It’s official: Bennifer 2.0 is splitsville.
Jennifer Lopez has filed for divorce from Ben Affleck, bringing to an end their two-year marriage—as well as months of rabid speculation.
Sources told TMZ, which first reported the Tuesday filing, that the couple have neither a prenuptial agreement nor a settlement in place.
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The tabloid pointed out the significance of the filing date, which marks the second anniversary of the pair’s Georgia wedding ceremony. (They were formally wed in Las Vegas, Nevada a month prior to the splashier celebration.)
Lopez’s divorce petition, which was filed pro per, or without an attorney, listed the date of her separation from Affleck as April 26, 2024.
It wasn’t until early May, though, that rumors began to circulate about their relationship status, with Lopez turning up stag to the Met Gala, which she was co-chairing. Affleck’s conspicuous absence was quickly explained away as a scheduling conflict.
The night prior to the gala, Affleck had attended Tom Brady’s Netflix roast in Los Angeles—with Lopez this time the no-show. (Again, clashing production schedules.)
At the end of May, amid reports that Affleck had moved out of their mansion and that they had started attending couples therapy, Lopez canceled her summer tour less than a month before it had been set to kick off.
“Jennifer is taking time off to be with her children, family, and close friends,” a Live Nation rep said at the time. The singer herself added in her own statement to fans that she was “heartsick and devastated” to have let them down.
Later in the summer, Lopez celebrated her 55th birthday with a Bridgerton-themed bash up in the Hamptons, sans Affleck. Weeks later, he was sighted cruising around Los Angeles on an electric-blue motorbike in a Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt and sporting a freshly-shorn faux-hawk—all sure signs of an extremely divorced man, according to fans.
TMZ reported Tuesday that the pair have been attempting to reach a settlement for months. The talks are ongoing but growing “increasingly acrimonious,” the tabloid said, “to the point [where], at times, they’re not even speaking to each other.”
Bennifer, as they were known, first got together in the early aughts after meeting on the set of the notorious bomb Gigli in 2002. (Lopez was married to her second husband, Cris Judd, at the time.)
After Lopez split from Judd, she and Affleck got engaged, only for the two to announce they were heading their separate ways by January 2004.
“Ben and I split up at the moment when I thought we were committing to each other forever, it was my first real heartbreak, it felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest,” Lopez wrote in her 2014 book, True Love.
In June 2004, Lopez wed fellow singer-songwriter Marc Anthony. Lopez later called their relationship “a Band-Aid on the cut” of her break-up with Affleck. She and Anthony separated in 2014; they share twins Max and Emme.
In 2005, Affleck married Jennifer Garner, with whom he’d eventually welcome three children: Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel. Affleck and Garner divorced in 2018.
By 2021, both Affleck and Lopez were single, having just split from Alex Rodriguez and Ana de Armas, respectively. Paparazzi began spotted the two together, photographing Affleck around Lopez’s Los Angeles pad.
“They are friends,” an insider insisted of the visits at the time. “They’ve never not been.”
