Lori Loughlin filed for divorce from Mossimo Giannulli on Friday, Sept. 4, ending a marriage that began in November 1997 and lasted nearly 30 years. In the filing, Loughlin cited irreconcilable differences and listed Aug. 31, 2025, as the couple’s date of separation.
The filing matters now because it is the first legal step that formally changes a relationship that had already been unraveling in private. Loughlin and Giannulli share daughters Olivia Jade Giannulli and Isabella Rose Giannulli, and the divorce leaves open the practical questions that follow any long marriage: property, support and how the split will be handled.
Loughlin said the pair have a prenuptial agreement covering separate and community property, which means the division of assets should be governed by a contract they already negotiated rather than left entirely to a courtroom fight. She also said spousal support will be determined later, keeping one of the most sensitive pieces of the breakup unresolved for now.
That legal step came after a period in which the separation had already been visible. In October, Loughlin’s publicist confirmed that she and Giannulli were living separately, but no legal action had been taken then. The divorce filing turns that private split into a public record and gives structure to what had already become a separation in practice.
The marriage has long been shadowed by the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal. Loughlin and Giannulli were charged in 2019, later admitted to paying half a million dollars to get both daughters into the University of Southern California as crew recruits, and served prison sentences tied to the case. Loughlin served two months in late 2020, while Giannulli served a five-month sentence from November 2020 until being released on home confinement in April 2021.
The fallout also reached Loughlin’s career. Hallmark fired her after the scandal became public in 2019, though she returned to acting in 2021 when she reprised her role from When Calls the Heart in When Hope Calls. In December, Hallmark announced that she would return to When Calls the Heart, and on Aug. 31 she resurfaced on social media in a joint Instagram post with Dave Coulier, Andrea Barber, Candace Cameron Bure, Jodie Sweetin and John Stamos.
Stamos, who has publicly defended her, said in an interview on Josh Peck’s Good Guys podcast that she is “not a liar” and “a saint,” adding that she did not deserve what happened and that he believed “it was all him.” The new filing does not answer how the couple’s prenup will be applied, but it does make clear that the marriage is now headed toward a formal end after years of public damage and private separation.
