Zellweger Cites 'Fraud' in Chesney Split

LOS ANGELES - Renee Zellweger is seeking to annul her four-month marriage to country singer Kenny Chesney on grounds of "fraud," according to court papers obtained Friday — a legal term that set Hollywood buzzing but which lawyers say likely has a technical, not salacious, meaning.

The Oscar-winning actress filed the petition Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, just four months after the couple wed in a sunset ceremony on the Virgin Islands island of St. John that surprised even their friends.

California courts require a specific legal ground for annulment; fraud is one of the listed boxes. Attorneys unconnected to the case said the claim typically means one spouse was deceived into the marriage — but that in celebrity filings it is sometimes checked as a matter of strategy to end a marriage quietly.

Representatives for both stars declined to elaborate. Chesney's publicist said only that the singer "asks that everyone respect his privacy during this difficult time."

The pair met in January at a tsunami relief telethon — he performed, she answered phones — and married in May. The 36-year-old "Jerry Maguire" and "Cold Mountain" star and the 37-year-old country hitmaker kept the courtship almost entirely out of sight.

The filing ends one of the year's shortest celebrity marriages, a category with no shortage of entries. Zellweger has never married before; neither had Chesney.

Chesney, touring through the fall, performed in the Midwest this week. Zellweger, who won the supporting-actress Oscar for "Cold Mountain," recently completed filming "Miss Potter," in which she plays children's author Beatrix Potter.

Legal experts noted that an annulment, unlike a divorce, treats the marriage as if it never legally existed — a distinction that affects property division for a union that produced no children and lasted a single summer.