Michelle Triola Marvin

Michelle Triola Marvin

1933­–2009

Michelle Triola Marvin helped make “palimony” a household word. In her 1972 lawsuit against her former boyfriend, Oscar-winning actor Lee Marvin, she established the then-novel legal concept that unmarried people could sue for property settlements when a relationship ended.

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A Los Angeles native, she had sung on the Sunset Strip and danced on Broadway before meeting Marvin in 1964 on the set of Ship of Fools, in which she had a small part, said the Associated Press. “They lived together for six years, and she took his last name but never married.” After their relationship ended, in 1970, Marvin gave her $833 a month while she sought to resume her career. “But after support checks stopped, she filed suit for half of everything Marvin had earned during their years together,” or $1.8 million. In 1979, led by flamboyant divorce attorney Marvin Mitchelson, her case came before the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

The trial “was a tabloid dream,” said the Los Angeles Times. Mitchelson argued that in return for Triola Marvin’s forfeiting her career to become his “cook, companion, and confidante,” Marvin had agreed to provide all her “financial support and needs for the rest of her life.” On the stand, Marvin “said he never loved her; she said he proposed marriage twice. He said she threatened suicide; she said he made her pregnant three times and paid for one abortion.” Ultimately, Judge Arthur Marshall denied Triola Marvin’s claim but granted her $104,000 in “rehabilitative” funding. “Both sides declared victory, but Michelle Marvin perhaps won the best sound bite: ‘If a man wants to leave his toothbrush at my house, he better bloody well marry me.’”

Although the award was later overturned on appeal, “palimony”—a term Mitchelson coined—became an established cause of action that enabled ex-lovers to sue for financial support in many states. For her last 30 years, Triola Marvin lived with Dick Van Dyke.