Topic
When a dispute reaches a courtroom it produces something rare in entertainment reporting: a document. These are the stories we can build almost entirely from them.
14 stories published.
She recorded four albums, headlined a Las Vegas residency and toured the world while a Los Angeles court controlled her money and her medical decisions. Here is the documented sequence, from the 2008 petition to the day a judge ended it.
8 min read
One of the most photographed marriages of the 2010s ended in a filing that took twenty-one months to finalise. The court record says what happened; almost everything else said about it does not appear in any document.
6 min read
John Lennon told the others he was leaving in September 1969 and was persuaded to say nothing. Paul McCartney announced it six months later in a press release he wrote himself — and then sued the other three to get out.
7 min read
Two marriages inside one group, both ended within three years of each other, and the biggest song of the period was sung by an ex-wife to lyrics written by her ex-husband. The documented sequence.
5 min read
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz built the most successful comedy in television history, owned the studio that made it, and ended their marriage the day after they finished shooting.
5 min read
Mike Todd died in a plane crash in March 1958. By September, his widow Elizabeth Taylor was involved with his best friend, Eddie Fisher, who was married to Debbie Reynolds. The public chose a side immediately.
5 min read
Tina Turner walked out of a Dallas hotel on 1 July 1976 hours before a show. In the divorce she gave up the royalties, the houses and the recording contracts, and kept the two words she performed under.
6 min read
Cher filed for separation in 1974, married Gregg Allman four days after her divorce was final, and then returned to CBS to co-host a variety show with her ex-husband for another two years.
5 min read
Madonna and Sean Penn married in August 1985 in front of a press corps in helicopters. The divorce file, the withdrawn 1987 petition and a sworn 2015 declaration are the only parts of this marriage that are documented.
4 min read
One photograph posted to Reddit in September 2012 turned a cat named Tardar Sauce into a trademark. Six years later, a jury in California awarded her owners $710,001 against a coffee company that went too far.
4 min read
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck called off a wedding in 2003, spent seventeen years apart, married in Las Vegas in 2022 — and the divorce petition arrived on their anniversary, to the day.
7 min read
The 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.
7 min read
The photograph taken outside the courthouse on 9 October 1973 is the strangest divorce picture in American celebrity history. Here is the documented sequence that produced it — and what Priscilla Presley did with the next fifty years.
4 min read
The same underlying dispute was tried twice, on two continents, under two legal systems — and produced results that appear to contradict each other. The reason is in the procedure, not the drama.
4 min read
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