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A married couple who decided to go their separate ways agreed to divide their home and its contents literally - by sawing the house in half.
One day the house was standing on stilts in a Cambodian village. The next, only half was there.
The wife will keep the half that is standing, while the husband has carried off bits and pieces of the home to put them up in a nearby field.
The extraordinary case came about after the couple, whose privacy is being protected by the village chief in the Kamchay Mea district of Cambodia, agreed that after 40 years of living together their marriage was over.
Village chief Vorng Morn said that the pair did not separate over 'anything big' but niggling differences came to a head when the husband accused his wife of not caring for him when he became ill recently.
They reached a curious agreement.
Not only they decide to tear half the house down, the husband said that before he puts together the remnants of his side of the severed property, he will stay at his ageing parents' home, so that they can look after him whenever he falls ill.
'His wife said that if her husband got sick and stayed at home, she was always made to pay for his medicine,' said chief Morn.
'But if he stayed at his parents' house, she wouldn't have to pay. So that was when they decided to separate.
'I and other people in the village tried to persuade them to think clearly before they did this because they had been married for nearly 40 years, but they didn't listen.'
The Phnom Penh Post reported yesterday that the couple, whose village is 50 miles from the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, had also decided to divide their land into four parts - two for them and two for their son and daughter.
The couple took the decision to saw the house in half after deciding that going to court to decide who got what would be too expensive.
The husband used a saw, a hammer and chisels and called in the help of friends to divide the house.
His wife's belongings were carefully moved from his side to the side of the home that she will now keep to ensure they were not damaged during the unusual division of property.
Local officials have frowned upon the extreme action, saying the couple should have divided the spoils under a legal process.
But Prak Phin, a local lawyer, said that literally dividing property was legal if both parties were in agreement.
'This action, however, does not mean they are legally divorced,' he said.
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