Inside Rascal Flatts’ Joe Don Rooney and Wife Tiffany’s Contentious Divorce, From Infidelity to $315k Rehab

By Jaslin Last updated Jan 10, 2023

Former Rascal Flatts guitarist Joe Don Rooney is still in legal limbo with estranged wife Tiffany Fallon Rooney, two years after filing for divorce. A settlement meeting is scheduled for March. Rooney, 47, and model and actress Tiffany, 48, married in 2006 and have three children: Jagger, 14, Raquel, 12, and Devon, 8.

However, court documents acquired by PEOPLE in the aftermath of Rooney’s initial divorce filing reveal a tense he-said, the she-said dispute in which both parties acknowledge adultery and Tiffany says the musician’s “habitual drunkenness and drug use” caused their breakup.

Rooney filed for divorce for the first time in January 2021, alleging irreconcilable differences. Tiffany filed a counter-suit in April 2021, accusing the celebrity of “inappropriate marital behavior.” In the nearly two years afterward, the couple has filed hundreds of documents in Davidson County, Tennessee, including subpoenas for Rooney’s former bandmates Gary LeVox and Jay DeMarcus, as well as accusations accusing each other of adultery.

Rooney filed a second amended and supplementary divorce case in October, accusing Tiffany of cheating on him with her personal trainer while they were still married. Tiffany responded five days later in documents of her own, stating that while she admitted to cheating, her affair was not the reason their marriage ended, as she began seeing someone else “once [Rooney] had fully withdrawn from their marital relationship due, [among other things], to habitual alcoholism and drug use.”

“[Tiffany] has always been completely honest about her adultery in this issue, in contrast to [Rooney], who has frequently lied under oath about his own adultery and drug usage,” according to the records. Tiffany also stated that they parted due to Rooney’s alleged “habitual alcoholism and usage of narcotic narcotics,” and that his troubles culminated in his 2021 DUI arrest.

(In September 2021, the musician was arrested and charged after crashing his car into a tree line in Franklin, Tennessee. In June 2022, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two days in jail). Rooney spent $315,800 on a four-month stay at a luxury alcohol and drug recovery center in Utah, according to the documents, but did not tell Tiffany where he was going or give her the opportunity to recommend a less expensive option.

Tiffany also claimed that Rooney was having an affair with another patient in the hospital. “[Rooney] has admitted to having an ongoing sexual affair with another facility patient while he was there for his highly expensive therapy, bringing his loyalty to the program into question,” according to the records.

Rooney refuted Tiffany’s claim of “habitual intoxication and usage of narcotic narcotics” in his own response, filed two days after Tiffany’s response but admitted to using cocaine “on a few occasions.” The artist further stated that, while he “suffers from alcohol use disorder for which he has had therapy,” he does not feel his substance misuse is the reason their marriage failed, and that he quit drinking at Tiffany’s request from May to September of 2020.

Rooney, like Tiffany, admitted to adultery, but defended his choice of a rehab center, claiming that his business management team chose it for him and that there were no other inexpensive options “that would have benefited [his] recovery in the same manner.”

Tiffany stated in her filing that she wants alimony from Rooney in the future because there’s a potential he’ll tour with Rascal Flatts again; according to the records, DeMarcus and LeVox have testified that “they would be amenable to performing as a band if [Rooney] would agree.”

In his petition, Rooney, though, asserted that the band was “now defunct,” and that he “vehemently denies that the band has any plans to reform.” Rooney and Tiffany are attempting to have the other’s counter-complaint dismissed and the expenses assessed against them.

According to documents filed in November, the two will meet for a divorce settlement conference on March 28. Rooney and his Rascal Flatts bandmates announced the cancellation of their farewell tour in 2020, saying they have no intentions to reschedule it “for the foreseeable future.”

“I wasn’t happy that Joe Don quit,” LeVox previously told PEOPLE. “It seemed to appear out of nowhere,” LeVox continued. “‘Let me try to put my head around this,’ it said. And then there was the epidemic, which essentially canceled everything.

I don’t like how it ended. I’m disappointed that we didn’t get to go on this farewell tour. I can’t accept the notion that there seems to be no closure with something we’ve been so fortunate to have. That will go on in my heart forever.”