Erika Jayne is opening up about her divorce from husband Tom Girardi for the first time. The reality star opened up about her split during Wednesday’s new Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Jayne, 49, joined her co-stars for a group lunch in an episode shot back in November — shortly after Jayne filed for divorce — and she explained how her life “drastically changed this week.”
“I let go of my Lamborghini, I let go of my 16,000-square-foot home, I let go of my marriage – I let go of everything,” she shared. “I literally made a decision that I had to.”
In a confessional interview, Jayne shared with the RHOBH cameras, “I left because he pushed me further and further out. The conversations that I used to have were now reduced down to a sentence or two.”
“I just kept walking around that house and, knowing that this marriage was headed down a really s**ty path, I had to make a choice to do what was right for me,” she added. “I couldn’t live that way anymore.”
The news of her divorce, after 20 years of marriage, came as a real surprise to many of her co-stars, some of whom felt hurt that she hadn’t confided in them.
“None of you knew on purpose, because it would put you in a bad position if I were to give you information that you had to hold,” Jayne told her friends and co-stars, adding, “It also doesn’t serve me to talk a lot about what is happening legally, or will happen legally, because I am married to somebody who’s very good in that area.”
The singer and reality star explained that she “spent a good 30 days closing out certain parts of my life” before filing, and that she “cried every day.”
“This was the end of a massive part of my life, and stepping into basically a void,” Jayne shared.
However, Jayne also explained how she gave a great deal of thought to how she wanted to try and avoid having her divorce play out in headlines.
“I filed on Election Day ‘because I wanted it to get buried,” Jayne shared. “I was thinking, ‘This is great. This is the most important, historic election In modern times, and this is gonna be a blip on the radar. It will slide through, and nobody’ll know.'”
However, the story didn’t end up getting quite as buried as she’d hoped and still ended up being the subject of many news stories at the time.
While spending time with co-star Lisa Rinna, Jayne revealed that she gave her husband no indication that she would be leaving him, or filing for divorce.
“I didn’t leave a note,” she recalled. “I drove him to work and I told him I loved him and he said, ‘Thanks, hun.’ Like I was an employee… [then] I went home and started putting everything in the moving van. I drove off, went to my new place, spent the night there and he was served the next morning.”
One month after Jayne filed for divorce, Girardi was forced into involuntary bankruptcy. In December, a lawsuit was filed against the pair on behalf of several families who lost loved ones in the Lion Air Flight 610 crash, which occurred in October 2018.
Girardi allegedly embezzled settlement money that was supposed to go to the family members of the victims. Girardi and Jayne are accused of using that money to fund their own lavish lifestyles and allegedly pay off loans to keep Girardi’s law firm afloat.
In February, Girardi was placed under a temporary conservatorship. In March, a psychiatrist told courts that Tom suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and that he is unable to care for his own personal or financial matters.
Earlier this month, Jayne’s attorneys filed a motion to withdraw as her lawyers in Girardi’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy case. Subsequently, a motion filed by the bankruptcy trustee investigating Girardi’s assets claims several of Jayne’s businesses have been given over $20 million in loans over the span of multiple years, issued by Girardi’s law firm.
Check out the video below for more on Jayne’s ongoing marital issues and pending legal battles.
