The Brown family rehashed the drama surrounding Meri Brown’s legal divorce from Kody Brown on the latest episode of Sister Wives — with Christine Brown claiming it was all Robyn Brown’s idea.
“When Robyn first came into the family, she started talking to us about these other families where the first wife divorced the husband so he could marry the second wife legally and legally adopt the kids,” Christine, 52, claimed during the Sunday, December 29, episode of the TLC series.
Christine alleged that in the moment, she thought, “That’s a plant” and that Robyn, 46, was hinting she wanted Meri, 53, to do the same for her and her kids.
“She mentioned that several times through the years, like, she was putting that in there because she would have loved that to happen,” Christine further claimed, noting, “I don’t think Meri felt like it was planted. I think Meri felt like it was her own idea.”
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Meri legally wed Kody, 55, in 1990, becoming his first wife. The plural family expanded their brood in 1993 when Kody spiritually married Janelle Brown. In 1994, Christine entered into a spiritual union with the patriarch.
When Robyn began dating Kody in 2010, she already had three children from a prior marriage. Four years later, Meri and Kody legally divorced and he married Robyn and then adopted her children.
While Christine alleged that was Robyn’s plan all along, she denied the accusations. “The idea that I, like, planted an idea in Meri’s head is an absolute lie,” Robyn said on Sunday’s episode. “I never said it.”
She claimed, “I don’t even know anyone who divorced their first wife so that the second wife could adopt kids. I’ve never even heard of that before.”
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Elsewhere in the episode, Robyn alleged, “I feel like I’ve been gas lit by some of the family members,” hinting that her actions were misconstrued.
Janelle, meanwhile, confessed she was wary of Meri divorcing Kody in 2014 because of the dynamics of their family at the time.
“I was actually sort of speechless when [Meri] told us that she was actually doing it, because I thought Meri would never do this,” Janelle recalled. “I already had started to see that there was a little bit of favoritism for Robyn from Kody at that point, and I did worry.”
Robyn, however, insisted that it was never her intention to legally marry Kody, especially after her past divorce. She said it was Meri’s idea, while Meri said she initiated the proceedings but she and Kody had discussed it together.
“[Meri] had had the idea in her head to offer to give me the legal marriage so that Kody could adopt my kids,” Robyn told viewers, claiming, “I never even wanted to be legally married to Kody.”
Robyn alleged she was “really grateful” she “wasn’t going to be legally married” to Kody because she had gone through “so much trauma with my legal divorce in my last marriage.”
She added, “I was very happy and content with my spiritual marriage. I didn’t need anything else.”
Although Meri did take the steps to get the ball rolling on the 2014 divorce, she didn’t think it would have such a big effect on her emotional state or her marriage to Kody.
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“I do question if at that time he already kind of had this plan in mind, [saying], ‘If I can just do this, it’ll be easy transition,’” Meri told the cameras, claiming that within “six months” of signing the papers, Kody “quit coming around.”
She recalled having “a lot of heartache” when she went to the lawyers to sign the papers, because she didn’t feel “emotionally supported” by the other wives or Kody.
“I had the logical part of me saying, ‘No, you still have the spiritual side of the marriage.’ It felt emotionally like I was getting rid of, like, the whole marriage,” Meri explained. “It was so hard. And I had to tell myself all the time, ‘No, it’s not. We still have that spiritual marriage.’”
Kody confessed he didn’t think of the severing of the legal ties as a big deal. “In my mind, we were just shuffling legal paperwork,” he said. “Meri and I, after that divorce, left Robyn and went to dinner together. I gave her a special ring and we probably went home and made love.”
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Meri and Kody remained in a spiritual union for nearly 10 more years, but their relationship never bounced back after their legal split. (Meri confirmed her separation from Kody in January 2023 after months of speculation. Christine and Janelle, meanwhile, left Kody in 2021 and 2022, respectively.)
Looking back, Meri claimed that their divorce and her decision to buy a bed and breakfast in Utah (which her mother lived in until her death) was a way for Kody to distance himself from their marriage.
“I think it’s interesting that I’m actually here living in the house because when I bought the house, that was not the intention,” Meri said in the episode after moving from Arizona to Utah for good. “I know Kody felt like that. I think other members of the family did too.”
She denied that it was her “escape plan,” alleging, “I think the escape plan was that legal divorce. Let’s be real, that was his escape plan.”
Sister Wives airs on TLC Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.
