She Says Her Husband Cheated. The Law Won’t Let Her Divorce Him for a Year (with Jen Hamilton)

Earlier this year, labor and delivery nurse Jen Hamilton announced to her millions of followers on social media that her marriage was ending. Now, she’s trying to change the state divorce law that’s keeping her married. You can also watch this interview at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. You can find Jen Hamilton on ⁠Instagram ⁠and ⁠TikTok⁠. Her book is called ⁠Birth Vibes⁠. Phoebe is going on tour this fall! Get tickets and see all of our tour dates at ⁠⁠thisiscriminal.com/live⁠⁠. Say hello on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠occasional newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow the show and review us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sign up for Criminal Plus⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, invitations to virtual events, special merch deals, and more. We also make ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠This is Love⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Phoebe Reads a Mystery⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠our online shop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Phoebe Judge?

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:01Phoebe Judge?

  Hi, it's Phoebe. I'm going on tour. The show is called Don't Worry. If you like hearing me tell stories about people, I've decided to tell stories about my life and the people I love. I'll introduce you to my parents and my sisters and the secrets our family kept. Well, some of us kept. I had to tell somebody. Just because you were eight didn't mean I couldn't tell you. I hope it's funny. I hope it's surprising. Find all our tour dates and get tickets at thisiscriminal.com/live.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  I needed the rage inside me to move forward, you know? And I think that the rage is what made me want to change divorce law.

• 1:46Phoebe Judge?

  I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is what happened next from Criminal. We've been putting out these episodes on Tuesdays for a few months now, both here in the podcast feed and on our YouTube channel. We think about these Tuesday episodes as more casual conversations, me talking with someone who's got an interesting story to tell. Often, that's a journalist or an author. But today, I'm talking with someone who's right in the middle of her own story, Jen Hamilton. Jen is a labor and delivery nurse who lives in North Carolina. You might know her from Instagram or TikTok, where she reaches millions of followers with her videos.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  What flavor baby are we having? Boy or girl? And sir, what's your name? What can I call you? Because I prefer not to call you daddy.

• 2:35Phoebe Judge?

  But recently, Jen has taken on a new topic: divorce laws, especially North Carolina's.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Did you know that in North Carolina, if you decide that you want to divorce someone, you have to stay married to that person for a full year?

• 2:50Phoebe Judge?

  Earlier this year, Jen separated from her husband and has alleged that he, quote, "led a double life." Her husband has not publicly commented. I started my conversation with Jen by asking her what she knew about divorce laws in North Carolina before this year.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  So I had some experience with divorce law back in 2019 because I kind of separated from my husband back then for a similar situation. So I, we got legally separated and then ended up getting back together. But back then, I was kind of unsure of how I wanted to proceed, and so I really didn't take much heed or credence to the whole one-year thing. And then now, I'm in a situation where I was like, I want to be done, and I cannot be done.

• 3:45Phoebe Judge?

  So earlier this year, you separated from your husband again. This time, did you know right away that you were intending to get divorced?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Yes, immediately. It was, it was not like a, it was not a question in my mind anymore. It was like the, the behavior has continued. This is not ever going to change. I want out. And when things made the turn, where I was like, okay, this is it, I also made a video on the internet and kind of just like told people what was happening. And it was my way of like walking across a bridge and then lighting a match behind me because I didn't want to be tempted to go back just to the familiar because it was not good for me.

• 4:34Phoebe Judge?

  What did you find out earlier this year about your husband?

• 4:40Speaker 02

  So I found out that he had a secret TikTok account where he was messaging girls or like buying pictures from girls. And obviously, that is not cool. That is not okay in a marriage. And so that's when I made the decision like, okay, I don't want to do this. I'm not going to be competing with other people for your attention. So if you want to do that, you go do that somewhere else.

• 5:00Phoebe Judge?

  How did you find out? What was, what was it that tipped you off?

• 5:05Speaker 02

  You know that feeling that just something's not right? Well, something wasn't right. And I got on his phone in the nighttime and couldn't find anything. It was, I was like, man, I'm just going crazy. And then I saw the TikTok app and I was like, he doesn't have a TikTok. And then, no, he did. He did have a TikTok, which my, my thing is like, that's kind of bold. It's kind of brave because that's my, that's my home, you know? Like, that's where I live, is TikTok. So like, for you to be doing shenanigans over there, that's pretty, pretty bold.

• 5:41Phoebe Judge?

  And what, what happened when you confronted him?

