Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are officially over — again.
Lopez filed to divorce the Oscar-winning "Argo" actor-director Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, according to legal documents reviewed by The Times. The couple's two-year anniversary was July 17 in Nevada, and the filing falls on the two-year anniversary of their wedding ceremony in Georgia .
Representatives for Lopez and Affleck did not immediately respond to The Times' request for comment.
Lopez does not say whether she and Affleck had a prenuptial agreement, according to TMZ, which first reported the stars' split on Tuesday.
Signs that the couple was headed for the rocks had been ample in recent months, with People reporting May 17 that they were living apart and following up May 22 with word from an "exclusive source" that their marriage was "not in the best place at the moment."
A disconnect between Lopez's and Affleck's approaches to life was mentioned more than once, with a source telling People in May that "Ben hates all attention and it makes him very uncomfortable" and "Jennifer has always had a different approach." A week into June, TMZ reported that the eight-figure Affleck-Lopez mansion and its 24 bathrooms had been quietly up for sale for a couple of weeks and that divorce was "imminent." The house hit public listings in July.
Meanwhile, Affleck purchased a $20.5-million L.A. house — which some said could easily be turned into a bachelor pad — on Lopez's 55th birthday late last month.
The July Fourth holiday weekend saw the two at opposite ends of the country, per People : Affleck in L.A., Lopez in New York's Hamptons.
Lopez's ninth and most recent album, "This Is Me ... Now," and its accompanying film released earlier this year heavily tapped into the rekindled relationship with Affleck. The album's summer tour was canceled before it began amid rumors of low ticket sales and relationship woes. Lopez said she was "devastated" at the cancellation. "Jennifer is taking time off to be with her children, family and close friends," her fan newsletter said.
The couple first met in 2002 on the set of " Gigli ," when Lopez was still married to her second husband, Cris Judd . JLo filed for divorce two days after she was caught kissing Affleck at her surprise birthday party.
Affleck proposed in November 2002 with a $2.5-million pink diamond, but the couple postponed their September wedding the day they were due to walk down the aisle, citing the media firestorm surrounding their relationship. By January, it was reported that "Bennifer" was officially over.
They spent the next 18 years apart with different partners — Lopez was married to singer Marc Anthony from 2004 to 2014 and was engaged to former New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez between 2019 and 2021 . Meanwhile, Affleck was married to Jennifer Garner from 2005 to 2018; the parents of three have remained friends and even co-parented with Lopez, who has twins with Anthony.
But you can't fight fate or power-couple status. Affleck and Lopez were spotted together again in 2021 and announced their second engagement in 2022 after he proposed in a bubble bath with a giant green ring . They were wed in Las Vegas later that year and seemed to enjoy embodying the best of early-2000s nostalgia before divorce rumors began to spread this spring, right before Lopez canceled her summer tour .
“We lost a sense of ourselves, and we needed to separate because we didn’t know how to survive it," Lopez told Variety in February, talking about her and Affleck's 2004 breakup under extreme media scrutiny. "I had to figure myself out, and he had to figure himself out.”
Looks as if they might have figured things out together, finally. And the answer is, "apart."
Times Fast Break intern Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .
Local Los Angeles, CA
Most Popular
Comments / 0