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.

As December winds down, it brings with it a particular kind of reckoning—the quiet sorting of what will not be carried forward. In St. Louis County, Missouri, that reckoning arrived for David W. Diehl in the closing days of the year. With the calendar nearly spent, a petition for dissolution of marriage was filed on December 29, 2025, drawing a formal line beneath a union that had lasted more than four decades.

Diehl and Mary E. Kreppel were married on August 15, 1982, their marriage registered in Cook County, Illinois. Over the years, the relationship accumulated not only shared history, but property, obligations, and understandings that now required careful division. The parties separated around December 19, 2025, just days before the filing—timing that mirrored the broader sense of finality that settles in as one year yields to the next.

Both parties are retired. There were no children born of the marriage, and no military service complicating the court’s task. The petition states plainly that the marriage is irretrievably broken and that there is no reasonable likelihood it can be preserved. What remains, then, is order. Filed through attorney Alan E. Freed of Paule, Camazine & Blumenthal, the petition asks the court to dissolve the marriage; to formally find it irretrievably broken; to set apart each party’s separate property; and to divide marital property and marital debt according to a separation agreement the parties have already reached. It also requests any further orders the court deems just.

End-of-year filings often feel symbolic, and this one is no exception. As the year closed, this petition did not look ahead with hope so much as it looked back with certainty—clearing the ledger before the calendar turned, and leaving January to begin without unfinished business.

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