down and talked to him. Dad confronts cheating mom and she says, "my fortune teller told me that the best way to get over your passing would be to start something new with someone else".
Now mind you, his dad’s not gone, or even on his way to the grave. The cancer is responding well to chemo, and he’s been slowly getting better. She literally tried justifying cheating on him because he might die...She no longer lives in the house and, to the best of my knowledge, has been ex-communicated from the entire family.
61. Thinking Ahead Is Always a Good Idea
A relative of mine got married, and then got divorced a mere six months later. It turns out that they had never seriously discussed whether or not they wanted children prior to getting married. One adamantly wanted children and the other adamantly didn't. This single issue completely drove them apart. They were together as a couple for three or four whole years before getting married, and somehow never managed to even discuss this a single time.
62. A Sentimental Loss
My father built the house I grew up in with minimal help. He spent two years working on it and did the hardwood floors, staircase, bathrooms, and hung every cabinet by himself. Every piece of trim in the house was run through a lathe with his own two hands. He even did the spackling for all the ceilings and all of the paint work.
Then my mom cheated on him for a year and bought him out of the house. Now my mom and step-dad have a pretty sweet place to live, and I can tell it hurts my dad whenever he has to go by to pick up my sister and stand in the entryway of the house that he built and watch their fat dog scratch up the hardwood that he was so proud of.
63. Deployed Outta There
When he was going on deployment, I got that horrible feeling that something was going on. I looked at the phone bill details and found many calls to a phone number that wasn't our friends. With dread, I called that number. The woman who answered was aghast because he told her he was single. My heart dropped even further.
Funny thing about that call, this was not the first time she had been seeing a man that she didn't know was married. She told me that during our conversation. It was surreal. Anyway, he filed for divorce during the deployment and was trying to get it pushed through as quickly as possible. He must have told that new one that he was divorced.
Our kids were 3 years old and 1 year old at the time. It was devastating to me, and I was so clueless back then. Looking back, I realized that the cheating had been going on for a couple of years. I don't know why he didn't break it off with me earlier or why he agreed to try for another child when he was seeing other people.
It took a while to get beyond the pain and betrayal. I'm a much happier person now than I was then, and more well-rested now that the kids are older.
64. At Least They Had One Thing in Common
In this case, the actual divorce is still in progress due to some visa issues. Nevertheless, for all intents and purposes, the relationship between two newlyweds that I know fell apart within the first nine months. Basically, they got married and everything was fine at first. Then, about a month later, she began to get weirdly quiet around him and started acting like she didn’t want to be with him after all.
One thing led to another and, a few months later, he told her that he now thinks of her as more of a sister than a wife. So, I guess they both realized that they didn’t actually love each other after all. That’s always fun...
65. Doesn’t This Guy Have Anything Better to Do?
This is a story from my parents, who are divorce lawyers. So throughout the divorce proceedings, there was a car that was a huge point of contention between the husband and wife. After months and months of saying he would never let the wife have the car, the husband concedes in exchange for something great, like one of their summer houses.
It turns out he had been driving the car for three hours everyday in a big loop around the city, putting thousands and thousands of miles on it basically making it worthless. The amount of planning and spite that went into that was amazing.
66. Over the Hill
My ex-wife and I went up to Big Bear to go snowboarding and spend some time together. We were having issues and I thought to be fun to get away and do something fun together. Let's just say it did not go well. She said she grew up snowboarding, but she never made it down a hill and had a terrible time. So we went back to the cabin and she was pretty much just on her phone, not talking to me.
We make it back and she says she needs to just shower and be alone for a bit. She goes off and I just hang in the den. She left her phone in her purse and it just kept buzzing, so I checked it out because what if someone was trying to reach us or something? I open it up to read a full conversation between her and this guy. It wasn't good.
I read how that day’s texts started and they started really early in the morning. "Hope you're doing ok up there". She said, "We'll see, doubt it. He's trying too hard. He should just know it really doesn't matter. Wish I was up here with you instead". Just the worst stuff. I was pretty devastated and really didn't know what to do.
