Bernie Madoff’s wife divorcing him, reports say

Ruth Madoff, the wife of financial criminal Bernard Madoff, is reportedly ending their 52-year marriage. The apparent reason: She wants to reconcile with their son Andrew.

Bernie Madoff, 73, is currently serving a 150-year prison sentence in federal jail in North Carolina for running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of billions of dollars over two decades.

Bernie Madoff biographer Diana Henriques told the U.K. Daily Mail that Ruth Madoff has not seen her husband since December, when their eldest son Mark committed suicide on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.

Ruth, 71, met Bernie at Far Rockaway High School in Long Island in the 1950s, marrying him when she was just 18, according to the Los Angeles Times. She worked as a stock broker on Wall Street and then for her husband's firm, but she claimed no knowledge of her husband’s financial crimes.

Mark and his brother Andrew also worked for their father, helping run his legitimate broker-dealer business in New York, Fox News reports, until their father revealed his investment fraud to them in 2008. They turned him in to the FBI and reportedly cut off contact with him.

Ruth Madoff, however, chose to support her husband after he was beaten in jail in 2009, so her sons severed their ties with her, too. After Mark Madoff killed himself, Ruth Madoff was turned away from the funeral by Mark's widow, the Long Island Press reports.

“For all practical purposes, the Madoff marriage was split apart by that 150-year prison sentence that will keep Madoff behind bars for the rest of his life,” Henriques told CBS News. “So my sense is that Ruth is now focusing all her efforts on rebuilding a relationship with her surviving son, Andrew, and her grandchildren."