A divorce case is currently engulfing Félix Lengyel (@xQc) and Samantha Lopez (@AdeptTheBest) in controversy, even though they never officially married. According to documents obtained by Passionfruit, Lopez is claiming the pair entered a common law marriage in the state of Texas, and now she’s filing for divorce. The court is moving the case to trial on May 19.
While much remains uncertain regarding the specifics of Lopez and Lengyel’s situation, what unfolded, according to court documents, shows the perils of having a very public breakup as an influencer—and the fan harassment, career instability, and economic uncertainty that might follow.
Lengyel is one of Twitch’s most popular streamers, with over 11.5 million followers. He rose to fame in 2017 as a professional Overwatch player. In 2018, the Overwatch league let him go following suspensions for using homophobic insults and describing a caster as “cancer.” But his audience only grew, spending upwards of 18 hours a day watching him play Grand Theft Auto roleplay, reacting to clips, and engaging with fans.
Lopez started streaming in early 2017, playing shooter games like Call of Duty and Overwatch, growing in popularity after streaming alongside Lengyel. Their relationship was tumultuous and played out in the public eye. Clips of Lopez asking Lengyel to “talk off stream” and heated arguments gained hundreds of thousands of views over their four-year relationship.
According to Lopez on a video still on Lengyel’s channel called “How I Met Adept and Fell In Love,” the pair first met in December 2017 at a preseason game of the Overwatch League. Over the next few months, they started dating. But initially, the pair did not go public with their relationship. According to Lopez’s statement in the court documents, Lengyel “remained adamant that it was not a good idea” for them to publicly acknowledge the relationship.
“Felix had convinced me that his fans would blame a girlfriend in his life for any kind of stream mishaps; for example, being late or being tired,” the court documents read. “He feared his fans would think a live-in girlfriend was interfering with the fan’s relationship with him.”
Over the next year, the pair moved in together and appeared on each other’s channels as “just roommates.” According to the documents, the pair went public with their relationship in December 2018.
Lopez claimed in her statement in the court documents that the pair became “informally married” in August 2020. When Lopez traveled to visit Lengyel, a Canadian citizen, she claimed in her statement they “acknowledged to immigration officials” they “agreed to be married.” Because of COVID travel restrictions, those traveling to Canada needed to be related or married to those they were visiting.
“We’re not married through a marriage certificate, we’re common-law partners because we’ve been living together for two years,” Lopez said in an August 2020 live stream right after she made it to Canada.
A common law marriage is a legally recognized marriage between two people without a marriage license. In the state of Texas, three different criteria need to be met in order for the marriage to be considered legitimate: Two people have to agree to be married, live together as husband and wife, and be represented to others that they are married.
“Texas is one of the few last remaining states in the nation that recognizes common law marriage,” Rebecca Rowan, a family attorney in Texas told Passionfruit. “There is no durational requirement and the only way to get out is just like any other marriage—death or divorce.”
Lopez’s lawyers claim the pair agreed to be common law married in 2020 so she could visit Lengyel in Canada. The lawyers claimed the pair also lived together, and they “held themselves as married to Samantha’s family.”
Lengyel disagreed, stating on a Jan. 8 stream he has “never been married” and will “never get married.” In court records, his lawyer claimed the pair never “held themselves” as husband and wife. “Occasional references to ‘my wife’ or ‘my husband’ do not prove a tacit agreement to be married without corroboration,” Lengyel’s lawyers wrote.
Moving forward after her trip from Canada, Lopez said in her statement in court records that she and Lengyel “would not disclose our status as married on our respective platforms to our fans” because they “believed this was the best way to protect each other from harassment and scrutiny online.”
But that didn’t stop the harassment from fans. In a June 2021 stream, Lengyel claimed they were being harassed “almost every day.” Lengyel and Lopez moved out of their Texas home, but she claimed that the “harassment” caused their “relationship to suffer.”
Influencer public breakups and divorces can tend to get a bit messy. In 2022, Ned Fulmer, a member of the YouTube collective Try Guys, left the company and disappeared from social media after it was revealed that he was having an extra-marital affair with a co-worker. The story was covered by dozens of outlets and even parodied by Saturday Night Live.
“The best stories have high-stakes conflicts involving characters you care about,” entertainment attorney Scott Sholder told Passionfruit. “When this type of drama plays out in real life between two people that each has hundreds of thousands if not millions of followers, you can bet that those followers will become invested in the story and, as we’ve seen already, pick sides, sometimes in very vocal (and potentially abusive) ways.”
In August 2021, Lopez and Lengyel publicly broke up but were back together by December, before ultimately ending for a last time in September 2022. On Sept. 17, the pair argued on stream in front of 125,000 people, ending with no public resolution.
Lopez claims in her statement in court records that Lengyel originally agreed “not to publicly announce that we had separated” but started messaging her “with a looming threat that he desperately needed to announce our breakup in order to get the public scrutiny off of his back for missing a public event.” That event seems to be ShitCamp, an event created by Twitch streamer QTCinderella that Lengyel pulled out of last minute.
“He insisted to the public that the reason he didn’t go to this event was because of our breakup, while privately admitting to me it was because he simply did not want to go,” Lopez wrote.
According to an agreed-upon temporary order, Lengyel cannot “discuss the pending litigation on any social network profiles” including Twitch and YouTube. On Nov. 14, Lopez filed the original petition for divorce claiming that she feared for her safety and asked the judge to bar Lengyel from discussing the divorce proceedings on stream.
The order states they can also not spend “any sum of cash in either party’s possession,” terminate any accounts that the pair shared, or threaten the other person by “party or telephone.” However, an updated motion of enforcement filed on Jan. 23 lists a series of “violations” that Lopez claimed Lengyel committed over the past two months. She claimed Lengyel put a $500,000 bet on the Super Bowl and tipped a waitress $1,200.
It also included a mention of a Jan. 7 incident, in which Lopez appeared at the house they once shared while Lengyel was streaming on Twitch. In a video recording of the incident, though most of it is inaudible, Lopez talks off-camera about “accounts” and “passwords” and says he is “violating a court law.” According to the court documents, Lopez claimed Lengyel changed the passwords to their Tesla online account.
On the flip side, according to the documents, on Jan. 20, Lengyel reported Lopez was trespassing in the marital residence, and he attempted to have law enforcement remove her.
According to police records, Lengyel contacted the police after he “saw someone enter on his Ring (camera)” and thought it “might be related to his ex.” It claims police also spoke to Ryan Morrison, who is both Lengyel’s attorney and the CEO of Evolved Talent, an influencer talent agency that represents both Lengyel and Lopez. Police claimed Lopez and her mother were at the residence “due to an upcoming court case over assets and to determine if they were legally married.” The officer asked Lopez if they had somewhere else to stay, “and they stated no.” Nothing could be enforced, so the officers left, the records state.
On Jan. 27, Lopez filed a motion to seal the court documents, claiming, “the records being publicly available have proven to inflame certain users of social media that follow or subscribe to the parties’ online streaming personalities.”
As the case continues, it will be difficult for Lopez to prove common law marriage, according to Rowan.
“I find my judges opposed to common law marriages. It’s a difficult standard and burden of proof,” Rowan said. “I see judges denying them more than granting them. It’s difficult to prove to a judge that’s common law marriage.”
Passionfruit reached out to Lopez and Lengyl for comment via email and both declined to comment.
