Divorce Lawyers Shared The Wildest Reasons Their Clients Split Up, And The Stories Are Suuuuuuper Juicy

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15-03-2025

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?"
Some responses also came from this thread because they were just too good to ignore.
And the stories range from painfully petty to jaw-on-the-floor-shocking. Here are the best ones:
1. "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."
— PetiteChaos
2. "Because the wife spent $42,000 on psychic hotlines."
— jdoc1121
3. "His wife 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."
— TISM_riverphoenix
4. "A couple got divorced over a cat. The wife called the cat Snowball because of its white fur and only wanted the cat to eat wet food or chicken breast. The husband called the cat Lily, again because of its white fur, and believed it should only eat dry food. These two argued for a year over custody of the cat but did not give a shit about their human kids, aged 15 months, 4 years, and 6 years old."
— sxcamaro
5. "The husband taught the parakeet certain cuss words for his wife. The bird lives with him now."
— brandonrandom9
6. "My client was the outrageous one, so my heart went out to his poor wife. He made their lives a penny-pinching hell. 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 everyone had to get one square from him before they could go to the bathroom — he never gave more than one square. The wife finally got fed up and left him when: 1) He gave her bangs during an in-home haircut and 2) their daughter was so traumatized by the toilet paper thing they couldn't potty train her."
"Also, 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 unnecessary (and sinful) expense."
— Julietcaravello1
7. "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."
— Bodhi_ZA
Max
8. "The wife was kidnapped in Mexico, and her husband refused to pay ransom. Eventually, her family managed to pay, and she was left on the side of the road."
"I don't know how much they wanted as ransom. But it was substantial as the conversation between her family and him was how he had it liquid, and they had to liquidate investments to get that amount. Her husband also wasn't with her on the trip. The wife was traveling with cousins and went downstairs alone to get ice cream and wait for them to get ready. I do not know all the details. She was extremely distraught talking about it and it was not necessary to pry. But it was clearly traumatic, and even though I had a million more questions, I left it alone."
— [deleted]
9. "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."
— [deleted]
10. "The clients were two 20-somethings. They were irreconcilable because he kept smoking her weed stash when she wasn't home."
— [deleted]
11. "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."
— dizzylyingdown
12. "I was a legal assistant when this case came in, but this lady divorced her husband of two months because he got her an iPad case for her birthday instead of the expensive jewelry she wanted."
— [deleted]
13. "The husband had an argument with the new in-laws during the wedding and moved out at around 5 a.m. during the first night."
— apolloxer
14. "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."
— Reddituser
15. "I worked for a law office where the owner would talk about a man who sued for divorce because his wife would no longer allow him to use a loaded gun as a... 'marital aid.' She had apparently agreed to it at some point and was fine with the gun as long as it was empty, but that just wasn't good enough for him, and he thought this was reasonable grounds for divorce."
— IRtheLaw19
16. "Because the husband insisted on bringing his mother on their honeymoon. That's where the wife discovered that the reason was because his mother was still breastfeeding him. Yes, the husband — a grown man — was still breastfeeding."
— OMGisCarolein
17. "My neighbor filed for divorce because her husband smacked his lips when he ate and slurped his coffee and soup — she thought if she didn't divorce him, she'd end up going to jail for battery."
— mollymuppet78
18. "The husband was frustrated by his wife's hoarding. She was frustrated by his utter uselessness. He filed for divorce, and she was my client. Her prized possession was a room or two full of 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."
— schmerpmerp
Max
19. "A friend of mine divorced her husband because his dick was too big. She said it was fun at first, but that sex became 'too much work.'"
"When she first told me, I refused to believe it. But then she showed me a picture of them dancing at their reception, and holy shit was this guy packing heat!"
— PantiesMallone
20. "I overheard a divorcing couple in my associate's office arguing about all the reasons they disliked each other when all of a sudden the husband started screaming about the wife leaving shit stains in the toilet."
— joeredspecial
21. "The husband wanted a divorce because the wife was still wiping the ass of their perfectly healthy teenage son."
— Reddituser
22. "I once had a client who married a woman he met while he was stationed in Guantanamo Bay. Well, she was practicing cooking American dishes for him when she decided to make spaghetti and added an ingredient from an unlabeled freezer bag to the sauce. When I asked her what it was, she just replied hysterically that she didn't know any better. That's when her husband chimed in and said that the ingredient was MENSTRUAL BLOOD!"
"The wife explained to me through tears that her mother and grandmother had told her that's the way to keep her man. Her husband couldn't let it go."
— Palatron