It may seem from the outside that a couple who has been married 20, 30 or 40 years has marriage figured out. But no St. Louis marriage is divorce-proof. Sometimes, after decades together, new problems arise that the spouses cannot overcome without separating.
We don’t know what caused baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. and his wife Kelly to get divorced after 29 years, but the couple recently finalized their divorce. Terms of the divorce are sealed.
As the Baltimore Sun notes, the Ripkens faced several challenges in a relationship that began in 1983 and led to marriage in 1987. As a star athlete for his hometown team, Cal Ripken has been in the spotlight most of his life. In an interview in the 1990s, Kelly Ripken admitted the attention “can get to be too much.”
Besides her husband’s celebrity, Kelly Ripken also lives with Graves’ disease, a thyroid condition. She once believed that the symptoms would cause Cal to leave her, but the couple stayed together.
Now, something has caused the couple to break up. We may never know what that is, but the challenges older divorcing couples face can be quite different than those married people in their 20s and 30s deal with. People who have been married for longer tend to have more substantial marital assets, potentially making property division more challenging. On the other hand, if an older couple has children, the kids are probably grown up, so child custody and child support will not be issues.
No matter how long you have been married, you will need a knowledgeable divorce attorney to advocate for you and help you make important decisions.
