Jon and Kate Divorce Papers

Kate Gosselin says in divorce papers that her marriage to Jon is "irretrievably broken." The star of TLC's "Jon & Kate Plus 8" filed for a no-fault divorce Monday in Montgomery County Court in Pennsylvania. She said in papers that she's willing to "negotiate a fair and reasonable" settlement with her husband of 10 years.

The divorce filing was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. Lawyers for the couple said it contains boilerplate language common to all no-fault divorce petitions filed in Pennsylvania.

The series follows Jon and Kate Gosselin as they raise their eight young children, including 8-year-old twins and sextuplets who just turned 5.

Monday night's show, in which the couple announced their separation and divorce, drew a record audience of 10.6 million viewers.

Attorneys for both Jon and Kate Gosselin said Tuesday that the couple lived together on their Berks County compound until recently.

"They have been living 'separate and apart' just within the last week or two," said Jon's attorney, Charles Meyer, using a term from the divorce petition.

The court document does not explain what led to the split. But in a statement released to the media, Kate asserted that "Jon's activities" over the weekend had left her "no choice but to file legal procedures in order to protect myself and our children." She did not elaborate. Both Jon and Kate deny tabloid accusations that they cheated on each other.

"To be honest, I was hurt by Kate's statement about the divorce," Jon countered Tuesday in his own release. "I have always done everything I can to protect our family. This weekend, I was home with the kids for four days, just being a dad. No nannies, just the kids and me."

He added that while "emotions are running high for both of us right now," he hopes to "resolve things amicably."

The couple plan to spend equal time with their children at the $1.1 million house they moved into last year, with Kate staying elsewhere when he has custody, and Jon making other living arrangements when it's her turn, according to the statement.

Kate's lawyer, Cheryl Young, said Tuesday that the couple has already started negotiating the terms of the divorce.

Jon and Kate Divorce Docs

Maybe Jon and Kate Gosselin are savvy business operators after all, even if what they did does reek of fraud.

The Associated Press got a hold of their divorce filing, and according to Kate, the couple has been more-or-less living apart for the last two years. The exact definition of that is always tenuous, but according to the filing, Kate makes no bones about the fact that their marriage has been anything but happy or loving for at least 24 months. The whole world knows the marriage has been a powder keg for at least the last few months, but for the last few years? What about their renewal of marriage vows in Hawaii?

If indeed the 'separate and apart' thing has been going on for two years, then it does appear that the last few television seasons of J&K+8 have been one big fraud. The clincher may be the marriage vows in Hawaii. We are now led to believe that someone - either Jon and Kate or the show's producers or all of them - cooked up the wedding vows stuff just to keep the obvious from spilling over into the public light. Well, who can blame them? They made a lot of money during the last two years and they do have eight young mouths to feed.

While the last few years of the show may have been a fraud, there really is nothing illegal about it. The only ones who may have a legal claim would be TLC, but I can't imagine that they'd actually have a claim nor would they pursue it even if they did. TLC has been making too much money off the Gosselins. And, really, there is nothing that says you can't renew your marriage vows even though you hate each other. Yet it now seems like everything was pretty well orchestrated and carefully crafted. All parties seemed to be in on the hoax, and this certainly went better than H.G. Wells' and Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast; far fewer people were injured or died in this hoax.