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Um, a lot of like, I just remember feeling bamboozled. Like, I felt like everything that I knew was a lie. I didn't even know how much was a lie at that point because we separated after that, and then I didn't find out about the actual, like, physical infidelity until later.

• 6:11Phoebe Judge?

  Were you surprised when you started looking into how divorce works in North Carolina?

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I had had some idea, but I really, when we had separated before, I really didn't think too much about the divorce process. It was, the separation before, to me, was almost like, please change, you know? Like, I mean it. I mean business. Please don't do this to me anymore. Almost like scare him into acting right? I don't know. And that's, I really don't feel like in my heart, I really wanted a divorce the first time. But this time was like, I don't want anything else, you know? And so whenever I went to a lawyer and started, you know, trying to figure out how we're

• 6:58Speaker 02

  going to do this, in North Carolina, yeah, you have to be separated physically in another location for 366 days before you can even file for divorce. And so for a lot of people, that is not possible. I mean, like, you think about like a stay-at-home mom who doesn't have any financial resources and like having to figure out how to have two, you know, locations that they're managing or financing until they can get divorced.

• 7:31Phoebe Judge?

  When I first heard about, I had a friend who was going through the same thing, in a much less contentious situation, but they decided they didn't want to be married in North Carolina.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:42Phoebe Judge?

  And I remember when they were both telling, and I thought, well, this sounds rather old-fashioned. I mean, you, what are you talking? This feels like 100 or 150 years ago.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, yep. And I mean, this law was passed in 1931, and the argument on the floor when they were trying to pass this law was to give her time to come to her senses. So the misogyny within this law is baked in, you know? Like, they did not want women to be able to make decisions for themselves. And if they made a decision that was against the marriage, then obviously, that's the wrong decision, you know? So I believe that there's so much more important things than marriage, you know? Because if, I took the marriage seriously, you know? I was down. I took the vow seriously. I lived it out.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  And so, you know, when you have someone else who isn't holding up their end of the bargain to me, that's a contractual, you know, thing that we could say, hey, you did, you did it wrong, you know? You violated the contract. I want out of this, you know?

• 8:54Phoebe Judge?

  Are there any exceptions to this separation period in North Carolina? You know, let's say the, the woman or the man is getting out of the relationship because it's abusive.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Nope, nope, not at all. So your ex could literally kill your kids, and you could not only be forced to, like, be married to them still for a year. It's just so crazy. There's no, there's no domestic violence protections. And so with the Divorce Reform Act that they're trying to pass, Senator Woodson Bradley is trying to push that through. It would allow for a divorce to be final immediately upon any kind of domestic violence situation. And then it would shorten that window to six months for everyone else if, and see, that's, and a lot of people are like, well, six months is still too long.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  In North Carolina, that's our only shot. That's our only shot at getting this through is to say, let's try six months. Because I agree, it still is too long. I think grown people should be able to put on their grown big-girl panties and decide things for themselves. But in North Carolina, that is not the case.

• 10:07Phoebe Judge?

  So let's just talk about where North Carolina is right now as opposed to other states. What are the other policies like in other states?

• 10:16Speaker 02

  I'll say that North Carolina is on the more extreme side. There are other states that it is so incredibly difficult to get divorced. I have a friend, Hadley. She was trying to get divorced in Mississippi. Now, that's a crazy town place because she had to go and have a 12-day trial to get divorced. And so even though she had all this evidence of like things that he had done wrong, it didn't fall into the one of the 12 reasons that you can get divorced in Mississippi. And literally, there had to be a judge that said, okay, you've convinced me that you can get out of this marriage. It's so crazy. So we're on the more extreme side, but there are states that are, you know, like very red states

• 11:00Speaker 02

  that believe that marriage is the most important thing that could ever happen. And not protecting women, not making sure that women are able to make decisions for themselves. And I say women because it's mostly women who get trapped. But, you know, there are other states where it's like 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. And why can't we be like that? You know? Because that would have been already been done, you know? Because that would be great.

• 11:25Phoebe Judge?

  See, I mean, the thing about North Carolina, there are other states where there's waiting periods after you file for divorce. But North Carolina, you have to-

• 11:33Speaker 02

  You can't even file.

• 11:35Phoebe Judge?

  And then, you know, and then after day 366, it's not like then, okay, you're divorced. I mean, then you have to go to the courts.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you still have all of that stuff that you have to do. It's just after a year, you know? And also, let's say hypothetically, this wouldn't happen because I have an IUD. But let's say hypothetically, in this next year, I fall in love and I get pregnant, okay? In North Carolina, the father of that baby is my ex automatically.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Did you know that?

