Photo: Instagram
Josh and Anna Duggar have listed their house for sale. Are they splitting up?
By Rebekah Kuschmider — Written on Mar 24, 2019
Josh Duggar, the oldest of the 19 kids born to Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar has been absent from the family’s television show since 2015. This is unsurprising since it was revealed hat Josh had sexually molested several girls, including his own younger sisters. He was also doxxed as a client on the adultery site Ashley Madison during a major hack of information there. And he confessed to being addicted to pornography and cheating on his wife, including with a woman named Danica Dillon who later sued him for sexual assault. After all of this, and revelations that Jim Bob and Michelle may have overlooked some of the wrong-doing, TLC opted to reconfigure the show. It went from being 19 Kids and Counting and focusing on parents Jim Bob and Michelle, to being Counting On, which followed the adult children as they got married and started families of their own. Josh and Anna were not included in that cast, for obvious reasons.
Over the years, Josh and Anna have occasionally made news, usually when they welcomed another new baby. But rumors about the state of their marriage have always dogged them. Now fans are wondering again if they’re headed to divorce. Their Arkansas home is on the market and the family hasn’t given any reason why the couple and their five kids might want to relocate.
Are Josh and Anna Duggar getting a divorce? Read on for all the details.
1. Marriage
As the oldest child, it made sense that Josh would also be the first Duggar kid to get married. He and Anna wed in 2008, complete with television cameras filming the event for a special called A Very Duggar Wedding. Within a year they had their first child, with additional babies following in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017.
Fans got close up views of their marriage when TLC aired specials focused on them called Josh & Anna: Our Story in 2013 and an episode about their fourth child called Anna's Having A… where they did a gender reveal on camera.
2. Washington D.C. years
They young family moved to D.C. in 2013 so that Josh could take a job as executive director of FRC Action, an organization sponsored by the Family Research Council. The Family Research Council is best known for it’s opposition to same-sex marriage and Josh’s job involved outreach to young people in order to rally them to oppose extending marriage and other civil rights to the LGBTQ community.
Anna stayed home with the kids during this time.
3. Scandal
Their whole word came crashing down on them in 2015 when InTouch reported that Josh had a police record for molesting five underage girls between 2002 and 2003. Allegedly, his father Jom Bob had reported him and told authorities that four of the victims were Josh’s sisters.
Instead of pursuing legal action against him, Jim Bob arranged for Josh to spend time at a religious camp involving labor and some type of counseling. No further action was taken by police and a judge subsequently destroyed records of the events. These revelations became public with the release of police records and led Josh to resigned his position at FRC and return to Arkansas.
4. Ashley Madison
Just a few months later, there was a large scale hack of records for the website Ashely Madison, a doing site for people wishing to commit infidelity. Josh’s name was on the client roster. The account had been active up until the time of the molestation scandal breaking.
At the time, Josh issued a statement saying "I have been the biggest hypocrite ever. While espousing faith and family values, I have secretly over the last several years been viewing pornography on the Internet and this became a secret addiction and I became unfaithful to my wife the last few years, while publicly stating I was fighting against immorality in our country I was hiding my own personal failures.”
Tabloid reports at the time state that Anna was deeply upset about the situation, and her family encouraged her to divorce Josh but she wanted to work on their marriage. Josh went to a religiously based rehab center to get more counseling.
5. Home purchase
During all this turmoil, the couple bought a home in Arkansas. They snapped up the foreclosure property for only $55,000 in January of 2015. But only three months later they sold the home to an LLC that Josh himself set up.
Josh, with the help of a family attorney, set up the LLC the day before the sale.
6. Assault allegations
The reasons for the real estate finagling can possibly be explained by a suit Josh was facing at the time. Danica Dillon had filed a lawsuit asking for $500,000 in damages after she claims Duggar sexually assaulted her.
The suit alleged that she had provided $600 worth of lap dances to Josh and agreed to have sex with him but he became violent and injured her. Selling the house to an LLC would protect it from being considered an asset had Dillon prevailed in court. As it was, Dillon withdrew her suit in 2016.
7. Selling
Now Josh and Anna have the house on the market for $299,000. It’s not totally clear what the couple’s plan is after it sells. They may need the money to pay fines related to charges that Josh has been operating his used car lot without a permit.
Another possibility is that they plan on having more kids and the five bedrooms in their current house aren't enough. Or maybe Anna has finally gotten fed up with Josh’s brushes with the law and wants out of the marriage, even though she has said it was a wonderful marriage as recently as last year.
Will Josh and Anna ever split up? No one would blame Anna if they did.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. Her work has been seen at Ravishly, Babble, Scary Mommy, The Mid, Redbook online, and The Broad Side. She is the creator of the blog Stay at Home Pundit and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.