The Full House actress has formally moved to end her marriage to fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, citing irreconcilable differences, a split that caps years of fallout from the couple's guilty pleas in the college admissions bribery case.
Lori Loughlin filed a divorce petition on September 4, listing August 31, 2025, as the couple's date of separation, the Daily Mail reported after obtaining the filing. The petition names irreconcilable differences as the grounds for ending a marriage that stretched back to the couple's elopement two days before Thanksgiving in 1997.
Loughlin and Giannulli signed a prenuptial agreement on October 28, 1997, and amended it on August 11, 2015. The petition states that an agreement for financial support will be reached at a later date. Attorneys Kristina Royce and Sarah Luetto represent Loughlin in the proceedings. Royce's celebrity clientele has included Channing Tatum and Curb Your Enthusiasm actor Jeff Garlin.
Giannulli has not responded publicly to the filing.
Word of the couple's split first surfaced last October. Hours before the news broke, TMZ reported that Loughlin was seen sharing a comforting embrace with actor James Tupper, a friend and sometime co-star who was formerly involved with the late Anne Heche.
That same day, Giannulli was spotted in Beverly Hills with 32-year-old stylist Hannah Harrison. Harrison later told Us Weekly that the timing was unfortunate but that her relationship with Giannulli was strictly "platonic." She said she had met him for work at a supply store for his fashion brand, G/FORE.
Harrison added:
"I feel like it was bad timing."
An unnamed friend of Loughlin's offered a different account to Page Six, alleging that the real catalyst was something Loughlin found on her husband's phone.
"Truly, the tipping point came when Lori found a bunch of text messages."
A separate unnamed insider told Page Six that "Mossimo had used Lori for years," adding that Loughlin "was hoping maybe he would change when he got out of prison, but he got worse." Those claims remain unverified and one-sided; Giannulli has not addressed them.
The divorce filing cannot be separated from the wreckage of the so-called "varsity blues" college admissions scandal. In 2019, Loughlin and Giannulli were charged with paying $500,000 to a fixer to falsely present their two daughters, Isabella "Bella" Rose, now 27, and Olivia Jade, now 26, as potential rowers to secure their admission to the University of Southern California.
Both parents pleaded guilty. Loughlin admitted to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud. Giannulli pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and to honest services and mail fraud, a broader set of charges that carried a stiffer sentence.
Loughlin served two months at the federal correctional institution in Dublin, California, and was released days before New Year's in December 2020. Giannulli served five months and walked out in early April 2021. The disparity in their sentences reflected the difference in their charges, but both emerged as convicted felons, a fact that shadowed every public appearance that followed.
Celebrity divorces have become a steady fixture in entertainment news. Kristin Cavallari and Jay Cutler's ongoing public dispute over the financial terms of their split shows how contentious these proceedings can become once they play out in the open.
The scandal carried a particular sting because of what the public already knew about the family's attitude toward education. Shortly before the 2019 indictment, Olivia Jade had posted a YouTube video breezily remarking that she did not "really care about school." The clip circulated widely after the charges dropped.
On the very day her parents were indicted, Olivia was holidaying on the yacht of Rick Caruso, then the billionaire chairman of USC's board of trustees, alongside Caruso's daughter Gigi, who was the same age and also a freshman at the university. Caruso later ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Los Angeles against Karen Bass. The Hollywood Reporter first detailed the yacht trip.
Both daughters were accepted into USC but were later announced as no longer enrolled. Last year, Olivia publicly professed to have been a "straight-A student" who "worked really hard" during high school, a claim that sat uneasily beside the $500,000 her parents paid to fabricate athletic credentials on her behalf.
Families in the public eye often find that legal trouble compounds personal strain. Kim Zolciak's family legal troubles offer another example of how quickly a celebrity household can unravel once the courts get involved.
After prison, Loughlin made a deliberate effort to reclaim some public goodwill. In 2024, she appeared on Curb Your Enthusiasm, parodying herself and the scandal. Executive producer Jeff Schaffer told The Hollywood Reporter that Loughlin was fully on board from the start:
"We called her manager up, who loved it, and who then talked to Lori, and she said: 'I'm in, I'm totally game.'"
Schaffer added that Loughlin delivered on every front:
"She was so great. Everything we threw at her, she was game to do. She makes the episode. I'm so glad she wanted to do it."
In a rare public comment on the scandal's aftermath, Loughlin told First for Women that she had tried to move forward with grace rather than bitterness:
"I try to be a forgiving person. I'm not one to hold onto stuff. Stuff happens to everyone. We've all been in positions to ask for forgiveness but to ask for it, you have to learn and know how to give forgiveness, too."
She elaborated on her family's approach to mistakes:
"My family wasn't one to hold grudges. I didn't grow up in a household where if you made a mistake, you weren't forgiven. No one is perfect, we all make mistakes. So I was always told to let stuff go. And I think for your own health, you have to let things go because you can't hang on to negativity. Life's too short."
Those words carry a different weight now. The woman who spoke publicly about forgiveness and letting go has decided, through a formal court filing, that this particular chapter is finished.
The entertainment world has seen a string of high-profile marriage collapses in recent months. Jack White's third marriage ended earlier this year when his wife filed a fault-based divorce in Nashville, and Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo's divorce raised its own questions about what comes after a split.
Several details remain unclear. The petition does not specify the court or jurisdiction where it was filed. The nature of the pending financial support agreement, whether it covers spousal support, asset division, or both, is not described. And the prenuptial agreement, signed nearly 28 years ago and amended a decade ago, will likely shape whatever settlement emerges, though its terms have not been disclosed.
The unnamed sources who spoke to Page Six alleged that Loughlin discovered "incriminating" emails and texts on Giannulli's phone, but neither the content of those messages nor Giannulli's response to the allegation is on the record. Without his side, those claims remain exactly what they are: one-sided accounts from people who chose not to put their names on them.
Loughlin eloped with Giannulli two years after she wrapped her star-making run on Full House. The marriage survived fame, a federal indictment, two guilty pleas, and separate prison sentences. It did not survive whatever came next.
Sometimes the scandal is not what breaks a family apart. Sometimes it just makes the cracks impossible to ignore.
