Utah woman ordered by judge to hand over her NUDE ‘boudoir album’ to ex-husband for ‘memory’s sake’

A Utah woman has said she was shocked when she was ordered by a judge to hand over a photo album of her “boudoir-style” nude photos to her ex-husband after he asked them to be part of their divorce.

Lindsay Marsh said she ordered the photos in the early years of her marriage, and wrote “loving” and intimate messages to him in the album.

But when she filed for divorce in April 2021 after 25 years of separation, her ex-husband Chris Marsh said he wanted to keep the album for the memories.

“It’s violating and it’s incredibly embarrassing and humiliating,” she said.

“The only way I can hopefully protect someone else from the same situation is by telling my story and showing that this is the kind of thing he thinks is okay.”

Marsh said she was shocked when her ex asked for the photo book and protested.

But Judge Michael Edwards, sitting in the 2nd District Court, sided with her ex-husband.

As a gesture, he told Marsh to return the book to the original photographer and have a copy made, with her body out.

Marsh went to the photographer, but the photographer refused, arguing that the images were art that should not be altered.

The judge then ruled in August of this year that Marsh must hand over the album to a third party, who would edit the images themselves.

“That person has to do whatever it takes to adjust the pages of the photos so that all the photos of… [Lindsay Marsh] be darkened and taken out in lingerie or that sort of thing or even without clothes,” he wrote in a statement shared with The Salt Lake Tribune.

“But the words are kept for the sake of memory.”

Marsh said the thought of handing the book to a stranger was even more traumatic, and called the judge’s clerk to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood the ruling.

“I just want to clarify,” she recalls. “The judge has ordered me to give naked photos of my body to a third party I don’t know without my permission?”

Judge Michael Edwards ruled that Marsh should hand over the footage to her ex, but said her body could be edited out of it

When the original photographer found out, she agreed to edit the photos.

“That’s even contradictory,” Marsh said.

‘Because these are things that were sensual and loving that I wrote to my husband that I loved. You’re my ex-husband now.’

Lindsay Marsh is required by law to keep the originals until December, in case her ex objects to any of the edits.

She then plans to have a burning party and throw them into the fire.

“It’s going to be great,” she said.

Chris Marsh told The Tribune that the books were full of memories, inscriptions and photographs, stressing that they were not “books of the inappropriate type.”

He said, “I cherish the fond memories we have had all these years as part of normal and appropriate exchanges between husband and wife, and I have tried to preserve them by having the inscriptions.”

He said their case raises broader questions for society.

“As boudoir photography becomes an increasingly common way for a couple to share intimacy, where is the line of appropriateness if they break up?”