Controversial couple Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau have reportedly split up again.
According to PEOPLE, the couple have filed legal paperwork with the King County Superior Court indicates that are negotiating their separation by means of private arbitration.
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A source close to the couple said, “They really gave it the old college try. They have a long history with two kids, but it really seems to have run its course. They worked really hard to fix things, but it still fell apart. The reconciliation just didn’t work.”
The couple first announced their split in mid-2017, with Fualaau being the one to initiate the separation. Letourneau and Fualaau first married in 2005, after being at the center of one of the most notorious news stories of the 1990s.
Letourneau was Fualaau’s teacher, and began an illicit affair with him while he was still underage. She became pregnant with two of his children before he was 15 years old.
At the time of their first split, Letourneau’s friend and attorney David Gehrke told PEOPLE, “I’m not surprised that they got married, and I’m not surprised, in this day and age, that they are separating.”
“Vili was the one who filed a petition for separation, which is usually a precursor for filing for divorce,” Gehrke went on to add. “It gives legal notice to creditors and the like that the debts won’t be joint. She could try to contest it, but that’s legally tough to do.”
Over the course of the past two years, the couple seemed to have reconciled their relationship.
In 2018, A&E aired an Autobiography of the couple’s story, in which Letourneau stated that her first kiss with Fualaau — who was 12 years old at the time — “seemed very right.”
“Twenty years later, people ask how it turned into romance,” Letourneau went on to say “Back in the day, I accepted the kiss, you know. I did. He wasn’t my student when that happened. For some reason, the kiss, it seemed very right.”
“[It] sounds young, I get it. He was young, I get it. Am I sorry that he’s the father of my children? No I’m not,” she continued. “Maybe I am just naive in that area of life. Maybe it could have stayed just a kiss. I always thought, ‘What if it could have?’ “
At this time, neither Letourneau or Fualaau have issued official statements on their separation, but sources close to them say that this time it seems to be for good.
