Judge Lynn Toler. Source: David Livingston / Getty
Judge Lynn Toler, known for being the helm of Divorce Court, shared that she suffered a terrible loss before the new year. In a social media post she announced that her husband, Eric Mumford, has passed away.
“I am in a million pieces,” she captioned a photo of them together. On the photo she wrote, “Beautiful Man. Both inside and out.”
Mumford died Dec. 23, 2022, he was 71-years-old. His cause of death is unknown. The couple has two sons together.
Lynn Toler And Eric Mumford Were Together For Over 3 Decades
This year marks their 34th wedding anniversary. In her last anniversary post, she reflected about their decades together.
Me and BigE #married 33 years today. (Together 35). There was no happily ever after. There was The Journey
First you’re simply besotted. Then the two practical people that you are you get unceremoniously hitched at lunchtime. Then you try to survive the kids so you can get to the part where you can enjoy the grands.
On the way there you get a chance to be drunk in Paris (BigE took this) After that you settle in for the fourth quarter.
Their three decades together wasn’t easy. In an op-ed for the Huffington Post, Toler reflected about the maladaptive behaviors that caused “a perpetual problem.”
Any desire I had that didn’t match his got me a little static. That would all have been well and good had I responded correctly. Though E was just ordinary, everyday annoyed about things, I didn’t see it that way. Even the mildest objection he raised prompted that voice in the back of my head to say, “Shut it down; it could go bad.” So instead of engaging in any meaningful exchange, I capitulated, repeatedly.
If you keep surrendering like that, eventually the other person buys. Over time I taught my husband that by merely furrowing his brow he could get me to back off my position. I was saying “I’m sorry” for even wanting to do something he didn’t like. And once you start that nonsense, the person whose pardon you are continuously begging begins to believe that you are, in fact, a perpetual problem.
After being married for 19 years, she said she began to see him as “a jerk.” They were “barely speaking” and “when one of us walked in a room the other would walk out.” Her job taught her that she was also contributing to the problem.
“Of course, as I eventually learned at work, we were both wrong,” she wrote. “It was, instead, that unexamined need thing that had taken us off the road.”
After doing the work to repair their marriage, Toler said it was “better now because it is a mindful one.”
“We keep an eye on our competing needs. We no longer act on that right-now feeling without considering long-term consequences. We have made a conscious decision to be consciously married. We also have our fingers crossed.”
