The drama across the Real Housewives franchise is not reserved for the cameras. Over the past several years, many couples featured on Bravo have met their demise — and it hasn’t always been pretty.
Consider the following marital splits and consider just how ugly things got between the spouses on their journey to divorce…
YIKES! Kroy Biermann and Kim Zolciak share four biological kids. In May 2023, the latter filed for divorce… and then accused the former of smoking too much pot. Biermann then accused Zolciak of being a gambling addict and an unfit mother. The estranged spouses owe millions in unpaid state taxes and both have asked for custody of their children.
Where to start for Erika Jayne and Tom Girardi?!? The attorney has been accused of defrauding clients out of millions of dollars, as Girardi supposedly stole this money from the families of those who died in a 2018 plane crash. Did Jayne have knowledge of this crime? She has consistently denied it, while also claiming that Girardi cheated on her left and right. “What’s being said is just, I mean, it’s insane. That lawsuit that says my divorce is a sham so I could hide assets — people want to believe that…I could have never predicted this f–king s–t,” Erika said on an episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
They both cheated on each other, Joe Giudice and Teresa Giudice have admitted as much. They both spent time in jail, too, for financial fraud, a crime that prompted Joe to get kicked out of America because he is not a U.S. citizen. The former spouses are on pretty good terms at this point, likely because they never have to see each other.
Bethenny Frankel and Jason Hoppy split way back in 2012, with Frankel at one point testifying that living with Hoppy was akin to a “torture chamber.” The reality stat alleged that she constantly feared for her safety and had to have a padlock installed on her bedroom door for protection, adding that Jason often locked her dog alone in rooms and tried to convince their daughter Bryn not to spend time with Bethenny. The ex-lovers spent 8 years battling for custody of their child until they reached an agreement that has not been made public.
Meghan King and Jim Edmonds probably don’t get enough credit for how effed up their split ended up being. In 2019, the former professional baseball player was accused of sending sexual text messages to another woman. He was later accused of sleeping with the family nanny. “We’re just still working it day by day. I think after such a breach of trust, it’s so hard to rebuild from there, especially [with] so many distractions, like our son’s health problems and two other little babies, as well. And so to focus on the two of us as a couple, is really hard,†King said to Bravo’s The Daily Dish at the time.
We’re going all the way back to 2010 with Camille Grammer-Meyer and Kelsey Grammer; all the way back to the first season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and the actor’s affair that played out on air. Camille eventually asked for divorce — and Kelsey alleges it all went down on the day of his mother’s funeral. He then went ahead and married his mistress, Kayte Walsh. As recently as 2020, Camille claimed that Kelsey wouldn’t speak to her, which makes co-parenting their kids a challenge.
This was one more rocky than contentious. In September 2019, Kenya Moore and Marc Daly filed for divorce, after just two years of marriage. In early 2020, the pair appeared to briefly rekindle their romance … but after quarantining separately during the pandemic, the pair split again. In January 2021, the couple confirmed that they had attended mediation, yet ultimately decided to move forward with their divorce
Gina and Matt Kirschenheiter got divorced in 2018 after he allegedly had an affair and she accused him of years of abuse. During the subsequent domestic battery case, Gina claimed at times she thought she was “going to die” by her spouse’s hand. Matt eventually pleaded guilty to one count of domestic battery with corporal injury of a spouse and guilty to one felony count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud or deceit. He was sentenced to 180 days in county jail unless he completed a number of conditions over a 178-day period.
More legal trouble here. In January 2014, Phaedra Parks’s then-husband Apollo Nida was arrested and charged with bank fraud and identity theft … after previously spending time in prison from 2004 to 2009 for auto title fraud. In May of that year, he pled guilty to charges of mail, wire AND bank fraud. He ended up being sentenced to eight years in jail and several months later, Phaedra filed for divorce. While her divorce played out on Real Housewives of Atlanta, Phaedra chose to not speak out about Apollo for the sake of their kids.