Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan) and wife Linda were married for 24 years when Linda filed for divorce in Florida in November 2007. The media was aware that the couple was having marital problems when the couple attended therapy on their reality television show “Hogan Knows Best.”

There have been recent reports that Terry was having an affair with his daughter, Brooke’s, friend, 33 year old Christine Plante. According to Ms. Plante, the affair was not the cause of the divorce, and it began after Linda and Terry had already talked about ending their marriage.

How Will the Affair Affect the Divorce?

Custody: Florida is a no fault divorce state which means that when seeking a divorce a person must only show that the marriage is “irretrievably broken.” An affair may call into question the moral fitness of a spouse and could affect child custody issues, but in the Hogan (Bollea) case one child (Brooke) is no longer a minor and the other (Nick) is seventeen years old, so there will be no custody issues. Courts usually defer to the preference of teenage children 16 years or older when determining what parent the child will live.

Property: An affair by one spouse could have an impact on the divsion of marital property. For example, the spouse having the affair may buy gifts for his or her girlfriend/boyfriend or pay for trips. If the spouse uses community property funds to make these purchases, then the spouse responsible for those expenses must pay them back. A spouse involved in a dissolution proceeding who knows or suspects that his/her wife or husband had an affair during the marriage should review credit card statements and bank statements to determine whether their spouse spent any community funds on gifts or expenses for the boyfriend or girlfriend. These are the types of expenses that the offending spouse must pay back.

So, since Florida is a no-fault state, Linda has no legal recourse in terms of being entitled to more than she normally would in the divorce, but there are certainly precautions that she can take to ensure that she does get not end up “paying” more for the affair than she has to.