I knew I didn't want to fight because I realized she wasn't worth fighting for. Grabbed my bag and drove back to San Diego. I took her phone with me, so I could text him and tell him, "We're coming home early, let's meet". I ended up inviting him to a coffee shop and waited for him to show up. When he walked through the door, he saw me immediately and kind of stopped.
I waved him over and wasn't too far from the door, so I told him we need to talk. He comes over and already front loads with the "It's not what you think," blah blah blah speech. I told him that if he wants her, he can take his sorry butt to Big Bear and go get her. Because I was leaving and we're through. See you when we sign the papers. And I left.
Second worst day of my life but I'm glad it happened. Met my lady three years later and we've been together for four years, now engaged. I don't know if you asked this because you yourself are going through this and need comfort and to know what to do. But I hope this is just a hypothetical question and if not, there are better partners out there for us. You just need to let life introduce you to them.
67. What a Way to Go
Not a divorce, but my mom's marriage to her first husband lasted for only about a year, or a year and a half at most. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer and he said that he wanted to marry her before he passed on. So, they got married and took a honeymoon to Hawaii, because they had both always wanted to go there.
68. Like Riding a Bike...
My my two bosses were married and opened a bike shop together. He was the brains and the backbone since he was a former Olympic mechanic, she just sort of balanced the checkbook and worked a couple days a week. Unfortunately, he had no credit and she did, so when they opened everything was in her name.
All he wanted in the divorce was the bike shop and was willing to buy her half. She wanted the bike shop too, but didn't want to buy him out for his half. Mind you, her father passed on and she was sitting on like $300k in the bank (and also had the audacity to take out student loans for her daughter to go to college).
He lost the bike shop and I think he got a little bit of money for his share. What she didn't expect was that all of the high-paying customers would stop going there. They were all his friends or they only wanted him to work on their bikes (so I don't know why she would have had that notion). So he opened up his own bike shop and all of the "regulars" have become regulars at the new bike shop.
69. No Limit
Banker here. I had heaps of situations where joint overdraft/credit card comes up just before divorce to the absolute surprise of one of the parties. Drained down to zero, of course. Especially sad when it's students/young kids who find themselves heartbroken after the break up AND with a debt they can't afford.
70. Coming in Second Place
My ex had been previously engaged to a man with a terminal illness. They were together for many years, but he eventually broke it off "for her own good". She was also abused by her father as a child, and there was a lot of baggage that came along with that too. We were very good friends in high school and reconnected again over 10 years later.
She was completely open with me about everything, so I knew was I was getting into when I started going out with her and when we eventually got married. With a broken heart, and a broken family, she found comfort in an old friend, and what I feel happened was that she mistook safety and normalcy for love. She was way out of my league by many standards, so I tried to give her everything that she could possibly need to make her happy.
Regardless of all that, she was dealing with a lot of mixed emotions. Because of her history, she very rarely enjoyed intimacy and so she always felt like she was letting me down as a wife. Even though I told her that I knew about this going in and never expected anything or pressured her one bit, she still couldn’t shake these negative feelings.
When she needed space, I gave her space. And when she needed somebody to talk to, she always knew that I was the person that she could come to—or, at least, she did at first. After a little while, she started to realize that I just didn't have the history with her that her ex-fiancé had. So, she would begin to call him in the middle of the night for long heart to heart talks when he was at his third shift job.
At first, I tried to be understanding about it, but it hurt. A lot. I knew that she still loved him. We struggled, and even tried separating after a little bit. It was an emotional roller coaster. Things were looking like they were back on the way up when, while lying in bed one night, she asked me "Is it worth it?" I felt my heart drop.
She was referring to all of the ups and downs we had been through over the past year. I said, "Of course it is, I love you. And as long as we love each other enough, it's worth it". She looked back at me with a look of enormous guilt, and that was when I realized that she didn't feel the same way. Not another word was said. I just got up and slept on the couch.
