Society Gists

Vanessa Haydon Trump, the wife of President Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., filed for divorce on Thursday afternoon in a Manhattan court.

Ms. Trump, 40, is seeking an uncontested divorce to end her 12-year marriage with the president’s son. Mr. Trump, 40, the eldest of five children from President Trump’s three marriages, met his wife, a former model, when his father introduced them at a 2003 fashion show. They married in 2005 at Mar-a-Lago, the family’s club in Palm Beach, Fla. They have five children.

“After 12 years of marriage, we have decided to go our separate ways,” the couple said in a joint statement. “We will always have tremendous respect for each other and our families. We have five beautiful children together and they remain our top priority. We ask for your privacy during this time.”

The couple live in Midtown Manhattan during the week, and the family often spends weekends in the Catskills.

Mr. Trump and his brother Eric, 34, took over the management of the Trump Organization after their father was elected president. While his sister Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, moved to Washington and took senior jobs in the White House, Donald Trump Jr. chose to stay in New York after the election.

He has stayed in close contact with his father, often defending the Trump administration on Twitter and in interviews on Fox News, and he recently campaigned in Pennsylvania for the Republican candidate in a special election.

The White House special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is examining a June 2016 meeting Donald Trump Jr. had with Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton and the president’s role in providing a misleading response to The New York Times last summer for an article about the meeting.

Last month, Vanessa Trump and her mother were hospitalized as a precaution after opening an envelope containing a white powdery substance that was later determined to be cornstarch, police officials said. A Massachusetts man was charged with sending the threatening letter. “No one should ever have to deal with this kind of sickening behavior,” Donald Trump Jr. said on Twitter about the episode.