Stalking. Fraud. Forgery. Hacked emails. Being followed. Being illegally recorded. It’s all part of the “hell” that was Bethenny Frankel‘s divorce.
The Real Housewives of New York star’s divorce from ex-husband Jason Hoppy and subsequent custody battle have lasted over nine and a half years, and for the first time ever — now that it’s pretty much over — she’ sharing never-before-heard details. And it is brutal.
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On Tuesday’s shocking episode of Just B with Bethenny, she finally opens up about her “nightmare divorce,” saying:
“I have spent millions of dollars, millions of tears. I have had a horrific, hall of fame, nightmare divorce.”
Wow. That at least has been clear from the length and what little we have heard from public legal filings. But for the first time ever she talks about the countless examples of “emotional abuse” she suffered at the hands of her ex, especially while being forced to live under the same roof. Strap in, y’all.
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Finally Opening Up
So why has she never spoken about it before? She is a public figure on a TV show after all. A couple really good reasons:
“I have been struggling with talking about this for years, A) because it didn’t have a finish point, and B) because I have a daughter and because it’s private and… I’ve just struggled because… when do you share something so it can help someone else?”
She says she’s felt “bound and gagged and shackled” when it comes to sharing her side. However, as an advice-giving host she gets questions about terrible divorces all the time, and ultimately she decided it was “irresponsible” not to discuss her own.
“There’s nothing in my life that has affected me as a mother, a woman, a human being, emotionally, physically, mentally… My face is different, I mean… Nothing has affected me as much as my divorce.”
As she points out later in the show, she realized recently she spent 20% of her life going through this divorce. After being married only 2 years. Wow.
Consequently, however, she says there’s nothing she’s “more of an expert on in the world than divorce.” Wow, how awful a claim! She continues:
“What I have overcome and accomplished in divorce is so much more than I have accomplished in philanthropy and in business. Divorce has been my greatest struggle and ultimately my greatest matter to survive. And it was torture.”
She goes on to describe divorce as “a business” where people make “millions” off of those who are going through it. It’s clear she’s been through the wringer. Or as she puts it:
“I’ve been through an ordeal. I’ve been through hell. I’ve been to hell and back. I cannot express to you how bad my experience has been.”
But she’s going to try!
The First Divorce
She begins:
“I got married in my twenties to a nice man who I loved his family, we were very close. I was kind of marrying him and them because I didn’t have my own family. It didn’t work out, and I remember sending him back the ring and a pair of earrings his parents had gotten me, and I believe he sent me a watch that I had bought him. I did not know anything, and I didn’t have anything, it was just… we were divorced. No money needed to change hands, no one needs to give me anything, and just… ‘bye.’ I was 26 years old. He came from a wealthy family, and there was never a conversation that I would take anything from him after being together two, almost three years.”
She said his decision not to keep the ring or try to get more money was just simple “right and wrong.”
We imagine you can see where this is going. She said she was trusting and didn’t want to look at things that could be problems in the future. She didn’t want to think about needing to shore up her prenup against possible issues down the road.
Enter Jason Hoppy, a regular guy who “had a simple life” and didn’t have a lot of money and didn’t want anything from her but her.
“I had a lawyer say to me about my prenup, ‘it’s terrible’ and ‘I wouldn’t let you sign this,’ and I said, ‘No.’ No one’s taking anything from me, and I’m trusting and I don’t want to deal with this, it’s embarrassing. The word prenup is embarrassing, it’s uncomfortable, it’s awkward.”
But don’t let that stop you! Bethenny is here to tell you, legally you need to think about entering into a contract — because that’s exactly what it is!
“If I had known that getting into marriage is the same thing as getting into business together with a business partner, my eyes would have been more open. So for those of you listening…”
She then quoted champion boxer Mike Tyson:
“Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face.”
She stresses how important it is to “have the awkward conversation” at the beginning to save potential problems down the road, whether in business, marriage, whatever:
“I don’t say when I get into business with major multibillion dollar corporations, ‘They would never do that, they don’t want my money, they’re not interested in that.’ It’s preposterous. So just don’t be so trusting, OK?”
Moving on, she warns:
“Don’t get into something if you don’t feel it’s absolutely right. That’s business, that’s relationships.”
And also:
“Understand: cracks become craters. Problems you see in the beginning will become massive canyons later.”
Words to live by!
Watching Your Child Drown
You can take Bethenny’s story as a sterling warning about what not to do. As she says, her divorce was nothing like she planned — certainly nothing like Gwyneth Paltrow made her believe was possible:
“I was wrong. I misjudged, I was totally, totally wrong. I started out, I thought that I would consciously uncouple.”
She says these divorced couples look “amazing in the movies” but not to buy into that fairy tale! Even loving parents can get so angry they lose sight of a child’s well-being coming first. Trying to choose her words “wisely,” she says:
“I’ve been the victim of anger trumping the benefits of a child.”
