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Dean McDermott and Tori Spelling have had a rocky marriage for many years. When I was looking through our archives I laughed when I saw stories with near-identical headlines, that they both wanted to divorce each other–but neither one could afford to. It’s not that funny for two people to be unhappily stuck together because of eye-watering debt. It’s just amusing to me that they each tried to run with that story in the press within six months of each other. Who can’t afford to divorce whom? Well, it looks like Dean was finally ready to pull the trigger, affordable or not. He posted an announcement of their split to Instagram and then deleted it hours later. Did he have it queued up in drafts and post it by accident?

Dean McDermott took to Instagram on Saturday to share that he and his wife of 17 years, Tori Spelling, are splitting up. However, hours later, the Canadian actor deleted the post.

McDermott, who has been married to the Beverly Hills, 90210 alum since 2006, announced their separation to his 138,000 followers in a post on his Instagram. The two share children Liam, 16, Stella, 15, Hattie, 11, Finn, 10, and Beau, 5.

“It’s with great sadness and a very very heavy heart that after 18 years together and 5 amazing children, that @torispelling and I have decided to go our separate ways, and start a new journey of our own,” McDermott’s statement read. “We will continue to work together as loving parents and guide and love our children through this difficult time. We ask that you all respect our privacy as we take this time to surround our family with love and work our way through this. Thank you all for your support and kindness.”

He concluded with a prayer hands emoji.

Spelling’s Instagram page has no indication of the duo’s split. Just one day ago, the actress shared a video of the family celebrating daughter Stella’s birthday at the Beverly Hilton, with McDermott in attendance. Set to the famed Weezer song “Beverly Hills,” the family can be seen celebrating poolside and in a penthouse suite with champagne and sweets. They family gathered together for a poolside video which was shared in Spelling’s reel.

Earlier this week, the family was all smiles as they appeared together at The Stand Up For Kids Gala at Universal Studios Hollywood. With the kids by their sides, Spelling and McDermott gave no indication that they would formally announce their split just 5 days later.

[From Yahoo!]

Okay, that statement is boilerplate and has “publicist” written all over it. This suggests to me that Dean has hired an attorney and is ready to file or has filed already. More interesting is why he deleted it so soon after posting it. A source (likely from Tori’s camp) ran to People to say the announcement was “out of the blue,” so Tori has apparently been blindsided. Although given how bad their relationship struggles have been, I don’t know what level of denial you’d have to be living in to not see something like this coming. That’s like, the ninth circle of denial. The same level of denial to continuously live beyond your means, maybe? Dean’s contributed to their money problems, too–I’m not laying the blame at only Tori’s feet here. They were both, to use one of my favorite words, feckless with their spending. Their marriage was beyond toxic and I think the writing’s been on the wall for years. It is weird that they’ve been hanging out as a family over the weekend and then Dean goes to post the Instagram on Monday morning. That’s not the usual “nothing to see here” play of the Friday afternoon breakup announcement. He knew, or his publicist knew, that it would get attention, and they wanted it that way–if it wasn’t an accidental post. But I don’t think it was, just a hunch. I think he wants to control the narrative for some reason. I have a feeling this is going to get messy.

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