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 last hours of the year have a way of inviting reckoning, a pause where long lives are measured not in resolutions but in realities. That sense of quiet stock-taking frames the petition Susan J. Irwin filed on December 31, 2025, in St. Louis County, Missouri—a filing lodged not at the hopeful threshold of a new year, but at the sober close of one already spent.
Susan J. Irwin and Roy J. Irwin were married on August 27, 1977, in St. Louis, a union that stretched across decades and seasons before the parties separated in late July 2025. The petition does not describe a marriage beyond repair. Instead, it states plainly that there remains a reasonable likelihood the marriage can be preserved, and that it is not irretrievably broken. This is not a document of finality, but of restraint, filed when the year itself seems to exhale.
No children were born or adopted during the marriage. Both parties are retired, both capable of supporting themselves, and neither seeks maintenance from the other. Yet the practical burdens of separation still demand attention. Susan asks the court to enter a judgment of legal separation; to segregate and award her separate, non-marital property; and to consider alleged marital misconduct in the division of marital property. She also asks the court to assign responsibility for the parties’ debts and to order that neither spouse pay maintenance.
One request carries particular weight: Susan asserts she lacks adequate financial resources to sustain the proceeding and asks that Roy contribute to her attorneys’ fees, litigation expenses, and court costs. Represented by attorney Erin E. Rathjen-Decker of Sandberg Phoenix & von Gontard, P.C., Susan’s petition reads like an appeal for balance rather than rupture. Filed as the year closed, it reflects a familiar truth—that some endings arrive not with a bang, but with careful words set down before the calendar turns.
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