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Brynne Edelsten has ended her four-year marriage to disgraced medico Geoffrey Edelsten, telling friends she is unable to forgive her publicity-obsessed husband for a reported dalliance with another woman more than 18 months ago.
Several months of marriage counselling have failed to heal the growing rift between the pair.
Her husband, who at age 70 is 40 years her senior, is in the United States where he has filed for bankruptcy.
Calling it quits: Brynne and Geoffrey Edelsten. Photo: Rebecca Hallas
The former US cocktail waitress, who rose to fame in Australia thanks to her lurid wardrobe and wildly extravagant lifestyle, remains living in the couple's glitzy Melbourne penthouse.
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Her publicist John Scott confirmed the couple had split six weeks ago and were still negotiating their settlement. She was "keen to stay in Melbourne, she has built a life here and she doesn't really want to go back to America", he said.
Three years after he was reported to be worth $100 million, Edelsten made a bid to seek protection from creditors, bringing into question his lavish jet-setting lifestyle which became the subject of his wife's own reality television show, My Bedazzled Life, in 2012.
The dalliance occured in March 2012 when Edelsten was caught wooing an American woman on an online dating site and then lavished gifts on her during a secret three-day getaway in Florida in March.
The woman, from New Jersey, told Australian reporters that Edelsten sent her $2000, followed by $800 for a return plane ticket to Florida.
Over a weekend in Miami he showered her with expensive gifts, including a Louis Vuitton handbag, a Michael Kors watch and pocketbook, souvenirs from their hotel and expensive hotel day spa treatments.
Fairfax Media reported yesterday Edelsten had recently borrowed money from his 90-year-old mother, secured with a stake in his Melbourne penthouse.
Edelsten declared himself bankrupt to a court in Ohio last Thursday, one day before a hearing in the long-running legal battle against his former US business partners, the Mawardi family.
Edelsten and the Mawardis had been fighting for control of assets that included a fashion label, which was responsible for many of Brynne's revealing gowns, a Dominican Republic casino, a luxury jet and two slum housing complexes.
In the federal bankruptcy petition, Mr Edelsten said he had debts of $18.2 million. He claimed he was worth between $US10 million ($11.1 million) and $US50 million.
Creditors included the Australian Taxation Office, US state and federal tax authorities, National Australia Bank, his mother, Singapore casino and hotel Marina Bay Sands, joint business ventures with the Mawardi family and his personal accountants and lawyers in the US and Australia.
Edelsten's Australian lawyers claimed the bankruptcy filing was a strategy to "better realise the investments made in the US".
"[Our] client has filed a Chapter 11 [bankruptcy] procedure," said legal firm Webb Korfiatis, which was allegedly owed $50,000 by Edelsten.
"[We are] instructed that [our] client does not intend selling any personal assets in Australia, including the CBD penthouse."
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