In addition to the Klingon man, there was a woman who said her husband had not spoken to her for 15 years, communicating only by Post-it note. And there was the man whose wife “would without justification flirt with any builder or tradesman, inappropriately touching them and declaring that she could not stop herself.”

One petition read: “The respondent insisted that his pet tarantula, Timmy, slept in a glass case next to the matrimonial bed,” even though his wife requested “that Timmy sleep elsewhere.”

There were complaints about husbands with atrocious body odor and others who changed the channels too fast. “The respondent husband repeatedly took charge of the remote television controller, endlessly flicking through channels and failing to stop at any channel requested by the petitioner,” one petition read.

In England, few divorce cases go to trial, so the parties have to work out — either amicably or unamicably — who is at fault and why. The reasons, which appear in the papers filed by the person seeking the divorce, have no bearing on eventual financial or custody arrangements, except in extreme cases, lawyers say. But they still have to be approved by a judge, which is where some chicanery may come in, lawyers here say.

“People have had to start playing games with this, with the complicity of the court,” said Patrick Chamberlayne, a divorce lawyer in London. “They put their heads together and say, ‘Surely we can come up with something that the court will agree on.’ That’s when you get the sort of trivial nonsense like ‘He was late home from work’ and ‘He wasn’t supportive in the kitchen.’ ”

In some cases, though, the divorce petition is used as an “instrument of punishment,” Mr. Chamberlayne said.

“The more angry the person, the more they dislike the other person, the more likely you will find extreme examples of behavior. Sexual impropriety, extreme sexual behavior, every vice you can imagine, drugs, prostitution, homosexuality — the more wounded you are, the more this stuff pours out.”