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.
It begins with a flick of a pen, a flick after twenty years of dinners, two children, quiet tensions, North Shore holidays, and gilded routines carried out behind the ornamental hedges of suburban Chicago. On July 1, 2025, Melissa Lerner stepped into the arena of the Cook County Domestic Relations Division and filed her petition for dissolution of marriage—a final act, a declaration of irreconcilable differences after a marriage begun with promise on November 6, 2004.
The petition, crafted by her counsel Todd R. Warren of Katz, Goldstein & Warren, tells the anatomy of a life long since partitioned emotionally, now in need of legal architecture. Melissa, 52, identifies herself as a homemaker—her labor unmonetized but no less formative. Scott Lerner, 53, maintains employment, lives separately in Arlington Heights, and is described as a man of ample means, capable of supporting both wife and child at a level consistent with the lifestyle the family once shared.
The couple’s younger child, a minor born in 2009, remains at the heart of the filing. Melissa seeks primary decision-making authority and parenting time, while requesting support for herself and the child—support that reflects not only need but also the years of unpaid investment she contributed to their shared household. With the filing, she also reserves the right to reclaim her maiden name: Multack. The petition sketches a familiar but deeply human story—of roles played, compromises made, and now, a woman stepping forward to demand what the law says she has long earned.
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