Brittney Griner Seeking Joint Physical Custody of Son in Divorce from Wife Cherelle

WNBA star Brittney Griner has filed for divorce from her wife, Cherelle Griner, according to a complaint obtained by Gaye Magazine, filed July 30 in Fulton County Superior Court.

According to the complaint, the Connecticut Sun center is seeking a total divorce on the grounds that the marriage is “irretrievably broken” under Georgia law, with no hope of reconciliation. Court records state the couple married on June 18, 2018, and have been separated since July 24. Some reports indicate the couple has been married since 2019.

Griner is represented by Atlanta family law attorneys Randall M. Kessler and Asha Heyward-James of Kessler & Solomiany, LLC, according to the filing.

“This is a matter we hope the parties can resolve privately.  There is no further comment at this time,” Kessler told Gaye Magazine in a statement.

Griner is asking the court to give both parents joint custody, though she’s requesting final say on major decisions. The pair share a two-year-old son, Bash. She’s also asking that child support be set using Georgia’s standard guidelines. On top of that, she wants the court to fairly split the money, property and debt the couple built up during the marriage, and to let her keep property she owned before they married or inherited on her own.

Griner and Cherelle’s relationship has played out largely in public since they met as students at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Their marriage endured one of the most closely watched ordeals in recent sports history: Brittney’s detention in Russia.

Griner was detained in Russia in February 2022 after vape cartridges containing cannabis oil were found in her bag. She was charged with smuggling narcotic drugs into the country, where marijuana is illegal, and received a nine-year sentence six months later. Cherelle, an attorney, became a public advocate for her wife’s release during the roughly 10-month detention, an effort that drew support from figures including Rev. Al Sharpton and then-President Joe Biden. Griner was ultimately released in December 2022 as part of a prisoner exchange.

During the detention, Cherelle said she communicated with Brittney only sporadically through letters and went nearly 100 days without speaking to her by phone. As the months dragged on, Cherelle said she would “not be quiet anymore,” telling CBS Mornings that her wife was “struggling” and that quiet diplomacy was not moving the U.S. government to act. Griner was ultimately released in December 2022 as part of a prisoner exchange.

Griner has since written and spoken publicly about how the detention tested the marriage. In her memoir “Coming Home,” released May 7, 2026, Griner described how frightened she was in Russian prison, writing that her mind raced with fears she’d never hug her family again — or that Cherelle would leave her. She revisited that fear in an interview on WHYY podcast, “Sports in America with David Greene,” telling host David Greene she wrote her wife a letter from the detention center telling Cherelle she could move on if she needed to. “I wanted her to promise me that she’d still be my friend, that she’d still write to me,” Griner said.

In 2015, Briner sought to annul her marriage to fellow WNBA player Glory Johnson, whom she had wed weeks after the two were arrested following a domestic dispute, according to Sports Illustrated.

Neither Brittney nor Cherelle Griner has publicly commented on the current filing.

View the Full Complaint Here