I left for the final time the next morning. That was eight years ago. I've been in a few relationships since, but I never remarried. I don’t know if I ever will, but as of right now I am still too emotionally damaged by all of this to even consider attempting to put myself out there like that again. At least we didn't have any kids or any jointly owned assets, so our divorce was basically just a breakup with a little paperwork.
71. Stubborn as a Mule
My dad actually got screwed by his divorce lawyer during my parents' divorce last year. My dad and my sister have never gotten along, and over the years it got more and more strained. They eventually got into a physical fight which led to a CPS report and him getting hit with a record. Not a very good look.
In this case, my mom was OBVIOUSLY going to get full custody of my sister. My mom also wanted to give my dad the house, and his cars, and his money pit of a boat. The lawyer decided, because my dad is stubborn as heck, that he would string ol' dad along. Lawyer spent HOURS with my dad trying to convince him that Dad could get more money and custody from my mom.
They did a divorce mediation (so they wouldn't have to go to court), and lawyer dragged it out for four hours. The whole time he was riling my dad up, thinking he could get things like the original down payment on the house, half custody of my sister, my mom's car, etc. At the end of the four hours of mediation, Lawyer told my dad he should take the deal that my mom and her lawyer had originally offered in the first place, and Dad signed that. So he paid about $12,000 in completely unnecessary court fees.
72. Hide and Go Seek Gone Wrong
I had a client hide Ziploc bags of ground meat throughout the house (in air vents, the attic, behind water heater etc.) I think it was at least 20-30 bags that took months to find all of them.
73. Fifteen Hours of Fame
My cousin was married for only 18 hours, or something ridiculous like that. From what I understand from having heard her tell the story a few times, there was some kind of really apocalyptic argument on their wedding night over where they should go from there with their lives. This sounds too ridiculous to believe, but it's all true.
The moral of the story appears to be that before you get married, you and your potential spouse should make sure that you both have at least a roughly compatible idea of what you're looking for out of a marriage—you know, things like how many kids you want, when you want to have them, where you want to live, whether you both want to work, money issues, etc. I hate to break it to you, but none of that is stuff that can just work itself out magically over time.
74. In Hot Water
She threw a pot of boiling water at me. It was thrown over our five-year-old son. She threw it at me because I was paying more attention to my son than her, I had just gotten home from work and he asked me to play the Nintendo with him. That was it after that.
75. Worst Case Scenario
We had a couple that were both lieutenant colonels in the Air Force. They had one daughter that was about 11 or 12. Both had graduate degrees and were generally intelligent people. Well, the husband had an affair and things went sour with the relationship. The daughter was at that age when her relationship with the mother was starting to get a little strained, and she mentioned how she wanted to stick with her dad.
The mother absolutely freaked. The first thing she did was go to the local police department and claim the father had been hurting the daughter. They investigated and couldn't find any evidence, so they dropped the case. The mother, still furious, then goes to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and reports the same thing.
The Air Force then suspends the husband from duty and conducts their own investigation, same result no: evidence of wrong doing. The mother then goes to the next state over where the husband is about to be transferred and contacts the local authorities there with the same story. They of course do their own investigation but same result, case is dropped.
Of course, this whole time the daughter has been interviewed a dozen times by psychologists, various therapists, the authorities, the Air Force, and who knows else. The daughter is straight up traumatized by this. Not to mention the harm it did to her father's career. He was basically screwed from any possible promotion just because of the allegations. As well as the fact that infidelity in the army is a big no-no. But that was his own doing.
Well, once word of all this gets back to the judge, he is furious. He's a former Air Force Jag and still has contacts in the ranks. The couple comes in front of him one day for a hearing and he outright tells her she better stop this behavior or he's going to hold her in contempt of court for the maximum amount of time he can lawfully hold her in a cell, contact the DA, contact her Air Force superiors, and basically anything and everything he can do within his power. It was one of the most messed up things I've seen.
