Divorces are hard for everyone, but when a lot of property is involved, things can get even more complex. A San Francisco divorce attorney can tell you that sometimes it helps to know that your divorce agreement isn’t as complex as you think it is. A recent post on Mental Floss has a fascinating list of 10 of the most bizarre divorce settlements of all time. A few highlights from the article are included below.
- Marvin Gaye’s lavish spending left him facing difficulties when it came to paying Anna Gordy’s alimony, so his attorneys struck up an agreement:
Gaye would record a new album and give all of the royalties to Gordy as alimony. Gaye headed into the studio and recorded the double album Here, My Dear to fulfill this deal with Gordy. Unfortunately for Gordy, critics and audiences didn’t love Gaye’s divorce-themed concept album; although today’s critics praise the album it was the singer’s worst charting record of the 1970s.
- This year, a Long Island doctor wanted his unfaithful wife to return the kidney he had donated to her or $1.5 million compensation for the sacrifice. Unsurprisingly, the courts did not recognize the request, as returning the kidney would have been disastrous for the wife’s health and organ donations are gifts, not loans.
- A Cambodian husband took the rule of equal property division very literally during his divorce last year –he cut the couple’s house in two, deconstructed his part and took the supplies back to his parent’s house.
-Writer Georges Simenon agreed to pay an exceptionally generous divorce settlement, but with one stipulation: his wife had to continue living within six miles of him so he could see his children regularly.
Image Via pdstahl [Flickr]
Celebrities are just like the rest of us -they fall in love, they have children, and they get divorced. By learning from the public lives of celebrities, we can easily learn lessons about our own private lives. Take for example the recent divorces of Hugh Hefner and John Cleese.