Divorced From Reality?

The good, the bad and the scandalously ugly — Rachelle Unreich examines the modern divorce and discovers how some couples are rewriting the rules of splitsville

- Rachelle Unreich

THERE ARE THE TERRIBLE STORIES you hear in whispered conversations at school pick-up, the hairdresser’s, the coffee shop. There’s the one about the woman who loathes her husband so deeply that she can’t bring herself to go through the divorce papers, telling her lawyer that even seeing her ex’s signature brings on a revulsion so deep she feels like throwing up when it appears on the paperwork. The story retold on Reddit of the ex-wife who left the marital home to her former husband and his new girlfriend, but not before she stuffed the curtain rods with a mixture of leftover prawns and caviar, incubating an untraceable whiff that wasn’t exactly Chanel No. 5. There’s the wife who found out her husband was leaving her when she returned from a solo trip overseas. Not only had he vanished without a trace, but so had most of her valuable possessions: her artwork, her jewellery, her silver cutlery and — this stung most of all — her prized rosebushes, dug up at the roots.

The worst ones of all make the news. New York socialite Tracey Hejailan-Amon said she was more than a little miffed when her husband of eight years, Maurice Alain Amon, informed her via email that he wanted a divorce. When she lost the key to a safe in the Paris home they once shared together, she had an easy solution: use a blowtorch on the lock box to open it. The result? Toxic dust ruined millions of dollars’ worth of artwork in the process. But all was not lost, especially since Tracey left one thing behind in the safe, presumably for her husband to find: her gold wedding ring.