• 12:16Phoebe Judge?

  No, on the birth certificate?

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so even if you have not seen that man in a year or whatever, he is still the legal father on the birth certificate. So you have to go to court, file affidavits and DNA tests and everything to be able to change the birth certificate to be reflective of the truth. Isn't that wild?

• 12:40Phoebe Judge?

  When you heard that this was the deal that you were looking at in North Carolina with your husband, what did you think?

• 12:50Speaker 02

  My immediate thought was how grateful I am for my resources. Because I thought about how many people that do not have my resources, that are not working, or maybe they have always stayed at home with their kids, or maybe they're being financially abused by their spouse. And I thought about how grateful I am for the resources that I have to be able to get through this time and be okay.

• 13:18Phoebe Judge?

  We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus at patreon.com/criminal.

• 13:33Phoebe Judge?

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• 14:40Phoebe Judge?

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• 15:24Phoebe Judge?

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• 15:45Phoebe Judge?

  Do you know, is there any evidence that actually shows that this waiting period does help marriages in North Carolina?

• 15:52Speaker 02

  I was told that the amount of people that actually, you know, like get back together is 1% to 2%. So we're requiring everyone to go through this to save 1% to 2% of people from getting remarried. You know, like, okay, you get divorced. If you fall back in love again, okay, cool, get married. I don't care. I want people to be able to make their own grown-girl decisions, you know? And I think it's so crazy that we keep people trapped in situations that they don't want to be in. But I could go, there's a DoorDash driver that just walked up to my house. I could go outside, get in his car, go down to the courthouse and marry that man if I wasn't already married, you know?

• 16:36Speaker 02

  I could marry him in a second, and that's a huge decision. We don't protect people from that, but we keep people trapped in things that they need to be out of.

• 16:47Phoebe Judge?

  And there are these other kind of unusual parts of the North Carolina divorce law, like the alienation of affection.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm not mad at that because I did think about that for a moment. But alienation of affection would allow you to sue whoever your spouse was having sex with if they knew about you. And so for me in particular, the person who was having sex with my husband, she called me and she said, oh, I knew all about you. He talked about you all the time. I just didn't know you had so many followers. So like, you know, there was a big part of me that was like, let me sue her, you know? Because that makes me mad. That would make me furious. Like, how could you, as a woman, for a year and a half?

• 17:35Speaker 02

  So there was a part of me that was like considering it, you know? Because, but in that moment, I just, to be honest, like I just wanted her to hurt. Like, I just wanted her to feel how I felt. And so it wasn't anything that was going to help me in the long run. It was just my hurt feelings on everything. That was just, I think you kind of go into that moment whenever you're, whenever somebody hurts you, that there's like this, I just want to, you know, have destruction, you know? So, but I kind of got over that. The other thing that's crazy, and this is wild that this actually happens. I have a friend who got separated from her husband.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  They were separated, and he found out that she was going on dates. And guess what? Her public adultery trial is this year.

• 18:30Phoebe Judge?

  What state was she in?

• 18:32Speaker 02

  North Carolina.

• 18:36Phoebe Judge?

  Wow.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Isn't that crazy?

• 18:39Phoebe Judge?

  So even if you, you're not even allowed to, to, so what are you supposed to do? Just be in a box for 366 days?

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Basically, yeah. But for me, I'm like, it would be, it would be wild for my ex to try to go down that road because baby, we can have a public adultery trial. You know what I'm saying?

• 19:01Phoebe Judge?

  So even though, you know, at one point you did consider suing under this alienation of affection part of the old law after you heard from the woman, um, you, you are, you're okay with losing that in, in favor of updating these old fashioned divorce laws?

• 19:18Speaker 02

  A hundred percent because as much as I felt like I wanted the other person who hurt me and knew about me, like that's, I think that's the kicker is like you knew and you, you still did this over and over and over and over and over and over again. The vindication that I needed is in living my life well. And so I want to be like leaving the world a better place than I found it. And me having more money doesn't accomplish that. Me trying to change the world does.

• 19:57Phoebe Judge?

  What made you want to, I mean, you had this very public, you're a public figure. You had this very public scandal. I don't know what you'd call it, but what made you want to go a step further and say, I want to change these laws, you know, I'm going to be fine. I can afford to deal with the 366, but I want to work to change divorce laws in North Carolina.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  Because that moment where I was like, thank God, I have all the resources that I do, made me mad for everyone else, you know? So even though, like if I work my tail off and, you know, talk about this and we get it passed, you know, this bill will never come in time for me. There, there's not, there's not a scenario in which this will help me at all. However, it will help so many people who come behind me. And to me, that is worth it.

