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A-Rod's Wife Files for Divorce, Says Slugger "Emotionally Abandoned" Family
2008-07-07
Los Angeles (E! Online) - Mighty A-Rod has just whiffed. The estranged wife of Yankee star Alex Rodriguez filed for divorce Monday in Miami, seeking to dissolve their five-and-a-half-year union. "The marriage of the parties is irretrievably broken because of the husband's extramarital affairs and other marital misconduct," Cynthia Rodriguez's petition reads, adding that the slugger had "emotionally abandoned his wife and children." "[She] has exhausted every effort to salvage the marriage." (View the court papers.) While citing numerous alleged infidelities committed by the baseball superstar, C-Rod did not specifically mention Madonna in court papers, after a week of media reports suggesting the Queen of Pop and Rodriguez may have carried on an illicit affair. "We just filed the papers this morning in Miami," John Van Ness, one of the family law attorneys on Cynthia Rodriguez's legal team, told E! News. "She has not been happy based on what has been happening," he continued. "At the end of the day, it is a very personal matter." A-Rod has not publicly commented on the divorce filing or his alleged philandering. In her divorce petition, filed in Miami-Dade County Family Court by her attorneys, Cynthia Rodriguez seeks primary custody of the couple's two daughters, 3-year-old Natasha and 3-month-old Ella. She is demanding to keep the family's six-bedroom, $12 million home in Coral Gables, Fla., and wants Rodriguez to pay her alimony, life and health insurance, private school tuition for the kids, and an equitable distribution of assets. The parties also signed an antenuptial agreement in October 2002, but the missus' attorneys stated that further investigation is needed to determine its validity. After the New York tabs and Us Weekly went wild speculating about the relationship between her hubby and the "Like a Virgin" singer, Cynthia fled to France to avoid the media circus, taking refuge in the Paris home of pal Lenny Kravitz. That sparked rumors that she and the rocker were an item, assertions which Kravitz angrily denied in a statement on Thursday, saying he offered his place to her strictly as a friend and was hurt at being referred to as an "adulterer." Madonna, meanwhile, released a rare public statement Sunday, refuting allegations she rounded the bases with Rodriguez and smacking down reports that her own marriage with filmmaker Guy Ritchie was headed for the disabled list. "My husband and I are not planning on getting a divorce. I know Alex Rodriguez through Guy Oseary, who manages both of us. I brought my kids to a Yankee game. I am not romantically involved in any way with Alex Rodriguez," Madonna said, while also denying reports that she was schooling him in the ways of Kabbalah. (Originally published July 7, 2008 at 8:14 a.m. PT.)
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