Though Sister Wives stars Kody and Robyn Brown are living their best monogamous lives these days, the road to getting there wasn’t easy.
Kody, for his part, became a three-time divorcee in nearly as many years. Robyn, however, came into the Brown family in Season 1 with the baggage of her divorce from her first husband, David Preston Jessop.
Why did Robyn divorce her first husband, David Preston Jessop?
Robyn and David married in June 1999 and welcomed their children during the marriage. In 2007, David filed for separation, claiming the marriage was “irretrievably broken,” per court documents from InTouch.
He also claimed that they had severe marital discord during the time of their relationship. Though David didn’t specify what the marital discord was, his family, has accused Robyn of theft, fraud, and financial abuse.
One of David’s nieces allegedly told the gossip site Without A Crystal Ball that Robyn accrued multiple credit card debt cases during the marriage. She allegedly acquired $32,000 in debt and was sued by Capital One for $8,600.
The case was reportedly settled for $3,700. David’s niece also claimed Robyn didn’t want to be in a plural marriage before she met Kody, but thought the arrangement would make for good TV. 
Sister Wives fans will know this is the opposite of what Robyn has said about plural marriage.
In addition to the allegations from David’s family, David himself hasn’t been connected to his and Robyn’s kids for years. Following their divorce, he was ordered to pay $159 a month in child support for their three kids.
However, by the time Kody adopted the children after he and Robyn legally married in 2014, David was 30 months behind on child support and had stopped asking to see their kids.
As of this writing, he has four other children with his second wife, Stacy, and isn’t in contact with his older children.
In September 2023, David and his wife created a GoFundMe page amid his battle with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. In September 2024, TV Shows Ace confirmed he’s in better health since starting the account.
Robyn said her issues with her ex-husband was the reason she didn’t want a legal marriage with Kody.
Robyn hasn’t discussed her and ex-husband’s current relationship publicly. However, she revealed during Season 19 of Sister Wives that her tumultuous time with him further proved to her that living in a plural marriage was what she needed.
In Season 19, Ep. 15, Kody’s first wife, Meri Brown, discusses how she and Kody got legally divorced so that he could adopt Dayton, Aurora, and Breanna. Meri shared that while she was on board with the idea at first, she later felt like Kody was planning on divorcing her all along.
Christine Brown, the patriarch’s third wife, weighed in on the situation and accused Robyn of “planting” the idea of Kody and Meri divorcing by telling the family early on that she knew several couples who the husband divorces the first wife to marry the last one legally.
The allegation upset Robyn, who denied saying it and claimed she preferred not being Kody’s legal wife due to her past with David.
“I never said it,” she said in a confessional. “I don’t even know anyone who divorced their first wife so that the second wife could adopt kids. I’ve never even heard of that before.
Meri told me when she made the offer that when we were getting to know each other, she had had the idea in her head to offer to give me the legal marriage so that Kody could adopt my kids.”
“I was actually really grateful that I wasn’t going to be legally married to Kody because I’d gone through so much trauma with my legal divorce in my last marriage,” she added.
While Robyn maintains her and Kody’s legal marriage was her idea, fans and her former Sister Wives will likely believe the opposite. Either way, she’s likely still happier in her second marriage than she was in her first.