76. Nothing Like a Final "Screw You"!
My father went through the process recently. Amounts of money aren't the real concern, but assets must be split as close to 50/50 as possible. My father had a precious set of old, inexpensive kitchenware that his late mother gave him before he even married my mother. When the divorce went to mediation and she told the mediator that she wanted those pots and pans, she got them.
She got them because she was willing to give up something else of equal monetary value (so, something worth less than $10), and was willing to sit in mediation for hours, racking up thousands in lawyer fees for both sides, until my father consented. Again, an even financial trade, but a sentimental trade of overwhelming disparity. Just as a final "screw you".
77. I’ve Got a Little Secret
This happened to my college roommate, who was one of my closest friends at the time. He met a girl in junior year that our ENTIRE group of friends thought was wrong for him. But, alas, love is blind. Fast forward to summer after graduation, and they are planning to get married in the fall. I am asked to be part of the wedding ceremony.
The two of them ended up being apart for most of the summer, as he was busy working while she was still finishing up school and working on putting the wedding together. Finally, the summer was over and the big day arrived, so we all converged on her home town in Colorado. The wedding went down, as did the big reception.
LOTS of money clearly was clearly dropped on this one reception by the two families. We see them off to the honeymoon, and I return to my home sweet home in St. Louis. A week later, I get a call from him asking if he can come stay with me. Despite my confusion and many questions, I said sure. I picked him up at the airport.
He was by himself. At his insistence, we hit the nearest bar, and I immediately got to hear all about how he had just found out that she cheated on him over the summer, but went ahead with the marriage anyway because she had felt pressured by how much her parents were spending on everything. But it the story got even worse from there.
She told him about this pretty much as soon as they were alone together, right AFTER the ceremony. She did not choose to tell him about it at any point during the week to 10 days that they were alone together for BEFORE the wedding. She insisted that they still go on the honeymoon to "work things out". Nevertheless, she refused to be intimate with my roommate, as she still had feelings for the other guy.
So he left and never returned to her. He then had the marriage annulled within six months.
78. Some Things Never Change
My soon to be ex-wife and I separated back in August 2018. She decided to end things with me because she concluded that I would never be able to trust her again after finding out that she had been having an ongoing affair for more than half of our 15 years of marriage. Yeah, that wasn't lovely to discovery.
We tried to reconcile for over two years, during which time she repeatedly told me that she had changed and that she would never lie to me again. Nevertheless, I still kept catching her in lie after lie just as before. Now, she is seriously dating a new guy, since at least this past December. Annnd she's cheating on him with another guy. Remember folks, she has changed!
79. A Matter of Trust
My sister was only married for two weeks. Originally, she was married to a really crazy jerk. She stayed with him for too long, and the divorce has been bitter. Her ex-husband was convinced that she had some kind of a secret trust fund that she was living off of, and he was demanding half of it. There is no such trust fund.
I mean, in what will hopefully be many, many years from now when our dad dies, there may be some money from his trust fund—but he’s very much still alive, so this guy was in no way entitled to any of that. Anyway, a little bit of time passes and my sister hooks up with another guy, who is apparently friends with her ex.
The ex decided to tell his friend about her mysterious "trust fund" and, intrigued by it, this new guy somehow convinced my gullible sister to marry him. New guy was clearly hoping that he would be more successful than his friend was in getting access to the trust fund—you know, the one that doesn’t actually exist.
Within days of marrying my sister, this new husband brought his ex-girlfriend and his child to stay with them—his ex who supposedly needed a place to stay since she was in an abusive relationship. Very shortly after, we learned that new hubby has secretly still been with baby mama for the entire duration of the relationship with my sister—and the guy only went out with her because he thought that she was a trust fund kid.
So, within just a couple of weeks of the nuptials, they were both at each other’s throats. He then threw out a bunch of her stuff, kept all of her expensive belongings, and filed a restraining order against her so that she couldn’t ever come back to the house—despite it having been her house all along. I’m not saying that my sister deserved all of this, but she does have a bit of a habit of stretching the truth.