She said she has always put her daughter Bryn first, saying she “would never talk about anyone in Bryn’s life negatively.”
She recalls early on in the custody hearings at the beginning of the divorce:
“I wanted primary custody of Bryn because I have a challenging schedule… In the event that I have to go to Australia for eight nights, I don’t want to be away from my daughter, I want there to be some flexibility.”
She says she “had the intuition” that if Jason had shared custody, he would be “rigid” and wouldn’t let her have that flexibility — even as she supported him AND her child. She also notes how “some people” use things like custody agreements “as a weapon” and “a gotcha” when unexpected issues come up that require that flexibility she needed. Wonder which people she could mean…
She recalled the judge telling her at the start of all this:
“Having a custody battle is like watching your child drown, asking you for help.”
So she tried to make it work. It’s then that Bethenny gets into the worst of it.
‘Den Of Hell’
She describes some of the worst things she went through at that time, living in her apartment with her ex-husband and their daughter:
“I had a situation where I had an apartment that I paid for with my money that was in my name, and one day my lawyer said to me, ‘It’s not in your name.’ I had no idea how that could possibly happen.”
She says she remembers being handed some documents, including a page that “was described to me differently” that she later found out that document was “forged” and “illegally notarized.” She then had to spend “millions and millions” fighting to get her apartment back.
“I was followed, I was hacked, I had my email broken into, I had my every move watched without my knowing it… I was threatened, I was harassed, I was emailed hundreds and hundreds of times in a very short period of time, and everyone that I went to, professionals, said, ‘You are not being physically abused.’ And I said, ‘I know this isn’t right. I know this isn’t right.'”
She says she was also “taunted” and “tormented” — and wasn’t able to check on the well-being of Bryn because she couldn’t even FaceTime her daughter when it wasn’t her time, which was its own “absolute torture.”
“Lawyers tell you that you can’t move out of your house. What is it called, the ‘marital residence.’ How could you stay in the house with someone you’re going through issues like fraud and being recorded … you’re now in a house with someone because you need to spend time with your child.”
She had to have a padlock on her bedroom door “to protect myself.” Why?
“I had someone crawl into my bed and look me in the eyes and say, ‘Is everything OK?'”
Um, ‘is everything OK’??? No, you’re in her bed!!! Hence the locks, which upset Bryn even then.
“My daughter still remembers, even though she didn’t know what the point was, she knew that the bedroom doors were locked, which was not in her best interest.”
It got so bad, Bethenny made a decision. She says:
“I bought another apartment, I moved out of the apartment I owned because I didn’t want my daughter to be in this den of hell.”
But she wasn’t even “allowed” to do that! Her lawyers wouldn’t let her buy a new place because her divorce wasn’t over, therefore her finances weren’t settled. So she and Bryn stayed in hotels, corporate apartments, and at friends’ places. All to stay away from Jason.
The Slowest Fight
Bethenny warns anyone starting a divorce:
“You need to understand that crazy things can happen and you need to protect yourself.”
How did she protect herself? By being her own legal secretary and organizing her own complaints. Everything Jason ever did to her, she collected it all in a way that would be recognized by a court of law:
“I went through all of the abusive emails, texts, things written about me, experiences, I have them in binders, I have 20 binders that have tabs from taunting to obsessing over men that I dated to all kinds of harassment, categorized. Because not until I had it so organized and an incident happened, could I take legal action.”
But all that work was worth it.
“Finally the first time I felt like I could exhale in years was when legal action was taken against what is emotional abuse. I had to take matters into my own hands and methodically and slowly capture the recordings, the emails, the texts, all of it together in an organized manner as if it was a thesis to have action taken.”
Wow. But finally it was over. After nine and a half years.
“After legal action was taken and my ex was arrested and a couple other things happened, I went back to trial for the umpteenth time and was given decision-making for my daughter’s medical and education.”
And it’s all because of her hard work. She says:
“Everything that happened is because I made it happen. Lawyers don’t make things happen, lawyers execute what you need. My lawyers are amazing, but I drove the entire process. I drove the research, I drove the decisions, what was just.”
She concluded:
“It’s doing everyone a disservice if I don’t truthfully explain that I’ve been through f**king hell. Emotionally abused, tormented, stolen from, defrauded, tricked, recorded, hacked, you name it, it’s happened to me in nine years and I came out on the other side, it ended because I fought for what was right, and justice came.”
Wow. Bryn is 11 years old now. The divorce may have been 20% of Bethenny’s life, but it’s been over 80% of her daughter’s. We’re just so glad it’s over and everyone is on the other side now.
What do YOU think of Bethenny’s shocking claims against Jason?? You can listen to the full podcast HERE.
[Image via Instagram/TNYF/WENN]
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