Hotel Offers Breathtaking Weddings and Speedy Divorces

A New York hotel plans to offer weekend packages designed to facilitate divorces in as little as 48 hours.

Like many hotels, the Gideon Putnam Resort in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., markets itself to couples looking for a weekend getaway. But unlike other establishments, the Gideon wants to ensure that some couples go home separately. According to a report from ABC News, the property has joined forces with a Netherlands-based company to provide weekend packages that offer married couples quick divorces.

While the Gideon will continue to offer traditional romantic packages and weddings — it continues to advertise “breathtaking weddings” on its website as one of the “Top 10 Reasons to Visit” — the hotel also anticipates being the setting of an upcoming television series featuring guests who come to divorce. The show, a version of which previously aired in the Netherlands, was masterminded by Jim Halfens, founder of the Dutch Divorce Hotel program. By helping couples split within 48 hours while they enjoy luxurious accommodations, the program claims to promote “divorcing in a positive way.”

While Divorce Hotel doesn’t guarantee guests will be divorced by the time they check out, it does claim that its mediators will be “100 percent committed to ensuring your separation is professional, fast, affordable and hopefully positive.”

Divorce Hotel has appointed Michele Martin, a mediator based in Albany, N.Y., to work with participating couples. Martin told ABC News that three days offers couples enough time to break up. Between scheduled sessions with her, Martin said that “guests can go to the spa or take a walk around the beautiful grounds.” Depending on the particulars of each case, she estimated that divorce packages will start at around $5,000.

Producers have not selected a couple to debut the show, which has yet to find a network home. A New York Times profile on Divorce Hotel noted that almost none of the couples on the Dutch version of its show ended up divorced by the end of the weekend.

“The notion of being able to — at the beginning of a split-up — spend a weekend putting these various pieces together and coming to a solution to them would be virtually impossible,” Robert Cohen told the Times. Cohen, an attorney who represented Michael Bloomberg, Christie Brinkley, Ivana Trump and other luminaries during their divorces, added, “I don’t see how one would do it and come up with a fair result.”

Even though couples participating in the Divorce Hotel program stay in separate rooms, Cohen pointed out, “Most people getting divorced don’t want to see each other again except when they have to.”

[Photo: iStock]