Let’s just say I’m not fully convinced that these guys just got the idea that there was a secret trust fund out of thin air. Anyway, that’s the story of the time my sister was married for just two weeks!
80. A Cell Phony
I went to a wedding where the bride got intoxicated and the groom picked up her phone to discover that she had been sending naughty texts to a coworker throughout the entire wedding. He told the officiant to not file the paperwork. This occurred towards the end of the reception, as they were leaving to go to the honeymoon suite. The story is that she was very intoxicated.
Her phone kept getting notifications so he decided to pick it up for her. They did not go on their honeymoon and they returned the gifts to everyone. The guests weren’t told about what happened for a couple of weeks, as the bride was trying everything she could to save the relationship. Regardless, it was a great reception!
81. Well, Someone Clearly Miscalculated Something...
One friend’s recent marriage abruptly ended after her husband had an unsolicited outburst at a family dinner, in which he shouted out "I KNOW THAT YOU GUYS KNOW I DO [COKE] ! AND YOU ALL NEED TO GET THE HECK OFF MY BACK ABOUT IT!" Turns out, his wife had not known that; nor had her dad, or anybody else in her family. That is, at least until now!
82. Don’t Get on This Woman’s Bad Side
I met with a scummy lawyer when I was looking to get a divorce. The first lawyer I met with, who had been recommended by a coworker as an amazing divorce attorney, suggested that, if I wanted full custody, I should make sure people knew the relationship was abusive. At first I couldn't believe my ears.
She wanted me to tell my friends/family, make sure the neighbors heard me screaming/begging him not to hit me, document every bruise even if I wasn't sure it came from him. The thing is, my relationship wasn't abusive and I'd already told her that multiple times. I just couldn't convince her to let it go.
She never outright said I should fabricate evidence or anything, but she ignored my repeated statements that there was no mistreatment and kept on with her detailed instructions of how to document any harm that might happen. I got the distinct impression that she was letting me know how to create an abusive relationship out of thin-air in order to get custody of my kids.
I ended up not using her as an attorney, for obvious reasons, and in the end my ex and I shared 50/50 custody of our children and raised them together despite whatever issues we had with each other. I can't help but wonder, though, how many dads lost a relationship with their kids because of her zealous coaching.
83. There's a First Time for Everything
When I got into a big fight with our 19-year-old son and punched him in the face, she understandably left me for that. Me and my son were fine like a month later. It was all because of him playing Xbox all day and not looking for a job. Everybody else in the family was working or going to school. That was the first time I ever lost it like that, then I went to 26 anger management classes, and it was my last. It happened six years ago.
84. Not Exactly Nuclear Physics
A friend of mine in high school worked at a pizza place. One of the delivery drivers was just ridiculously smart when I talked to him. Later I found out that he used to be a nuclear physicist. His wife was also a nuclear physicist, but left him for her lawyer. He got screwed out of his kids, most of the assets, and had to pay a lot towards alimony/child support.
He did the math, and figured out the tips he didn't get taxed on plus his minimum wage delivering pizza was more than keeping his job as a nuclear physicist. Plus he got a little satisfaction not having to pay her as much. The guy was really nice. I always felt bad for him.
85. Taking Things Too Far
It took years for me to finally get to the point where I was done. The last straw was the night he drunkenly screamed at me for hours, at least five hours. Then, he blared loud music for another hour or so, before finally passing out. He'd done it several times in the past, but that time, it broke me. I spent most of the next day crying. That gut wrenching, mournful type of crying. I had a job and moved out six months later. It's been four years, I don't regret a minute.
86. No Going Back
Not a divorce lawyer and haven't had a divorce, but I did surgical rotations with an OB/Gyn, and have personally seen the lowest of the low. In divorce hearings, people say a lot of wild stuff when trying to place blame or get custody. A lot of it is straight up lies. Not all lies can be erased or taken back. The worst one is an accusation of harm.
