What primary sources (court records or contemporaneous news) verify the exact date of Jill Biden's divorce from Bill Stevenson?
Executive summary
Reporting across U.S. outlets consistently states Jill Biden and William (Bill) Stevenson divorced in 1975 — many specifying “May 1975” — but none of the provided sources include a primary court document or a contemporaneous 1975 news item that shows the exact calendar date of the divorce decree or judgment [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. The materials at hand are secondary summaries and biographical accounts; they point to the year and often the month but do not supply or cite the original divorce record from Delaware courts.
1. What the assembled reporting actually says about timing
Most mainstream stories written in early February 2026 that recount Jill Biden’s first marriage to Bill Stevenson uniformly place the end of that marriage in 1975 and several outlets explicitly state the divorce was finalized in May 1975 — for example NBC Philadelphia, NBC New York, KCRA and Hindustan Times [2] [8] [4] [5] — while People, The Guardian, TMZ, Us Weekly and others reiterate a 1975 date without giving a day or attaching a scanned court document [1] [3] [6] [9] [10]. These are contemporary 2026 summaries of longstanding biographical facts, not reproductions of a 1975 court filing.
2. Where secondary reporting likely got the date and why that matters
Secondary accounts commonly draw on Jill Biden’s own memoir and decades of biographical profiles; People’s explainer notes Jill wrote about the divorce in her memoir and in interviews over the years, which is the kind of source journalists lean on when reporting remote personal history [9]. Biographical retellings and aggregated news briefs can compress nuance — converting “divorced in 1975” into “divorced in May 1975” — without showing the underlying paperwork, so the presence of consistent month/year reporting does not by itself constitute verification from a primary legal record [9] [11].
3. What the provided sources do not contain — and why that’s significant
None of the supplied items include a scan, citation, docket number, or transcription of a Delaware divorce decree or New Castle County Family Court record granting the divorce, nor do any cite a contemporaneous 1974–1976 newspaper story announcing the decree (p1_s1 through [1]4). Because the central question asks for primary sources — court records or contemporaneous news — that exact evidentiary item is missing from the provided reporting; therefore the precise calendar day of the divorce cannot be affirmed from these materials alone [2] [8] [4].
4. Reasonable next steps to obtain a primary source
To verify the exact date, a researcher should seek the original Delaware divorce record: look up New Castle County Family Court or the Delaware public records portal for 1975 divorce dockets, request the certified divorce decree from the county clerk, or search microfilm/archives of local newspapers such as Wilmington-area papers from spring 1975 for a legal notice or report; none of these primary-record retrievals are present in the current source set, so they remain the necessary follow-ups to move from consistent secondary reporting to documentary proof (the absence of those records in the supplied sources is itself documented by the supplied sources' content) [2] [4] [9].
5. Alternative explanations and editorial caution
Given multiple reputable outlets independently reporting “1975” or “May 1975,” it is plausible the month/year is correct and derived from Jill Biden’s memoir or widely circulated biographical materials, but repetition is not substitution for a primary court file; some outlets may have recycled the same biographical summary or press-kit material, creating an echo that understates uncertainty about the exact date [1] [3] [9]. The reporting includes no contradictory claims about the year, but without a scanned decree, a precise calendar date remains unverified by the primary sources the question seeks [11] [10].