• One man was told to pay for wife's ice cream expenses
Image: PEXELS
Diary,
Lately, I’ve found myself contemplating how crazy people get when ending a marriage.
According to a law in Mississippi, in the good ol’ land of Mr Washington, ‘incurable idiocy,’ which develops during the course of the marriage, is a legal reason to get a divorce because of the impact it has on the marriage. Not cheating or impotence or insanity or the wife getting knocked up by another dude. Idiocy! However, the spouse claiming it, must not have known of the condition before getting hitched.
You think that’s nuts?
Consider poor Marvin Gaye. Yes, that famous Marvin Gaye. In 1975, Mr Gaye was going through a very acrimonious divorce with his estranged wife Anna Gordy Gaye. She claimed he had skimped on his alimony and child support. Marvin claimed he had no money, so the judge ordered him to pay $1 million in royalties from his next album. So what did Mr Gaye do? In 1978, he recorded an album called ‘Here, my dear,’ in which he mostly lamented about his bitter divorce.
He deliberately made the album so bad that it was initially a commercial and critical failure, just like he wanted. But it’s a Marvin Gaye album, right? Today it’s considered one of the greatest albums of all time. Go figure.
I especially pity a guy in India who divorced his 23-year-old wife, one of the reasons being that she spent too much of the family money on a nasty ice cream habit. The judge granted him the divorce, but slapped him with alimony payments. So far so good, right?
What happened next makes me swear never to step foot in a church wearing a tuxedo before strangers who are most probably hedging bets on how long me and the missus shall last together. The judge in this Indian case added something extra to the man’s alimony payments to his ex-wife.
‘What for?’ asked the man.
To which the judge answered, ‘To cover her ice cream expenses.’
Do have a thoughtful day, now, will ya?