WASHINGTON — Kathleen Buhle, Hunter Biden’s former wife, has publicly described the difficult final years of their marriage, including addiction, infidelity, financial problems and the impact on their three daughters.

Buhle was married to Hunter Biden for 24 years, from 1993 until their divorce was finalized in 2017, and the couple has three daughters: Naomi, Finnegan and Maisy.

Her account became widely known after the publication of her 2022 memoir, If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction, and Healing, in which she examined the collapse of their relationship.

The book was not presented simply as an account of Hunter Biden’s struggles, however. Buhle also wrote extensively about her own experiences, including her dependence on the marriage and the difficulty of rebuilding her identity afterward.

In interviews promoting the memoir, Buhle said Hunter’s substance-abuse problems placed significant pressure on their family and gradually changed the relationship they had built over many years.

She described discovering drug paraphernalia at their home and said Hunter’s substance use became increasingly serious following the death of his brother, Beau Biden, from brain cancer in 2015.

Buhle also described a particularly painful discovery involving Hunter and Hallie Biden, Beau Biden’s widow, saying her daughters found messages that revealed the relationship before Buhle herself learned about it.

According to Buhle’s account, the discovery unfolded in 2016 after one of her daughters found messages on Hunter’s phone and contacted a family therapist for help telling her mother.

The allegations about Hunter’s drug use and infidelity were not limited to Buhle’s memoir; some details later became part of testimony during Hunter Biden’s 2024 federal gun trial.

Buhle testified for the prosecution in that case, describing her discovery of a crack pipe and discussing Hunter’s substance use during their marriage.

Her testimony became part of the prosecution’s effort to establish Hunter’s drug use around the period when he purchased a firearm in October 2018.

The trial was legally focused on Hunter’s firearm purchase and whether he had unlawfully denied being an unlawful drug user when completing the required federal purchase paperwork.

Buhle’s public statements have also included criticism of her own decisions during the marriage, particularly regarding household finances and the extent to which she allowed Hunter to manage financial matters.

In her memoir, she acknowledged that she had largely left financial decisions to Hunter and later recognized that she had not fully understood the family’s financial situation.

She has repeatedly emphasized that her story is also about rebuilding her independence rather than simply exposing her former husband’s problems.

During her 2022 ABC News interview, Buhle said that losing the Biden surname after the divorce was frightening because the name had become closely connected with her personal identity.

She nevertheless described the experience of rebuilding her life independently as empowering and said writing the memoir helped her understand how deeply she had tied her identity to her marriage.

Buhle has also spoken positively about Joe and Jill Biden’s relationship with her daughters, despite the painful circumstances surrounding the end of her marriage to Hunter.

In her ABC interview, she said she had never questioned Joe and Jill Biden’s love and attention toward her three daughters and expressed gratitude for their continued family relationship.

Her account also includes observations about what it was like to become connected to a prominent political family, particularly after Joe Biden became vice president under Barack Obama.

Buhle described feeling excluded from certain aspects of the family’s Secret Service arrangements and recalled moments that contributed to her feeling that she was not fully part of the Biden family.

Those experiences provide context for why Buhle’s memoir attracted attention beyond the details of her divorce, particularly because it offered a personal perspective on life surrounding a major American political family.

At the same time, many of the most dramatic details circulating online originate from Buhle’s own memoir and interviews and should therefore be identified as her recollections and allegations, rather than independently established facts.

That distinction became especially important as her story was repeatedly discussed alongside political controversies surrounding Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and the Biden family during the 2024 election period.

Major news organizations including ABC News, CBS News, The Washington Post and The Guardian have separately reported on Buhle’s memoir, interviews and testimony, providing additional context around her claims.

The broader story is therefore less about a sudden new revelation and more about a former spouse publicly documenting the breakdown of a long marriage and the personal consequences that followed.

Buhle has said that writing about those years helped her move beyond anger and regain a sense of identity separate from Hunter Biden and the politically prominent family she had joined through marriage.

Today, the most reliable account of Buhle’s story comes from her memoir, recorded interviews and her 2024 courtroom testimony, rather than social-media headlines describing the material simply as “Biden family secrets.”

The story remains significant because it illustrates how personal relationships, addiction, family pressures and political prominence became intertwined during one of the most closely scrutinized periods of the Biden family’s public life.