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.
Case No. 2616-FC01423 was sworn to in early February and filed in the Circuit Court of Jackson County at Independence, where Rolf Richard Stangel asks the court to dissolve his marriage to Barbara Leigh Stangel. The verification bears the date February 3, 2026, the petitioner affirming under oath that the facts stated are true to the best of his knowledge and belief.
The petition records that the parties were married on April 1, 2019, in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in Carroll County, where the marriage was registered. They last separated in August 2025. No children were born to or adopted by the parties during the marriage, and the respondent is not pregnant. The filing further states that neither party is on active duty with any branch of the Armed Forces of the United States or its allies.
In measured language, the petition outlines the financial architecture of the marriage. The parties accumulated marital property and marital debts and may present a property settlement agreement for the court’s approval as fair and not unconscionable. If no agreement is reached, the petitioner requests an equitable division of assets and debts. Each party is said to own certain non-marital assets to be set aside accordingly. Both are described as retired, self-supporting, and capable of paying their own attorney’s fees and costs, with neither seeking maintenance from the other.
The petition concludes with the assertion that there is no reasonable likelihood the marriage can be preserved and that it is irretrievably broken. Filed as winter gives way to the administrative tempo of a new year, the case enters a judicial process designed less for narrative than for resolution—cataloguing assets, assigning responsibility, and, in due course, issuing a decree that formalizes what the parties state has already come to an end.
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