Disclaimer: All facts gleaned from the filings stated hereafter are only as truthful as the petitioner. The tone of this article expresses a style of writing historically employed by America’s greatest writers and, as such, is for opinion purposes only. No intentional harm is due. Do not read if the topic of divorce (even your own) causes you emotional distress. Continue at your own risk.
Paper tells the truth without blinking. A divorce filed at the end of December—December 28 to 31—often smells of flight: last call, lights dimming, someone trying to outrun the calendar. A filing at the start of a new year reads colder. Cleaner. It says the reckoning waited its turn.
That tone hangs over the petition filed January 8, 2026, in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County, Missouri, where Mathew Wertenberger moved to dissolve his brief marriage to Tammy Johnson. The facts line up like case notes. Married March 3, 2025, in St. Charles County. Separated by August 1. No children. No pregnancy. No illusions left standing. The petition says the marriage is irretrievably broken, beyond salvage, beyond spin.
Wertenberger, represented by Dan Haltenhof of Haltenhof Law Group, LC, asks the court to do what courts do best: divide the wreckage and move on. He seeks a formal dissolution of the marriage, an equitable division of marital property and marital debts, and the return of each party’s separate property to its original owner. The petition states plainly that neither spouse requires maintenance—each earns enough to stand alone, and neither asks the other for support. There are no military ties, no custody battles, no lingering claims waiting in the shadows. Only a request for such further orders as the court deems just and proper.
Filed at the beginning of 2026, the petition doesn’t beg for mercy or nostalgia. It documents the end, marks the boundaries, and steps back. The year is new. The marriage is not. And the record closes without sentiment.
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