YOU CAN NOT REDACT AN ACCUSATION OF INTIMATE HARM AGAINST A MINOR. It happened ridiculously more frequently than I can stomach. A spouse, trying to get the upper hand, makes the claim. Now the lawyer/court/state is bound by law to investigate. And suddenly that precious, innocent child that mommy is trying to gain custody of is brought to the OR, sedated, and then investigated inside and out for evidence of harm.
Those are about the only days that nobody in the entire wing says anything. No jokes, no smiles. Just a sick feeling in your stomach that takes away all appetite and joy. So many times, the parent who makes the accusation finds out what they're about to put the child through, and tries to take it back.
Tries to cancel the procedure, tries to say they may have been confused or mistaken, or even admits they flat out lied. Doesn't matter. Once that box is opened, the investigation must continue. Of the couple dozen cases I saw, I can only recall one that supported the accusation.
87. Some People Just Don’t Want to Be Helped
Dad was really awful and mom tried to save him a lot of money during the divorce. They have three kids who were 16, 13, and 8. Dad wouldn't sign ANY agreement my mom’s lawyer produced. It had to be his idea and from his lawyer or it wasn't getting signed. Dad’s lawyer was incompetent and sends an agreement that states he will pay $2,000 a month in child support until all kids are 18.
My mom tried to explain to dad that it needed to be revised to lower every time a child turned 18. Dad called mom a bad name during that negotiation so mom said screw it and signed the agreement. Dad paid the $2,000/month for ten years when he should've been paying around $1,400/month for five years and $700/month for the last five years.
88. What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas
We got married way too quick. It was Vegas where she was from. Came back to NY where I worked and she did nothing at all. She left around X-mas to see family in Vegas. Came back like three weeks later. Then a month later just after she interviewed for a job she told me she was leaving again to go to Virginia to help her worthless aunt move back to Vegas.
She gets there and blows $500 in two days then calls me to ask for money to put gas in her aunt's car. I said heck no and she didn't talk to me for two days. I finally tell her this isn't working. We get a quick Vegas divorce and she is remarried six months later.
89. Absolutely Evil
She took the cats. He wanted the cats. Looked like courts would give him the cats. She had the cats put down.
90. That’s When You Know Something Is Wrong…
The moment I decided I had to divorce her was when she was driving and I was in passenger seat as we went down highway. I thought about opening the door and jumping, taking my own life just to get away from her...What stopped me from doing it was the fear I would survive and be stuck with her because I would be cripple.
91. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
When I was in the army, my wife and I were good friends with a newlywed couple that lived a few doors down from us. One day, I got home from work to find the guy sitting on his front door step. I said, "Hey!" He said, "Dude, you gotta come see this". So I walked into his house, and it was completely empty. There was not even a single scrap of paper or a bag of trash.
To make things even weirder, every single cabinet door was open, as was every refrigerator door and every drawer. If it was supposed to be closed, it was open. He said that the front door was wide open when he got home, and every faucet was turned on, too. There was no note or anything whatsoever. His wife was just gone without a trace, and everything in their house was gone with her.
Strangely enough, my wife and I had just dinner with them, at their house, the very night before. We were all laughing it up, drinking, and having a great time, with not even the remotest sign of anything being wrong. He said that the first thing he did after making this discovery was to call her parents’ house.
As soon as the phone rang, her father answered the phone and—before the poor guy could even ask if he knew anything about what was going on—he just said: "Bill, you need to let it go," and hung up on him. Remember that line from True Lies when Tom Arnold says that his ex-wife even took the ice cube trays? Well, this girl really did take the ice cube trays.
She also took all of his uniforms and other clothes. He literally only had the clothes on his back and whatever was in his pockets at the time to his name. I never did find out what the motivator was; she was just gone forever.
