New Jersey's
former first couple is finally about to become unhitched,
and it figures to be especially messy.
Jim and Dina
Matos McGreevey's divorce trial, which starts Tuesday, means
the end of their 3 1/2-year separation that has lasted
nearly as long as their marriage.
The trial will
feature the usual squabbles -- the ex-governor wants equal
custody of their 6-year-old daughter, and alimony and child
support are at issue as well. But the proceedings
figure to be particularly salacious because of the
question everybody has asked at least once: Did she know
he was gay?
Matos McGreevey,
41, claims she was duped into marriage by a closeted gay
man who needed the cover of a wife to advance his political
career. McGreevey says he gave her a child and the
coattails she rode to the governor's mansion, thus
fulfilling the marriage contract.
Matos McGreevey
seeks $600,000 as compensation for the time she would
have lived at the governor's mansion in Princeton had her
soon-to-be-ex not resigned in disgrace. Perks enjoyed
by a sitting governor's spouse include household
servants, access to a state police helicopter, and a
state-owned beach house.
The gay former
governor and his estranged wife will sit at adjacent legal
tables, less than five feet apart, in the Union County
Courthouse in Elizabeth as their high-priced lawyers
lay bare the pair's sex lives and finances. Only
issues concerning custody of their kindergartner are
expected to be decided away from the glare of tabloid
reporters and Court TV.
McGreevey's
political career unraveled during his first term after an
affair with a man he put on the state payroll as homeland
security adviser. McGreevey says the man tried to
blackmail him. (The man, who denies being gay, says
the governor sexually harassed him.)
The McGreeveys
split, unceremoniously, when they moved out of the
governor's mansion and into separate residences in the fall
of 2004.
McGreevey, 50,
who now lives with a male partner and is studying to be an
Episcopal priest, says in his book the marriage was ''a
contrivance on both our parts.''
To bolster his
case, his lawyer intends to call as a witness a young aide
who claims to have been involved in three-way sexual
encounters with the McGreeveys. The ex-campaign aide,
Teddy Pedersen, 29, went public last month with
allegations of regular trysts beginning when the couple was
dating in 1999, and ending two years later, after they were
married and McGreevey had been elected governor of New
Jersey.
''Plaintiff will
testify at trial that he needed to have a disrobed male
present in the room with them'' in order for him to become
physically aroused, McGreevey lawyer Stephen Haller
wrote in recently released court papers. ''This tends
to prove that plaintiff was at least bisexual, a fact
which should have been obvious to defendant prior to the
marriage.''
John Post, who
represents Matos McGreevey, wants to bar Pedersen's
testimony, which he says is ''irrelevant'' and
''inflammatory.'' Even if it's true, which Post doubts
in court papers, he said it proves only that the
McGreeveys engaged in heterosexual activity.
A full transcript
of Pedersen's sworn deposition has not been released,
and Pedersen has not responded to repeated requests for an
interview.
In excerpts of
the deposition attached to the recent court filings,
Pedersen described his sexual encounters with the
McGreeveys. He portrayed a setting in which McGreevey
and his future wife had sex while he watched. He did
not indicate that he had sexual relations with either
of the other two and said he did not learn that McGreevey
was gay until the day before the governor's famous ''I
am a gay American'' declaration during his nationally
televised resignation speech. (AP)
