808S & HEARTBREAK

It’s Official: Kim Kardashian Files for Divorce From Kanye West

The reality TV star and the rapper have been married for seven years and have four children.

Kim Kardashian West has officially filed for divorce from Kanye West.

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Superior Court confirmed to The Daily Beast that divorce paperwork was filed on Friday.

The separation, first reported by TMZ, has been imminent for the better part of a year, with Kardashian spending most of her time in Los Angeles and West at his ranch in Wyoming.

Celebrity divorce lawyer Laura Wasser, who filed the paperwork, did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.

The pair, among the highest-profile American celebrities alive today, have been married for nearly seven years and have four children—North, Saint, Chicago, and Psalm. Kardashian is seeking a joint custody agreement in which she will chaperone the kids most of the time, and West is likely to agree, according to TMZ. Their marriage is subject to a prenuptial agreement that will divide their assets.

A source told E! News, which airs Keeping Up With the Kardashians, that the husband and wife were “completely done and no longer speaking.”

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Reports of trouble began to emerge last year and escalated as West’s ill-fated presidential run saw him rage during unhinged campaign events and reveal the family’s most private affairs. He said that he wanted a divorce and that his wife nearly decided to terminate the pregnancy that eventually resulted in the birth of North West. Kardashian later said the musician had been undergoing a serious mental health episode and asked the public for compassion.

The divorce will be Kardashian’s third and West’s first. They met in 2003, began dating nearly a decade later, and married in 2014 in Italy. He has made occasional appearances on her family’s flagship show over the years—though he later bristled at reality TV as “unbearable”—and wrote songs like 2012’s “Cold” about her. She starred in the controversial 2013 music video for his song “Bound 2.”

Her family described the two as “soulmates” while they were dating and after they wed, but West would go on to rebuke the family as manipulative, even calling Kardashian’s mother Kris Jenner “Kris Jong-Un.”

The union of the two A-listers encompassed dramatic shifts in their lives and American culture. Both have evolved into more explicitly political creatures since they married. West expressed support for former President Donald Trump while Kardashian voted for Joe Biden.

Both separately visited Trump in the White House—West to express his support, Kardashian to lobby for the commutation of a prisoner’s sentence. TMZ reports their differing politics factored into the divorce.

Each has endured crises during the marriage as well. Kardashian’s first two pregnancies were rife with complications, so much so that the couple had their next two children via surrogates. She was robbed and taken hostage at gunpoint in Paris in 2016, and he was hospitalized for a psychiatric emergency in the same year as he struggled with bipolar disorder.

Their public pursuits have likewise changed. Kardashian’s eponymous show will end this year, and she is studying to become an attorney, an outgrowth of her work on criminal justice reform. She created and then folded a wildly popular mobile game and several consumer product lines while she and West were together. After being on the brink of bankruptcy four years ago, West has grown into a fully-fledged fashion mogul and near-billionaire with his Yeezy line of clothing and sneakers.

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Pilar MelendezSenior National Reporter

Blake MontgomeryFormer Reporter/Editor

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