92. The Slip-Up
Apparently our dad had another kid about 8 years older than me. My mom blurted something out about it after their divorce when she was mad about something. It was along the lines of, "if he thinks he can forget you exist like that other kid of his..". She then turned very white and I was never able to get more out of her than that.
My dad pretends he doesn't know what I'm talking about, but has apparently told my brother a bit of the story and then backtracked and never talked about it again. So yeah, apparently I'm not the oldest.
93. Race to the Finish
I once worked on bank equipment, and my favorite was opening safety deposit boxes for the bank. So one day, I was asked to get there before the bank opened, which was really odd. I show up and greet the bank employee—along with a lawyer and a very angry looking woman. She is really impatient to get into the safety deposit box.
I get the lock open and swing the door out, and she's screaming, "let me in there!," So I stepped outside and let her rush by. A few moment later, I hear a string of loud curse words: it was empty. Then she busts out and storms off, but while she passed she threw down a single piece of paper that had been in the vault. It basically said, "Screw you, witch". It had been a nasty divorce, and the-ex husband got there before she did.
94. Don’t Shoot the Messenger
Just to warn everybody, this one is kind of messed up. It happened to a friend of mine. We were both deployed to Okinawa. My friend married his girl prior to the deployment. Then, he found out mid-deployment that she had cheated on him. Now, finding out about something like that is bad enough as it is—but the way my friend found out about this was the part that was the most messed up.
He had checked his Facebook messages one day and suddenly saw a message from some dude that he didn't know. The guy straight up told him that he had slept with his wife. Apparently, she had never told him that she was married and, when he eventually added her on Facebook, he realized that she was married to my friend.
After making this discovery, he felt so guilty about the whole thing that he decided he had to message my friend and let him know. My friend didn't waste any time and divorced her while still in Oki. I'm not even sure how that was legally possible, but I definitely remember him doing some kind of judicial paperwork the very next day after getting the messages—so I guess he found a way.
95. Who Are You Gonna Believe, Me or Your Own Eyes?
Go to the gym, no headphones! That’s cool, house is five minutes away. Pull up in front of my house and see work buddy’s car out front. Walk in house through open garage. Son coloring at kitchen table. Ask him "Hey bud, where’s your mom?" He points at the stairs. Walk to stairs to hear moans and movement. My heart started pounding.
Up to this point I had suspected the worst but never had proof. Knew I had to go look and catch her or she would say I was overreacting and tell me it wasn’t what I thought. Walk upstairs and hear them in the spare bedroom. Walk in the room and say "well this is awkward". They freak out and try to grab clothes and tell me nothing is happening.
I walk out to my car and have ex-buddy chase me out and tell me to hit him. I go to my command (I’m in the army) the next day. Report him and have the command force him to call his wife that day and let her know. I am now divorced and much happier!
96. Sweet Revenge
This wife cheats on her husband during his frequent travels for work. She files for divorce and gets to keep the house. Months elapsed and the husband is still rightfully angry but has no recourse. Then he has an epiphany: "I wonder if she changed the password to the Nest Thermostat?" She did not.
For the next year he continues to mess with the thermostat. In the middle of summer when they're sleeping in HIS bed, he turns the heat on to 90 degrees at 3 a.m. Middle of winter? Time to shut off the heat and hope the pipes freeze. Away on vacation? Turn the air conditioning down to 55 and let it run 24/7 for a nice surprise bill when they get home.
97. Hunting for Problems
Brother of mine caught his wife cheating. Her phone would always be going off and she would hide it. He got curious, looked into it, and found some guy had been texting her for a few months. She said she was going to stay home because she had to catch up on homework over the weekend. My brother and I went on our hunting trip and he told me about it.
We never left the city, we went to my house and stayed there till it got dark, then drove back to his neighborhood in my neighbor’s car. She sent him a picture of her at home saying she was going to go to bed early that night. Well, we snuck close to the house after a car parked down the street and a guy walked to the house and let himself in.
