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Robyn Brown, Meri Brown and Janelle Brown were filled in on Christine Brown’s decision to leave Kody Brown and move to Utah on the Oct. 2 episode of Sister Wives. Christine had made up her mind weeks ago, but finally sat down with the other wives to share where she was at. All five adults came together to film the tense conversation.
Meri and Robyn were incredibly caught off guard by Christine’s decision. Meanwhile, Janelle had an inkling that Christine might be leaving, but she still vocalized her fears for what would happen with their kids’ relationships. Christine was planning on taking her and Kody’s youngest daughter, Truely, with her to Utah, which sparked a big debate amongst the group.
“She’ll be fine,” Christine assured everyone. “It’s going to be hard and she’ll miss everybody and I’ll be taking her from Kody…it’s hard, don’t get me wrong.” Kody, who had mostly been quiet up to that point, jumped into the conversation at the mention of his daughter. “You won’t be taking her from me,” he insisted. “We’ll have to get shared custody. It’ll have to be 50/50.”
In a confessional, he added, “I’m not going to sit here and have her do this without objecting to it and saying that we gotta work something out for custody. I don’t know what that looks like. This discussion hasn’t happened.” Christine was surprised by Kody’s reaction, and told him that she thought they had already discussed this privately. “I never said it was okay that you were moving,” he retorted. “We just talked about moving.”
Christine remembered things differently, but Kody stood his ground. “I never said it was okay,” he said. “I never made a big deal of it, but I never answered that. You never asked if you could move. You said you were moving. Okay, I let you go, that’s what I said, I agree. But you never told me the first time you talked about this that you were going to move. You just said, ‘Let me go.’ That doesn’t mean you just run with Truely and Truely’s out of my life.”
Kody was adamant that he needed to remain a key figure in his daughter’s life. That set Christine off, because she didn’t feel he was spending adequate time with any of their children, even when she lived close by. “I find it ironic that now he wants to be involved in my kids’ lives now that I’m leaving,” she admitted. “Now he wants 50/50 time with us. The whole time we lived here, if he wanted 50/50 time, he should’ve been around more. He doesn’t get 50/50. He hasn’t been around enough for that.”
The conversation continued in circles before Christine moved on and assured the other wives that they would figure out the future of holidays and birthdays as a family. “Me leaving won’t change the relationship my kids have with you,” she insisted.
Still, Robyn and Meri were shook. “I’m still in shock a little bit,” Robyn admitted. “I’m still trying to figure out what this means for the family. The idea that Christine wouldn’t be my sister wife feels wrong to me. I haven’t seen a lot of positive examples of the aftermath when a wife leaves a plural family and that’s scary to me.” Meri added, “I don’t know how long this has been coming, but it’s really disappointing to me.”
The lengthy conversation ended with the episode, and there were clearly still some hurt and confused feelings. Sister Wives airs on Sundays at 10:00 p.m. on TLC.