Olympic skater Michelle Kwan files papers to divorce Clay Pell in R.I.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwan has filed papers in Providence County Family Court, seeking to divorce Clay Pell in Rhode Island on the grounds that irreconcilable differences caused the breakdown of their marriage.

Kwan's filing came the day after TMZ reported that Pell, a grandson of the late U.S. Sen. Claiborne Pell, had filed for divorce in California, also citing irreconcilable differences. Kwan says in court papers that she learned of Pell's filing without warning via a tweet that was soon followed by an an online article in the New York Daily News.

Court records reveal that Kwan also asks the court to order Pell not to stay at and to remove his belongings from a house the couple is remodeling at 63 Hammersmith Rd. in Newport, which has not yet been issued a certificate of occupancy. Pell, she said, had placed an air mattress at the residence and suitcases clearly marked "Pell."

In addition, she requests that they both be reimbursed for all money they put into the four-bedroom home and 1.9 acres that city land records show Pell, with Kwan as a co-owner, purchased in 2014 for $1.5 million, and that it be placed on the market. 

Pell, in turn, seeks for the Rhode Island divorce complaint to be dismissed and that the matter be heard in California, court records show. 

Kwan, who is represented by Deborah M. Tate, is objecting, arguing that she lived in Rhode Island for the year prior to her filing and is a registered voter in the Ocean State. She seeks to keep the divorce case in Rhode Island.

She says that, though the couple leased an apartment in Brooklyn while she worked on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, she spent large blocks of time and the weekends with Pell in Providence, where they kept a 52 Barnes St. address.  She lists their Newport and California homes as "vacation" properties.

According to Kwan, the couple last lived together in November. Since then she has been staying at a motel in Newport, from where her mother has been overseeing renovations to the pair's Hammersmith Road house.  

Court records indicate that Kwan, through a constable, unsuccessfully attempted to serve Pell with divorce papers 10 times in April, and that finally court documents were tacked to the front door. The couple tried to resolve their differences "amicably and expeditiously" prior to Pell filing a divorce complaint in California "without warning" on March 27, she says. 

She says, too, that Pell misled her into delaying bringing action in Rhode Island after the couple began discussing divorce in November. 

The couple married in January 2013 at the First Unitarian Church on the East Side of Providence. They have no children.

A lawyer, Pell ran unsuccessfully for Rhode Island governor in 2014. He previously worked in the Obama administration as director of strategic planning on the national security staff, and for six months, as deputy assistant secretary for international and foreign-language education. A Brown University spokesperson said Pell is a practitioner in residence at the Swearer Center for Public Service. 

The couple’s Prius was the center of a mini-controversy in Rhode Island in 2014. Kwan had reported her Prius stolen in February. It was found five weeks later. It wasn’t the first time the car had gone missing: Pell had reported it stolen in December 2013. He found it a day later, where he’d left it, outside a CVS.

Questions about Kwan’s residency arose in 2014, when a Coca-Cola ad said she was a native of Los Angeles and a resident of Washington, D.C. (Pell, then a candidate for governor, had listed his address as Barnes Street in Providence.) In addition, a February 2014 story about Kwan that appeared on the website of the American University radio station said: “the 33-year-old California native resides in Washington, D.C.”

Pell did not return a phone call seeking comment. His former campaign manager also did not respond to a request for comment. Kwan could not be reached immediately; Tate, her lawyer, did not return a phone call. 

—kmulvane@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7417

On Twitter: @kmulvane