My brother was fuming at this point and wanted to beat the snot out of the guy. I settled him down and told him to think about the long run. We snuck up to the house and using the night vision camera got video of them bumping uglies in the living room. My brother wanted to confront this guy at this point so... I did something messed up and called the authorities. I said I heard a lot of yelling from the house and asked if they could go check. It kept my brother from messing with the dude (a coworker of hers).
Officers show up, take statements. We leave and the next day he pulls her iMessages off the email account and talks to a lawyer. We give the lawyer the messages and when we show up five days later from our "hunting trip," he calls her and says he got something wild and wants her to come out and see it.
When she comes out he gives her divorce papers and kicks her out of the house. She had officers do a civil stand by while she got her stuff a few days later. House was his before they got married so all she got to keep was some stuff they bought together and her car. No kids and the prenup nullified the alimony she could have gotten as he made way more money than her.
The guy she was sleeping with had a record. We saw her a few months later, she tried talking to my wife and said she missed my brother and she was sorry, the guy and her broke up shortly after the divorce.
98. That’s Just Wrong
My ex's brother helped his friend (he was friends with the couple, but clearly "chose" the guy) hide assets and wash cash in the six months leading up to a "surprise, I'm divorcing you!" by the friend to his now ex and deceased wife. Oh yeah—he did this because she had just been diagnosed with cancer, was not going to live, and he didn't see why "his money" should go to "her health care" when she was going to "die in a few years" anyway.
99. Not Your Average Loophole
My uncle is a divorce lawyer and represented this guy getting a divorce from his wife of 15 years. Super bad breakup, and they split everything 50/50, even the land that the house they lived in sat upon. Well, she decides to build a house right behind the other house. Mind you, this was a lot of land, probably 200 yards separating both home sites, so the back of the houses faced each other.
The house gets built, and my uncle gets a call from his client asking about the legality of a situation he had gotten himself into. Apparently, his ex-wife would spend a lot of time in her backyard, so he saw her all the time. What he did was buy a female dog and name it the same name as his ex-wife. His plan was brilliant.
Anytime he would let his dog back in from letting her out, he would yell "Susan you [curse for a female dog]! Get in here!" He would also yell if she was peeing on the flowers, "Susan! Quit [peeing] on the flowers!" or "Susan you! Quit digging in the dirt!" The ex-wife called 9-1-1 on him a couple of times, but there was nothing they could do because the dog was registered under the name of Susan.
100. The Last Straw
I divorced him when I realized that no matter what I did he was never going to change. I let him walk all over me and cheat on me for years and kept thinking if I just did more, was more patient, a better wife etc, he would realize his mistakes. Example: He would cheat. I would catch him. A huge fight would break out.
He would manipulate me into it somehow being my fault he did it: You don't love me enough, you'll never trust me again, you didn't [sleep] with me that one time back in 2006 and I felt rejected. Somehow I would have to make it up to him and prove to him I trusted him. I'd forgive him and work my butt off to be happier, nicer, more understanding.
But after a few months I would just catch him all over again. The last straw was when he convinced me he had really changed. He wanted to be a family, the whole package. Of course I ended up pregnant. It turned out to be high risk and I was hospitalized often. Only allowed home with bed rest. Even then he wouldn’t stop running around on me.
I lost 45 pounds, my hair started falling out, I was too weak to even walk. My own family thought I was dying. He didn't even care. So at one point I was sitting by myself and I just realized. I was done. He was never going to change. And it wasn't my fault. I couldn't fix whatever was broken in him and I was done trying.
It took six months after the baby was born before doctors would let me go back to work. I moved out. Spent a few years alone, swearing off men. Now I'm with a fantastic man that loves me. The divorce is still dragging on. My ex tried a lot of dirty tricks when he found out I was leaving. I laughed in his face at every one.
He doesn't get it. At one point I seriously thought I would die. I thought my kids would be left alone with only him to take care of them. After going through that, nothing he could do could bother me. Ever. So anyway. That's my story. Hope it helps.
