In late August, one of the biggest trending stories on social media was that of a UK woman who sold her wedding dress on Ebay to allegedly fund her share of the cost of the divorce proceedings after her husband, who had left her for another woman, apparently left her holding “the bill” for the divorce. Given the fact that the story combined a whole host of topics that gets social media buzzing – wedding dresses, online auctions, cheating husbands, vitriolic back-and-forth between ex-spouses, and clever moneymaking ploys – it is not surprising that the world was fascinated, but there are a number of murky aspects of the story that might lead to misconceptions about the divorce process.
What We Know About the Dress Story
Samantha Wragg of England had been attempting to sell a 2-year-old wedding dress on Ebay several months back and had been having no luck in getting sufficient bids on the dress when she decided to employ some viral marketing strategies to get her advertisement before more people. She wrote about her husband of less than 2 years having left her for another woman, and provided a darkly humorous description of the dress, saying, “If you want a dress that is full of bad memories and shattered hopes and dreams then this is the dress for you!” as well as, “Great condition but needs dry cleaning to remove the stench of betrayal!”
Wragg also stated in the advertisement that, “Mainly selling as I need to pay for my divorce which my husband left me to foot the bill for!” After creating this ad, the wedding dress reportedly sold for over 65,000 pounds, but it is not clear that this was a legitimate bid. On her personal blog, Wragg later stated that she didn’t want to share any of the financial details of her marriage and that she hoped her husband was happy and that she had forgiven him.
Questions About the Advertisement
We only have a limited number of facts about this situation, but there are a number of curious aspects to the story that suggest that the real facts might be different from what was stated in the advertisement. Wragg herself admitted the advertisement was an attempt to exploit social media to raise the price, and her and her husband’s kind words about one another suggest the advertisement might have been hyperbolic.
But the aspect that is the most curious is the concept that one spouse would have to “foot the bill” for a divorce. The British courts are obviously different from the US courts, but, based on American law, there is really no such thing as “footing the bill” for a divorce. Sure, there are some relatively minor court and filing fees involved in a divorce, but nowhere near the type of money at issue in the advertisement. And there are certainly legal fees, but each spouse would hire his or her own lawyer and neither would be required to pay the legal fees of the other spouse unless the court orders that be done (and in that case, you can go to court to enforce the judgment). In a divorce, the spouses are dividing their property between themselves and sometimes one party is paying spousal support, but there should never be a situation where the “cost of a divorce” outweighs the assets held by the parties.
The real story between Wragg and her husband may always stay between them, perhaps as it should be, but it would be incorrect to read this story and walk away with the impression that divorce is a process that somehow unfairly sticks one party with “the bill” as that is simply not how divorce law works, at least in the US. For any questions on divorce law in California, contact the Law Office of Kelley C. Finan today to schedule a consultation to discuss your circumstances.