• 20:55Phoebe Judge?

  The, these bills have been proposed before in North Carolina and they haven't had any success.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  And they get shot down.

• 21:01Phoebe Judge?

  Why do you think that is?

• 21:06Speaker 02

  I think that there is a lot of, how do I say this nicely? I don't know that I can. There's a lot of like misogyny. There's a lot of misogyny. There's a lot of old white dudes who think, oh, you make a vow, you gotta stick to it, you know? But a lot of the times it's the man who is not doing that. I'm not saying that that's a hundred percent, but geez Louise, like let us, let us ladies free, you know? It's so crazy. And so I'm hoping that yes, this, um, this gets passed and it does help women, but it will also help men who are, who find themselves in abusive or trapped situations too.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  So, um, it helps everybody. So I don't see why anybody could be against this, especially the domestic violence part. Like, how can you, how can you possibly say that, that somebody who got their ass beat needs to stay legally married to that person for a whole year to just make sure that they don't want to be with that person? Like, that's so stupid.

• 22:12Phoebe Judge?

  Do you think it'll work this time? Do you think it'll get better?

• 22:14Speaker 02

  God, I hope so. I hope just us talking about it. I hope that Woodson gets reelected so that it like, we have a shot.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  I, I think that if, ah, I just really hope that people are listening to people's stories. Cause I, I did a news interview the other day about this and I, she, the interviewer said, what's one thing that you wish that you could say to the people who would be deciding this? And I said, just listen to people's stories because it's easy to look at something on a piece of paper and be like, oh, well, marriage is important to me, so nope, I don't want to do that. Listen to these people who get trapped in these real life circumstances. And I bet that they would never be able to do that with a clear conscience, you know?

• 23:00Phoebe Judge?

  Did you ever think that 20 year old you, 21 year old you would be doing this, talking about this right now?

• 23:09Speaker 02

  God, no. I would be so sad because I got married at, what was I, 22? Um, and I was, I was, um, just a little bit of background. I was very like evangelical Christian growing up, went to Liberty University.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  One of the very first times that I ever had sex, I got pregnant. It was like virgin, one month pregnant, the next. And so I then felt what it was like to be on the other side of, you know, shame. And, um, I thought that my way out of the shame was getting married, you know? Like if I just marry this man who is now the father of my baby, you know, we're going to be good, we're going to be all right. And so if I knew at 22 years old, that I was going to be like championing divorce, divorce law changes, I would have been so devastated. I think that, you know, sometimes I'll hear people say like, if you could go back and you could tell yourself one thing, you know, I don't think I would have the heart to tell her, you know?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Cause I don't think that I was strong enough to know what was to come. I think that I, everything that has happened in my life needed to happen the way that it, that it did in order for me to be where I am now. Even like my husband cheating in the most diabolical way possible, um, needed to happen for me to leave because I love that man. Oh, I love that man with everything inside me, like and outside me, every hair on my head, love that man. And if he didn't do what he did, I would have kept forgiving the things that I had already forgiven. So I, I think that it needed to happen in the way that it did for me to be, uh, where

• 24:55Speaker 02

  I am, for me to have the strength that I have now.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  I'm now of the, of the thought that, girl, I can, I can handle anything. This is not, this is not assigned to the universe, by the way, to test that theory. But, uh, I feel, I feel very strong. I feel, um, you know, I burned my bed sheets. Like there was this moment where I had to get so angry and so mad about what I was going through, that it almost like, uh, was the, I needed the rage inside me to move forward, you know? And I think that the rage is what made me want to change divorce law. Cause it's like, can I cuss?

• 25:36Phoebe Judge?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Okay. Let me do whatever I can to burn this shit down so that people don't have to go through this.

• 25:43Phoebe Judge?

  Well, Jen Hamilton, thank you very much for being here.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 25:50Phoebe Judge?

  You can find Jen Hamilton on Instagram and Tik Tok at the link in our show notes. She also wrote a book called Birth Vibes. You can find a link to that in our show notes too.

• 26:02Phoebe Judge?

  I'm heading out on tour next month with a brand new live show and I hope you'll come see it. You can find all of the tour dates and get your tickets at thisiscriminal.com/live. And don't forget that you can watch the videos of these Tuesday conversations, which we're calling What Happened Next at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Thanks for listening.

• 26:32Speaker 01

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