Monica Getz, Advocate for Divorce Court Reform, Dies at 90

Monica Getz, whose tempestuous 24-year marriage to the jazz star Stan Getz was whipsawed by his addictions and who, after losing a protracted legal fight to save the marriage, became an advocate for divorce court reform, died on Jan. 5 in Irvington, N.Y. She was 90.

Her son Nicolaus Getz said the cause of her death, in a hospital, was bile duct cancer.

The Swedish-born Ms. Getz was a student at George Washington University when Mr. Getz, one of the most revered jazz saxophonists of the 20th century, met her backstage at a campus concert and pursued her even though he was married. When they wed in 1956, the actress Donna Reed was the maid of honor at the nuptials in Las Vegas.

The Getzes lived in a 27-room mansion called Shadowbrook, overlooking the Hudson River in Tarrytown, N.Y. They bought it in the mid-1960s when Mr. Getz’s fame was at an apex as a result of his bossa nova recordings: the album “Jazz Samba,” with the guitarist Charlie Byrd, and the hit single “The Girl From Ipanema,” on which his mellifluous tenor sax backed the breathy singing of Astrud Gilberto.

Drugs and alcohol, however, created havoc in the Getzes’ marriage. Mr. Getz had begun using heroin at 16 and was arrested two years before the marriage for attempting to rob a pharmacy to get narcotics. At the insistence of his wife, a teetotaler, he would seek medical help and enter rehabilitation programs, but relapses invariably followed.

At the couple’s divorce trial in 1987, Mr. Getz said he often drank to the point of blacking out. “I have a discography of 2,010 records,” he said, but “some of them I can’t even remember making.”