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Planet Money

A lawsuit for your broken heart

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.629.8K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2024

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Keith King was upset when his marriage ended. His wife had cheated, and his family broke apart. And that's when he learned about a very old type of lawsuit, called a heart balm tort. A lawsuit that would let him sue the man his now ex-wife had gotten involved with during their marriage.

On this episode, where heart balm torts came from, what relationships looked like back then, and why these lawsuits still exist today (in some states, anyway.) And also, what happened when Keith King used a heart balm tort to try to deal with the most significant economic entanglement of his life: his marriage.

This episode was hosted by Erika Beras and Sarah Gonzalez. It was produced by Emma Peaslee and edited by Molly Messick. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Gilly Moon. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This is Planet Money from NPR.

0:04.0

You can think of what Keith King does as like breakdancing, but on a bike.

0:11.0

I mean, one of my all-time favorites was always a trick known as the

0:14.8

double decade and that's where you the bicycle goes up on the back wheel and you go

0:20.2

around the top of the bike twice before you set the bike back down.

0:23.6

Whoa, Keith is a BMX writer.

0:25.8

He started doing it in the 80s.

0:27.4

I was with the sport when it would be considered underground or in its infancy. As the sport grew, I was right there. And he doesn't just ride. He runs a BMX

0:38.3

STEM company out of North Carolina. They perform everywhere. Halftime at NBA Games the Alaska State Fair and one day about 15 years ago

0:47.4

While he's trying to line up a gig he meets Danielle and just a couple months later, he's like, I need to marry her. And he didn't just drop to a knee. He took her on a helicopter ride.

1:00.0

So what I did is I took all my trucks and trailers and I painted on the top of the trailers.

1:04.8

I had five of them. I put Danielle, Will You Marry Me?

1:10.5

And then I invited her family and I have my mom and dad there.

1:14.0

This is so complicated.

1:15.9

They get married and his wife starts working with him at his BMX Dunk Company.

1:20.7

I handle the logistics and the moving parts of everything need to be

1:24.8

everywhere and she helped sell the show and promote the show. I felt like we were

1:31.4

kind of like a power couple.

1:32.8

They had a little girl, lived in a nice house, went to church together,

1:36.4

and his wife was one of those people that's always posting on Facebook like,

1:40.0

oh, look at my amazing life.

1:42.0

And the BMX business was growing. Oh, look at my amazing life.

...

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