UPDATE: Well, we didn’t really expect that to be so simple, did we? With the court system mostly shut down due to COVID-19, Mary-Kate Olsen requested an emergency divorce filing last week, but that request has since been denied. A judge deemed that this case is “not essential,” which means Mary-Kate will have to wait a while before getting the divorce process going.
While the divorce is on hold indefinitely, the bigger question here is what will happen to the apartment. In her emergency request, Olsen said that her husband, Olivier Sarkozy, was forcing her out of their main apartment by May 18th, which I just realized is today. Now, Mary-Kate hasn’t actually been living there during quarantine, so it’s not like she’s getting thrown out on the streets, but she expressed concern that Sarkozy would destroy her personal property inside the apartment.
So with the emergency divorce not being granted, it seems like Sarkozy is pretty free to do whatever he wants for the time being. Hopefully he and Mary-Kate can work something out for the time being, because it would be pretty sh*tty for him to just like, throw away her stuff.
Earlier this week, I wrote about 10 of the messiest celebrity divorces ever. That list had everything: cheating scandals, custody disputes, and enough pettiness to last a lifetime. Well, I’m starting to think I spoke a little too soon. (Or predicted the future, depending on how you want to look at it.) On Wednesday, news broke that Mary-Kate Olsen is divorcing her husband Olivier Sarkozy, and we’re already getting a look into the legal details of their situation. In short, it sounds like a f*cking disaster.
Here’s a quick refresher, so we’re all up to speed. Mary-Kate married Olivier, who’s the half-brother of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in 2015. He’s 17 years her senior—she’s 33, and he’s 50. Olivier has two daughters from a previous marriage, both of whom are taller than Mary-Kate. That’s not important here, I just think it’s funny. Their relationship always felt a little strange, but they seemed like kind of a good match to me. We never saw any photos from their wedding, but a source famously said there were “bowls and bowls of cigarettes” at the reception, so just let your imagination run wild with that.
But fast forward five years, and things are obviously not so great anymore. On April 17th, Mary-Kate Olsen signed a summons and complaint for divorce, and those papers were then sent to the New York Supreme Court. But things quickly hit a snag, because the New York court system is not accepting divorce filings right now. In light of the pandemic, the Courts have placed a temporary “prohibition on the filing of new, non-essential matters,” which includes divorces.
But things aren’t that simple. On Wednesday, Olsen requested that she be allowed to file an emergency divorce petition, claiming that Sarkozy terminated the lease on their New York City apartment without her consent. In the request, she wrote, “This application is an emergency because my husband expects me to move out of our home on Monday, May 18, 2020 in the middle of New York City being on pause due to COVID-19.” She says in the request that she’s reached out to Sarkozy’s attorney and her landlord, asking that the lease be extended past the end of this month, and adds, “I am petrified that my husband is trying to deprive me of the home we have lived in and if he is successful, I will not only lose my home but I risk losing my personal property as well.”
In an email from May 3rd that was included with the filing, Sarkozy explained that he was terminating the lease because he is “not in a position to extend it and/or pay additional rent.” I don’t know all the details of this situation, but this makes no sense. Without even taking Olivier’s money into account, Mary-Kate Olsen has an estimated net worth of $250 million. I’m sure their apartment in Gramercy is very fancy, and it’s a tough economic time, but I feel pretty confident these two can still pay rent. To me, this sounds like a toxic game, and it’s stressing me the f*ck out.
No divorce is simple, but this apartment situation is way more complicated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It sounds like Sarkozy is currently staying somewhere else in NYC, but Mary-Kate is riding out the quarantine at their home in the Hamptons. For this reason, she says that she can’t “look for another apartment right now, let alone retrieve my separate property belongings,” adding that she is “gravely concerned my husband will dissipate, dispose of and/or secret” her belongings that are currently in the apartment. I’m glad she’s not trying to drop everything and come back to the epicenter of a pandemic, but this is a very sh*tty situation. Like, imagine being told that you have to be out of your apartment in a week, but you also can’t go there to get any of your stuff. I’m moving in four months, and I’m already panicked about packing! Truly a nightmare.
There’s one other important piece of the emergency petition that Mary-Kate Olsen filed this week. She’s requesting that her prenuptial agreement be enforced, and given that $250 million estimated net worth that I mentioned, that’s exactly what she should do. A source told Us Weekly that Mary-Kate has an “ironclad prenup”, which might be the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard. According to the source, “her business interests and fortune are protected,” which is a huge relief to hear. If she can just get this apartment fiasco sorted out, the actual divorce proceedings will be pretty straightforward. Well, they should be, but with the messiness we’re already seeing here, I imagine nothing will be simple.
So far, Mary-Kate Olsen hasn’t commented on her divorce, but given that she and her sister Ashley are pretty much the most private people on the planet, I wouldn’t expect to hear anything directly from her. But with divorce proceedings being public, we’ll know as soon as there’s an update on her emergency filing. Until then, I’ll be working on my top-secret plan to somehow get the Olsen Twins back into acting. It’ll never happen, but hey, we can dream.
Images: s_bukley / Shutterstock.com
