Divorce Makes Some Couple do Strange Things
When it comes to divorces that don’t involve celebrities, there are usually two kinds of stories that make it into the news: those that chronicle odd behaviors and incidents that led to divorce, and the strange and often unpleasant ways that people deal with a divorce that has already occurred.
In two recent stories of divorce, the first chronicles a strange alleged threat from a wife to a husband that could have ended far worse than it did, and which played a part in the divorce proceedings. The second story involves how a man in England hoped to cope with a divorce, and ended up with a problem donkey.
In a Long Island divorce court, a judge recently ruled that a wife’s alleged violent threat towards her husband was not a grounds for divorce. Shlomo Kupperman had accused his wife Irene of threatening him with a dangerous weapon, according to the New York Daily News. That weapon? A samurai sword.
Shlomo told the judge that after his wife had several affairs he confronted her one evening, asking her where she had been. According to his story, she became enraged and grabbed a 3-foot samurai sword from his collection, charging at him and coming very close to his face. In his testimony, he claimed that he slowly backed away from his wife and retreated to the bedroom and locked himself in for the rest of the night.
Nobody called the police or went to the hospital that night, however, which cast some doubt in the eyes of the judge, who decided that the alleged incident was not, on its own, a grounds for divorce.
Irene Kupperman, for her part, claims that she never attacked anyone. “It’s beyond ridiculous,” her lawyer said.
The judge granted the divorce on other grounds, however, citing the couple’s functional separation.
In Tiffield, England, a man was ordered to pay 6,000 pounds in fines after he let a donkey that he owned attack pigs that he also owned, and even kill another donkey in a neighboring field.
Andrew Harding was convicted of eight counts of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal. He must pay the fine and serve 200 hours of community service. His donkey, Paco, was seen grabbing and shaking the pigs by the neck, and a neighbor captured images of that and other offenses against his own donkey, according to the Telegraph.
The reason that Harding kept the property and the troublesome livestock was to cope with a 2007 divorce from his wife, and to provide a place for his children to visit and play when they were with him on his weekend visitations.
“It was a family farm,” he said in his own defense during the trial. “A place to get the kids away from their Xbox. It was fine until we got the donkey.”
Officers had found other unsavory conditions on the farm in the past, including livestock that didn’t have enough water or shelter.
Harding said that the farm was a nice place for his children before he got the donkey for them to ride. “I wish I never had the thing,” he said. “It was a pain in the ass.”
