Married in a Florence Fortress, Divorced in a Los Angeles Courtroom: The Kim Kardashian and Kanye West Record

How it began

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West married on 24 May 2014 at Forte di Belvedere in Florence, after an engagement staged in a rented baseball stadium in San Francisco. They had four children. On 19 February 2021 Kardashian filed a petition for dissolution of marriage in Los Angeles Superior Court, citing irreconcilable differences and requesting joint legal and physical custody. She was declared legally single on 2 March 2022, and the judgment finalising the divorce was entered on 29 November 2022.

That is the entire documented spine of the case. Everything else — the arguments about parenting, the public posts, the commentary from both sides and from neither — happened outside the file, and this article treats it accordingly.

The dated record

1. 2012

   The relationship becomes public. West had appeared on Kardashian's family's reality series before that year.

2. 21 October 2013

   West proposes at AT&T Park in San Francisco, an event filmed for television.

3. 24 May 2014

   They marry at Forte di Belvedere in Florence.

4. 2014–2019

   Four children are born. The couple appear together at major public events, including the Met Gala in 2019.

5. July 2020

   West holds a campaign event in South Carolina during a presidential run and makes personal remarks about his family. Kardashian responds with a public statement asking for compassion and referring to his bipolar diagnosis, which West had previously disclosed himself.

6. 19 February 2021

   Kardashian files for dissolution in Los Angeles Superior Court, citing irreconcilable differences and requesting joint custody.

7. 2 March 2022

   The court grants bifurcation and declares Kardashian legally single, restoring her name to Kardashian.

8. 29 November 2022

   The divorce judgment is entered, incorporating a settlement covering custody and support.

9. 2022–2023

   West's commercial partnerships with a major sportswear brand and other companies are terminated following public remarks that the companies described as antisemitic; he later issued public apologies.

What the sources support

• PUBLIC RECORD: the marriage date, the petition date of 19 February 2021, the single-status order of 2 March 2022 and the judgment of 29 November 2022 are all court matters.
• PUBLIC RECORD: the petition cited irreconcilable differences — California's only no-fault ground — and alleged no misconduct, because the form does not ask for any.
• PUBLIC RECORD: the settlement provided for joint custody and for child support, the monthly figure for which appeared in the filed judgment.
• CONFIRMED / ADMITTED: West has publicly disclosed a bipolar diagnosis in his own words, including on the artwork of his 2018 album and in subsequent interviews.
• CONFIRMED: several major commercial partners publicly ended their agreements with West in 2022 and stated their reasons in their own announcements.
• PUBLIC RECORD: Kardashian passed the California First-Year Law Students' Examination in 2021 and has continued a legal apprenticeship, a fact she documented herself.

Why the case took twenty-one months

Uncontested California divorces routinely close in six months and a day, the statutory minimum. This one took nearly two years, and the reason is visible in the docket rather than in any single dispute: the parties bifurcated the case, separating the question of marital status from the questions of custody and property, and the second set took considerably longer than the first.

Bifurcation is the same mechanism used in the Pitt–Jolie case, and it produces the same confusing headline: two people described as divorced while their case is still open. It is a procedural device, not a signal about the state of the relationship.

The other factor was the size and complexity of what had to be divided. Both parties ran substantial businesses through the marriage — a cosmetics and shapewear group on one side, a footwear and apparel operation on the other — and property held in California is community property by default unless the parties agree otherwise. The terms they reached are summarised in the judgment; the underlying valuations are not public, and no figure for the overall settlement has ever been officially released.

There is one further reason the file matters more than usual here. Both parties built businesses whose value depends on their own public image, and both continued operating those businesses throughout the proceedings. A settlement of that kind has to allocate not only property but the right to keep trading on a shared decade of publicity — which is why the negotiation outlasted the marriage's legal end by nearly nine months.

Public reactions on the record

Continue reading · What happened next?A Two-Year Marriage and Eight Years of Filings: What the Pitt–Jolie Record ConfirmsThe marriage lasted two years. The litigation lasted eight, ran across two countries, survived one disqualified judge, and outlived the divorce itself in a fight over a French vineyard.

“Living with bipolar disorder does not diminish or invalidate his dreams and his creative ideas, no matter how he might express them.”

That statement is the closest thing to an explanation either party has given for the breakdown, and it predates the filing by seven months. Kardashian has since spoken about the divorce in general terms on the family's television series and in interviews, consistently declining to attribute blame in specific incidents.

West has commented repeatedly and publicly, including in music, in interviews and on social media, at times objecting to arrangements concerning the children. Those statements are his own, they are on the record, and none of them has been tested in a contested hearing. Where he has made allegations, this article records that he made them — not that they are established.

Where the record stops

Almost every characterisation of the parenting arrangement is disputed, and the actual custody terms in the judgment are the only reliable guide to what was agreed. Claims about what either party did or said privately during the marriage rest on unnamed sources or on one party's assertion, and are excluded here.

One further point of accuracy: the 2022 termination of West's commercial partnerships is frequently folded into the divorce narrative. The two are unrelated in the record. The partnerships ended after public remarks in October 2022, eleven months after the couple were already living separate legal lives, and the companies gave their own reasons in their own statements.

What followed

Kardashian expanded her shapewear and skincare businesses, continued the family's television franchise on a new streaming platform, and continued her legal studies and criminal-justice advocacy work. West married Bianca Censori, which he confirmed publicly, and has continued releasing music, though with a substantially reduced commercial infrastructure after 2022.

The children are minors and are not the subject of this article. Forgotten Frame does not publish photographs of the couple's children, does not name them in headlines, and does not repeat claims about their care that come from anywhere other than the filed judgment.

It is also worth noting what the divorce did not do: it did not end either party's presence in the other's professional orbit. The family's television series continued and addressed the separation directly, with Kardashian discussing it on camera. That is unusual. In most high-profile divorces the surviving account is assembled by third parties; here, one side has a broadcast platform and has used it, and the other has released music and statements. Both versions are self-published, and neither has been tested.

Where they are now

Divorced since November 2022, sharing custody under a settlement they both signed, both still commercially active, and both still discussed constantly by people working entirely from social media posts. The court file is short, boring and available. It remains the only version of this story that anybody has actually signed.