Joey Lawrence's Estranged Wife Samantha Cope BREAKS Silence on Shock Divorce... After Actor Was Accused of Cheating

Joey Lawrence is being accused of adultery with his Socked in for Christmas costar and producer Melina Alves.

via: People

A source close to the former couple, whose divorce news broke on Aug. 21, exclusively tells PEOPLE that the pair went their separate ways after Lawrence, 48, struck up a relationship with Melina Alves, a writer and costar on his upcoming film, Socked In For Christmas.

"Joey met Melina Alves on the set of their movie, where she was a producer," the source claims. "He then love-bombed her just like he love-bombed Samantha. He continued to date Melina even after Samantha found out about it and confronted him."

When Cope, 37, "wanted to go to counseling," the source claims, Lawrence "fooled their counselor" and would "get ready for dates with Melina while Sam watched, bawling her eyes out."

On Aug. 22, TMZ reportedly obtained divorce filings by Alves' estranged husband Edward Rider, which alleged he discovered in late March that Alves was having an affair with Lawrence. Rider's divorce paperwork was filed in July, just a few weeks before Cope filed for divorce, per TMZ.

Rider alleged in the court filing that Alves and Lawrence were having the affair in California — where they were presumably located for the filming of Socked In For Christmas — and went on to engage in infidelity "at various other times and places," according to TMZ.

PEOPLE has reached out to reps for Lawrence, Cope, Alves and Rider for comment, but they have not returned multiple requests for comment.

On Wednesday, Aug. 20, PEOPLE confirmed that Lawrence and Cope — who met while filming Lifetime's My Husband's Secret Brother in 2021 before tying the knot in May 2022 — were separating after two years of marriage.

According to the divorce filing obtained by PEOPLE, Cope cited irreconcilable differences as the reason for their split and submitted the paperwork on Aug. 13 — two months after their date of separation, which was listed as June 7, 2024. She requested to block the court's ability to award either side spousal support and is seeking full physical custody of their daughter Dylan, 19 months, while permitting Lawrence visitation at her discretion.

Per the filing, Cope has requested that Lawrence "not take [Dylan] for long, extended periods of time until she is old enough to specifically ask for the visitation time" and that Dylan not "be in the presence of any non-family members while with Joe unless agreed upon by Samantha."

Speculation about the former couple's separation was first sparked when Lawrence was spotted without a wedding ring in PEOPLE's exclusive photos of his family vacation to Jamaica in August. Cope was also noticeably absent from the pictures.

Lawrence and his brothers Matthew, 44, and Andrew, 36, described the trip as a "vacation of a lifetime." The three siblings were joined by their mother, Donna, the Melissa & Joey alum's daughters, Charleston, 18, and Liberty, 14, as well as Andrew’s girlfriend, Brittany McGowan, on the Caribbean getaway.

“Nothing matters more in this life than the beautiful memories you share with loved ones,” the brothers told PEOPLE at the time. "It was a vacation of a lifetime and we can’t wait to go back!”

Eight months before Cope filed for divorce from Lawrence, he spoke to PEOPLE in December 2023 about how they met and why he didn’t initially expect their relationship to develop into a marriage.

"I never dated somebody that I'd worked with before. That was just very, very much out of the ordinary for me," he told PEOPLE at the time. "I've never actually gotten into a serious relationship with somebody that I actually worked with, never."

"It was very unexpected," he continued. "These wild twists and turns that you get to be our age. You just kind of go, ‘All right, well, I guess that's what it is.’ You learn to accept the unorthodox way some things just sort of roll out and you're thankful for — you're thankful for it, even though it's not what you expected."