Chana and Simon Taub, both 57, have endured two years of divorce negotiations, but neither is prepared to give up their Brooklyn home.
Now a white partition wall has been built through the heart of the house to keep the pair apart.
Mr Taub asked a judge to allow him to erect the partition when the couple's divorce stalled over financial details.
The Taubs' divorce has been rumbling through the New York divorce courts for two years.
But despite owning another home - just two doors away - the unhappily married couple have decided to carry on living under the same roof.
"It's my house," said Simon Taub, who requested the building of the wall.
"And emotionally, in my age, I want to be in my house," he told the Associated Press.
Chana Taub maintains that she has as much right as her partly-estranged husband to stay in the Borough Park house.
"I need a house to live and money to live on. I worked very hard for him, like a horse, like a slave for him."
Barricades
Eventually, after negotiations led nowhere, a judge ordered that the partition wall be built inside the house.
The wall divides the ground floor of the house, and keeps husband and wife penned into separate sections on different floors.
One door linking the rival sections of the house is barricaded shut to prevent any accidental contact between the pair.
But one US therapist interpreted the Taubs' acrimony as evidence of a still-flickering flame.
"It's clear that if they're going to go to this length, there's still far too much connection," Kimberly Flemke told AP.
"I would hope they'd both go to therapy."
