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.

The year is barely awake when this marriage is asked to end. January 2, 2026 arrives with the promise of clean pages and better habits, and into that thin morning light comes a petition filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois—quiet, deliberate, and unsentimental. Paul Liwinski’s request to dissolve his marriage to Miriam Esther Pappa-Nowell does not chase the drama of endings. Instead, it settles into the work of naming what has already slipped away.

The couple married on December 14, 2018, in Cook County, but the marriage itself did not linger long in shared space. According to the filing, they have lived separate and apart since January 2019, a separation that stretches across years and seasons, long enough for absence to become ordinary. Irreconcilable differences, the petition states, caused an irretrievable breakdown; reconciliation was tried, failed, and no longer serves the living.

Represented by attorney Paul Marinov, Liwinski asks the court for a narrow set of remedies that reflect the stripped-down nature of the union’s end. He seeks a judgment dissolving the bonds of matrimony, an order denying maintenance to the respondent, and the assignment of each party’s respective non-marital property. With no children born of the marriage and both parties described as capable of supporting themselves, the petition avoids entanglement, requesting only such further relief as the court deems just.

End-of-year filings often feel like confessions slipped in before midnight. This one, lodged at the start of a new calendar, feels different. It does not pretend to be a beginning. It is an acknowledgment—filed early, plainly stated—that some endings wait patiently for the year to catch up to them.

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