WNBA star Brittney Griner has filed for divorce from wife Cherelle Griner, and is seeking joint physical custody of their two-year-old son.
The Connecticut Sun center, 35, has been married to Cherelle, who heavily advocated for the basketball player’s release from a Russian prison in 2022, for eight years.
On Thursday, Brittney submitted a petition to the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia, for the dissolution of marriage. The filing, obtained by ABC News, stated that the couple has been separated since July 24, 2026, and that the marriage “is irretrievably broken” with “no hope of reconciliation.”
Brittney has requested joint physical custody of their son, Bash, whom they welcomed in 2024, as well as “equitable division” of all marital debts and assets, “both real and personal, tangible and intangible.”
An attorney representing Brittney told the outlet in a statement, “This is a matter we hope the parties can resolve privately. There is no further comment at this time.”
The Independent has contacted Brittney and Cherelle’s representatives for comment.
Brittney’s divorce filing comes four years after she was freed from Russia in a prisoner swap. The athlete had originally been detained at a Moscow airport in February 2022 after vape cartridges containing cannabis oil — a drug strictly illegal in Russia — were found in her luggage.
She pleaded guilty to drug-possession charges and was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony.
Cherelle led a months-long campaign, working closely with the Biden administration to advocate for Brittney’s release.
“I won’t go down until she’s back … every single day matters for me to be sound, for me to be alert, for me to be attentive, to make sure that she comes back,” Cherelle, who is a lawyer, said on a May 2022 segment of Good Morning America.
Brittney ultimately spent 10 months in Russian detention before she was released in a prisoner swap in December 2022.
In her first interview following her release, Brittney revealed that she “wanted to take my life more than once in the first weeks.”
“I felt like leaving here so badly,” she told ABC’s Robin Roberts in 2024. “I could just visualize everything I worked so hard for just crumbling and going away.”
The WNBA veteran was previously married to retired WNBA player Glory Johnson, with whom she shares twins, Ava Simone and Solei Diem. The pair got divorced a year after tying the knot in 2015.
