Report: Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen hire divorce lawyers

Celebs According to reports, the couple, who were married in 2009, have been living apart in recent months after an "epic battle."

Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen’s marriage, the recent subject of rampant tabloid speculation, could be heading toward an end, according to a new report from Page Six.

The New York Post‘s gossip page reported Tuesday that Brady and Bündchen have both hired divorce lawyers, signaling a potentially permanent split for the couple, who married in February 2009.

People magazine reported a slightly different version of events Tuesday afternoon, citing anonymous sources that said Brady was “trying to figure out what to do” after Bündchen hired a divorce lawyer, and that the quarterback is actively seeking his own representation.

A representative for Brady and Bündchen had not responded to a request for comment from Boston.com at the time of this article’s publication.

Page Six quoted multiple anonymous sources in its report, with one saying that the couple’s protracted argument about Brady’s decision to unretire from the NFL could ultimately “be the end of them.”

“I don’t think there will be any coming back now,” a second anonymous source told the tabloid. “They both have lawyers and are looking at what a split will entail, who gets what and what the finances will be.”

Sources told the tabloid that any divorce would involve joint custody for Brady and Bündchen of the couple’s children, as both parents are “very involved in their children’s lives.” Bündchen gave birth to the couple’s son Benjamin, 12, in 2009 and daughter Vivian, 9, in 2012. (Brady also has Jack, 15, a 15-year-old son from a previous relationship with Bridget Moynahan.

Page Six initially reported on September 1 that Brady and Bundchen were having marital troubles, highlighting Brady’s decision to unretire from the NFL as the primary focus of an “epic fight” between the pair. CNN and Page Six both reported that the couple was living apart.

Later that month, however, Page Six quoted a source reportedly close to Bundchen who said that the couple’s marital strife was “not due to [Brady’s] decision to play football again — sometimes things are complicated.”

The next day, yet another source told Page Six that the marriage’s troubles were not due to infidelity, and that Brady and Bundchen had “recently struggled to make their marriage work and have grown apart.”

Long before Brady announced his retirement from the NFL on February 1, 2022 (and then changed his mind 40 days later), both he and Bündchen acknowledged having tough discussions about the quarterback’s career and the impact it had on his family.

Bündchen has said that she didn’t love the hits that Brady took on the field. During a 2017 interview with CBS, Bündchen said that Brady had suffered a concussion not previously reported by the Patriots, adding that she didn’t think it was “a healthy thing for anybody to go through.”

Brady, meanwhile, has acknowledged multiple times that Bündchen wanted him to do more on the home front. In an April 2020 interview with Howard Stern, Brady said that the couple had attended therapy after Bündchen wrote him a letter detailing her dissatisfaction with their marriage.

​​“She didn’t feel I was doing my part for the family,” Brady said. “I had to make a big transition in my life to say, ‘I can’t do all the things that I wanted to do for football like I used to. I gotta take care of things in my family because my family, the situation wasn’t great. She wasn’t satisfied with our marriage.”

Brady took an 11-day unexpected sabbatical from Buccaneers in August during the preseason. He later explained that it was due to personal reasons.

“It’s all personal,” Brady said. “You know, everyone has got different situations they’re dealing with so we all have really unique challenges to our life. You're right. I’m 45 years old, man. There’s a lot of s*** going on. So you’ve just got to try to figure out life the best you can. You know, it’s a continuous process.”