Meri Brown officially given a ‘release’ from church to divorce Kody Brown: EXCLUSIVE

Meri Brown takes a “heartbreaking” step to make her breakup from Kody Brown official in the Oct. 13 episode of “Sister Wives.”

In TODAY.com’s exclusive clip of the Season 19, Episode 5 moment, Meri Brown explains that she and Kody Brown have not been legally married since 2014.

“Back in 2014, Kody and I did do a legal divorce, and for me, that whole process was purely for the fact that he could then marry Robyn (Brown) legally and then adopt her three older kids,” she says. “But our spiritual marriage, our spiritual ceiling was still intact. When we marry, it is for eternity. That’s the intention.”

Meri Brown was Kody Brown’s first wife. The former couple agreed to “permanently terminate” their marriage in 2023. In recent years, his marriages to Christine and Janelle Brown have also ended. Now, he is only married to his fourth wife, Robyn Brown.

In TODAY.com’s exclusive clip, Meri Brown recalls how she recently traveled to Utah to meet with the leaders of the Brown family’s church to start the process of terminating her spiritual marriage to Kody Brown.

“I was granted what is called in our church a release, which is basically the equivalent of a divorce,” she says. “It was a very, very hard conversation, hard meaning heartbreaking because this is not what I wanted to do. This is not what I intended when I married Kody.”

Since she says marriage is meant to last for an “eternity” in her church, Meri Brown says that a “release” from the church means there’s nothing binding her and Kody Brown “together for eternity.”

“So once I had that terminated or released, that means it’s done,” she says. Earlier in the season, she said this was her way of ending the “limbo” of her life after splitting from Kody Brown.

After meeting with her church leaders, Meri Brown contacted her ex-husband to update him.

“I texted Kody and I said, ‘Hey, I went ahead and started the process. In two weeks, if you want to, you know, give any input, have anything to do with it or whatever,’ And he never responded to my text,” she says.

Earlier in the season, Kody Brown gave his stance on the release and why it didn’t matter to him.

“The damage was done so badly that we’re not going to reconcile no matter what. However we’re made accountable to God, I don’t want to be held accountable to the church and all their BS. I’m going to let Meri go and do her thing because if I’m angry at her, it becomes a fight. I need her just to go away because it took forever for her to finally realize it’s been done and over for years,” he said.

At multiple points, most recently in Season 19, Episode 4, Kody Brown said he had lost his religion.

Over the last few seasons of “Sister Wives,” Meri Brown has lamented Kody Brown’s lack of desire to mend their broken marriage.

In Season 18, she explained why she insisted on televising her breakup with Kody Brown. She said Kody Brown initially didn’t want to in order to avoid public “criticism.”

“I didn’t think that was fair. I felt like it was something that needed to be documented,” she said during a “Sister Wives: One on One” special.

“I was owed that. I was owed him having that conversation with me publicly instead of seeing it after the fact,” she continued.