When the Break-Up of a Marriage Is Also a Breach of Contract

Photo Source: hgtv.com

The main reason I have cable these days, honestly, is because of my HGTV addiction. I like that the shows are so predictable and formulaic, which makes them low-stress. It’s a habit I started years ago as a stressed-out lawyer in a law firm, when I needed to come home and watch something that didn’t require thought, and it’s kept me company as I transitioned into academia. And I’m apparently not alone in using it as comfort television. 

I use HGTV a lot in my Contracts class as the foundation of hypotheticals (so much that I’m contributing a chapter to a book detailing how I use it) and so I’m always interested when there is a real-life HGTV contract problem…such as is happening right now with “Flip or Flop.” 

You might not be anxiously following HGTV shows, so let me tell you that the world was recently rocked (well, a small corner of the world) by the revelation that Christina and Tarek, the married couple with two young children at the center of the house-flipping show “Flip or Flop,” were separated and/or getting divorced. And now come reports that HGTV has threatened them with a breach of contract action if their ongoing marital problems affect the filming of the show.

This is an example of the interesting issues that arise when your personal life becomes the equivalent of your contractually obligated professional life. Christina and Tarek no longer want to be married to each other, apparently, which is a stressful enough situation, without adding in the fact that their marriage is also the source of their livelihood. HGTV has a point that the show is less successful when you know that their personal life is a mess. The network was running a commercial pretty steadily through the holiday season where Christina and Tarek talked about their family Christmas, and every time I saw it I thought it was so weird and that they should pull the commercial. But that was clearly the advertising campaign HGTV had long planned for the show and it was probably costly for HGTV to change it at that point.

I am curious to see what the resolution of this is. I’m unclear how much longer Christina and Tarek were under contract for. They probably hoped to keep their separation quiet for as long as they could (they had, after all, kept it quiet for several months). But now that it’s out in the open, we’ll have to see how the parties recalibrate not just their personal but also their contractual relationships with each other. There is always a lot of talk about how “real” the shows on HGTV is. This situation is testing where our boundaries on “real” vs. “fake” actually lie.