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A house divided by divorce

Wall goes up right through warring Brooklyn couple's house

NEW YORK: Like two Cold War adversaries, Chana and Simon Taub are separated by a wall — one that was built straight down the middle of their home to keep the bickering spouses apart.

Neither one wanted to move out of their beloved Brooklyn house, and so a white drywall partition was erected a few weeks ago on orders from a judge.

The divorce case has been dubbed Brooklyn's "War of the Roses," after the 1989 movie.

Bugged phones

Ms. Chana says her husband of more than 20 years has bugged her phones. Mr. Simon says his wife owns too many shoes.

It is not as if the Taubs have no place else to go. For one thing, they own a place two doors down. But for reasons that include stubbornness, spite and their love of the home, both insist on staying in this particular house in Borough Park.

"It's my house. And emotionally, in my age, I want to be in my house!" says Mr. Simon, 57.

Ms. Chana, 57, who claims her husband abused her, says she has as much right to stay as he does, if not more. "I need a house to live in and money to live on!" she says. "I worked very hard, like a horse, like a slave for him."

High worth

The wall divides the living room from the staircase on the bottom floor of the Taubs' three-storey house, whose market value has been put at $923,000 by the city.

She gets the top floor, where the bedrooms are situated, along with the kitchen on the second floor. He gets the living room on the first floor and the dining room on the second floor. So that they do not run into each other on the second floor, the door between the dining room and the kitchen is barricaded.

Ms. Chana says that for two decades she put up with physical and mental abuse that grew more severe over the years. She says she had to flush the toilet after him, and put on his socks and shoes for him. He became so violent by mid-2005 that she filed for divorce, she says.

Denial

Mr. Simon denies ever laying a hand on Ms. Chana, and says he gave her a luxurious lifestyle. But he says his sweater manufacturing company went bankrupt in the late 1990s, and he suffered a second heart attack in 2005 that only worsened their financial problems. He says she wants a divorce to squeeze what money he has left.

In August 2005, a judge said Mr. Simon, whom Ms. Chana had forced out of the house, could move back in after building a wall. Ms. Chana appealed. An appeals court eventually allowed the wall, calling it a novel concept. The wall went up in December, and Mr. Simon moved back in. — AP

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