History Main / DivorceRequiresDeath

* ''Series/TheOrville'' takes this literally as in the Moclusan culture, killing your spouse is the only way to end a marriage.

'''Since this is a DeathTrope, expect heavy unmarked spoilers.'''

!!Examples

* In the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "Second Sight", we meet a famous scientist who has everything... except his wife's love. And she comes from a culture that doesn't permit divorce, so she's slowly (and unknowingly) killing herself instead by telepathically creating an image of herself to pursue affairs. The episode ends with her husband killing himself instead in the process of culminating his life's work, so that she will be free.
* ''Series/TheOrville'' takes this literally as in the Moclusan culture, killing your spouse is the only way to end a marriage.
* In ''Series/LawAndOrder'' episode "[[Recap/LawAndOrderS15E9AllInTheFamily All in the Family]]", the big reveal is that the VictimOfTheWeek refused to divorce his wife. In their society, based on Jewish religious law, a divorce can only be granted by the husband; as long as he refuses, his wife remains married to him until his death.
* In one early episode of ''Series/LawAndOrderSVU'', a beautiful man is [[VictimOfTheWeek dead]]. It quickly turns out that his landlady was an alcoholic who had the hots for him and also had a pedophile boyfriend ''and'' a daughter. (The daughter is [[DawsonCasting clearly adult]], but probably supposed to be 16 or so, making the [[{{Ephebophile}} pedophile label inaccurate in a plot-relevant way]].) It is quickly established that the man died protecting the girl from the "pedophile". This later turns out to be a lie: The girl was in love with the man, but he was about to leave the country and refused to take her with him. And she couldn't bear the thought to live without him. So her mind snapped, and she killed him.
* ''Series/HighlanderTheRaven'' had an episode where Amanda's former husband (a fellow Immortal she only married to save her own neck) turns up. They fight and when she had him dead to rights, he pleaded "I'm your husband." She answers "I want a divorce" and offs his head.
* In one episode of ''Series/PersonOfInterest'' the VictimOfTheWeek is a married couple who have both put out a hit on the other in order to avoid the cost of the divorce. At the end of the episode they decide that they can make the marriage work (once they get out of jail).
* ''Series/FatherBrown'': Discussed in "The Flying Stars" when the VictimOfTheWeek insists that she'll die before allowing her husband to divorce her simply because he doesn't want to watch her drink herself to death, mere minutes before she's killed in a scuffle with another person.
-->'''Mrs. Adams''': The only way I leave this marriage ''is in a coffin''.

* ''If Thems The Rules'', [[DepravedHomosexual Arcturus Black]] poisons his wife, [[SettledForGay Melania]], so he could be free to seduce [[CelibateHero Harry]].

* ''If Thems The Rules'', [[DepravedHomosexual Arcturus Black]] poisons his wife, [[SettledForGay Mela]][[TheBeard nia]], so he could be free to seduce [[CelibateHero Harry]].

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' has Quagmire getting married to a woman who turns out to be insane and threatens suicide every time he tries to divorce her.

** Rhaenyra Targaryen is TheBeard, married to the gay Laenor Velaryon, and the two are fine with the situation and find romantic partners elsewhere, until the day Rhaenyra wants to marry her uncle Daemon. In that case however, things take a much better turn as Laenor is FakingTheDead so he can become a sword for hire in Essos along with his lover Ser Qarl Correy, leaving Rhaenyra free to marry Daemon (at least "better" for the parties involved, not so much for the dead Velaryon guard and Laenor's devastated parents).

* ''Series/HouseOfTheDragon'': Prince Daemon and Lady Rhea are in an ArrangedMarriage. They hate each other, live apart, and haven't seen each other in years. They're as divorced as they can be in a society that does not allow divorce. Daemon conducts his life as if he were not married--the only thing his marriage stops him from doing is being allowed to marry someone else. Twice he tries to take a second wife while his first wife still lives, calling it polygamy, but he's resoundingly told he can't do that. And so he kills Rhea in a HuntingAccident in order to free himself up to enter a more desirable union.

** Also played straight, to end a marriage. Divorce doesn’t really fit the time period, so for Victor and Victoria to be together, the man she was forced to marry instead must die. Luckily, he’s evil enough that no one will mourn him. And conveniently, he accidentally kills himself, sparing anyone else the effort (and the guilt – he was evil, but not enough to justify homicide). Rather fittingly, he dies by [[spoiler:drinking the poisoned wine that was meant for Victor to kill himself with.]]

** ''Literature/LordEdgwareDies'': the victim agreed to a divorce, but the ''new'' flame was pious and wouldn’t have agreed to marry a divorcee.

