Shannen Doherty gets rare posthumous divorce days after her battle with breast cancer came to an end.
As it’s been previously reported, Doherty agreed to her divorce and signed the papers just one day before her July 13th passing.
According to documents obtained by TMZ, Doherty and her lawyer Laura Wasser worked tirelessly to ensure Doherty did not pass away while still legally married to her Kurt Iswarienko, who she was marred to since 2011.
However, despite signing the divorce papers on July 12, the judge didn’t sign off on the divorce until Monday July 15. In California, if someone in the middle of divorce proceedings dies “after a dissolution of marriage or domestic partnership or a legal separation is filed but before there is a entry of judgment terminating their marital or domestic partnership status; this will abate the proceeding and the court will lose all further jurisdiction with respect to marital/domestic partnership status.”
At that time it would be “standard to dismiss the action and proceed with a probate of the estate of the spouse who died.”
However, despite passing away two days earlier, a family law judge made the rare decision to sign the divorce papers and entered the divorce judgement.
Earlier in July, documents obtained by People revealed Doherty believed her ex-husband Kurt Iswarienko was prolonging their divorce so that he wouldn’t have to pay her spousal support.
Doherty claimed “it is simply not right that Kurt be permitted to prolong our divorce in hopes that I die before he is required to pay me while he continues to live his life and shirk his responsibilities to his dying wife of more than 11 years.”
Kurt’s lawyers denied the claim, saying that he offered a settlement six months after Doherty filed for divorce, claiming that Doherty denied the settlement.
“Kurt is not ‘simply wait[ing] for Shannen to die,’” Kurt’s attorney Katherine Heersema said in response. “He wants the best for Shannen and he wants both of them to be able to put this case behind them and move forward.”
On July 14, Doherty’s longtime publicist Leslie Sloane confirmed her death after a nearly decade-long battle with cancer.
“It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the passing of actress Shannen Doherty. On Saturday, July 13, she lost her battle with cancer after many years of fighting the disease. The devoted daughter, sister, aunt and friend was surrounded by her loved ones as well as her dog, Bowie. The family asks for their privacy at this time so they can grieve in peace.”
According to her oncologist, Dr. Piro, Doherty fought until her final day. “We kept going until we couldn’t go any more,” Piro told People. “The last conversation that we had, she was in the process of realizing that things had taken a pretty significant turn.”
“The conversation was about love and support and caring and still fighting through. She wanted to continue to take treatment and fight through, even though her physical condition had taken a bit of a downturn. And so we did.”
However, despite dealing with a stressful divorce during the end of her life, Dr. Piro said he “never got the sense that that emotional challenge was draining her ability to continue to fight on the medical side.”
“It certainly made it more challenging, but she’s such a winner that I feel like she pulled all the resources necessary to give the best fight against cancer, even though she was being very emotionally challenged,” the doctor continued. “She fought so hard and she didn’t believe that it would ever be over, which kind of makes everybody around you believe that, too, because you want to believe that.”
Piro described the last few hours of Doherty’s life, saying, “In the last few hours, she was in a place where she was very comfortable and sleeping and transitioning, and she was surrounded by some of her very close friends.”
“The room was surrounded by a select group of friends that were giving her a lot of care and support. It was somber and sad, but beautiful and loving,” Dr. Piro explained. “The hardest thing about this was that she wasn’t ready to leave because she loved life.”
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