According to the article, Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow have been a couple since 1987. In 1999, the British couple were revealed as their nation's first gay dads. They also won the legal right to list both of their names on their surrogate children's birth certificates. Over the past two decades, the Drewitt-Barlows raised five children together. They became civil partners in 2006 and legally married in 2014. At some point, the family ended up relocating to Florida.
In 2006, Tony became sick from cancer. And Barrie began snoring. As a result, the couple began sleeping in separate bedrooms. According to the article, these developments led the couple into a completely non-sexual relationship. And then Barrie began turning to his 25-year-old PA, Scott, for support -- which, of course, led to a secret nine-month affair.
Now, the ultra-rich gay couple -- whose combined worth is somewhere around $51.6 million -- is getting divorced. Fortunately, their kids won't have to worry about moving from house to house. Barrie and Tony have decided to remain in the same household, with one ex-partner living on one side of their $7.7 million 10-bedroom mansion, and the other living on the other side.
The Sun spiced up the article a bit by noting that Scott had briefly been in a dating relationship with the Drewitt-Barlow's 19-year-old daughter. Actually, she was probably 18 when they first started dating. But it doesn't sound like there are every really anything to that relationship.
I guess I'm mostly saddened to see the dissolution of this pioneering pair of gay dads. They used their riches and connections to create their own family -- and by extension, allowed other same-sex couples to become fully-protected surrogates themselves. And now they've allowed themselves to drift apart and create instability for the children that they brought into this world.