* In traditional Jewish Law (not to be confused with contemporary Israel) a woman cannot divorce her husband. Thus it occasionally arises that a man will refuse to give his wife a ''get'', or a divorce agreement, often in attempt to extort money out of her, and many legal devices are used in an attempt to pressure this recalcitrant husband into granting his wife a divorce.[[note]]The traditional Jewish law still has its fair share of power in contemporary Israel though: citizens registered as Jewish in the Ministry of Interior can only get married in Israel through the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s registry; while marriage performed abroad is recognised, a divorce recognised in Israel can only be done through the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s courts. This means men who won’t give their wives a ''get'' are imprisoned, and that women are severely discriminated against in these proceedings, especially if she is less religious than her husband (some husbands even ''pretend'' to be religious to get a sweeter deal).[[/note]] The story is said of Jewish Sage Rabbi Akiva Eiger, that such a man was brought before him once, with the hope that Rabbi Eiger would convince him to divorce his wife. Rabbi Eiger brings him into his study, and opens a volume of the Talmud to its first page. He turns to the man, looks him in the eye, and says, "The Talmud says here that a woman is freed from her husband in one of two ways. Through divorce, and through the husband's death. Which one would you prefer?" The man looks at Rabbi Eiger, laughs and says, "What, are you trying to threaten me?" He walks out of the study, walks out the front door, and collapses dead of a heart attack on the front steps.

** Jewish women who aren’t granted a ''get'' (Jewish divorce) from a missing husband are called ''‘agunot''[[note]]עֲגוּנוֹת, lit. ‘anchored’[[/note]]. They have several solutions to avoid this situation. For instance, according to traditional interpretation, King David did not sin when sleeping with [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathsheba Bathsheba]], as her husband divorced her before going to war (as was, according to Jewish interpreters, standard practice back in the day), lest he were captured and she would become an ''aguna''; so, [[LoopholeAbuse technically]], King David did not sleep with a married woman, which is a sin punishable by death according to the Old Testament laws.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* In ''Manga/{{Ooku}}'', Yunoshin has sold himself into (pampered) bondage in the female shogun's harem, expecting never to see home or girlfriend again. Once a man enters the [[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ooku ooku]] as a concubine, he can take no other (female) lovers than the shogun and can leave the service or the building only at his death. [[spoiler:The shogun later lets him go, by helping him FakingTheDead. He's declared legally dead, his family gets a large "bereavement" payment, and the man formerly known as Yunoshin goes home to marry the [[ChildhoodFriendRomance Victorious Childhood Friend]] he loves and take her family name.]]

* ''Film/DivorceItalianStyle'' revolves around this trope, with the VillainProtagonist seeking to get out of marriage by setting up circumstances in which he can murder his wife and receive a slap-on-the-wrist by committing a type of HonorKilling specifically mentioned in the Penal Code until 1981.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "Second Sight", we meet a famous scientist who has everything... except his wife's love. And she comes from a culture that doesn't permit divorce, so she's slowly killing herself instead. The episode ends with him killing himself instead, so that she will be free.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' 5[[superscript:th]] Edition: The "Ceremony" spell grants supernatural blessings for various rites. A marriage ceremony grants the happy couple a week of protection from harm, after which they have to be widowed to become eligible for the spell again. It raises the question of just how far players are willing to go to optimize their characters -- and of how marriage law handles coming BackFromTheDead.

* Very odd subversion from Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's ''The Premature Burial''. A young French woman named Victorine [=LaFourcade=] was seeing a poor journalist named Julien Bossuet, but she caved in to pressure from her wealthy family and dumped him, and ended up marrying a well-known banker. Her marriage to him was [[DomesticAbuse abusive and unhappy]], and she apparently fell ill and died after many years of putting up with the banker's abuse. Julien went to her grave to take a lock of her hair as a memento, only to find that she was not actually dead; she had only been mistaken for dead and BuriedAlive! He took her home and nursed her back to health, and the two eloped to America together. They returned to France some 20 years later, and Victorine's former husband recognized her, and tried to claim her back, though she refused to go back to him. [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome The court ruled in ''her'' favor because of the unusual circumstances and the number of years that had passed.]]

* '' Film/HowtoMurderYourWife''has the protagonist inadvertently get married; his wife is Catholic so she won't grant him a divorce. He is an author of a comic strip featuring a hard-bitten detective who becomes a hen-specked sap after the writer is married. The writer illustrates how his hero plans to murder the hero's wife. The real-life wife sees it, is heart-broken and disappears- leaving the whole murder plot laid out.[[/folder]]