I’m cheering for no one. But I’m glad to hear you believe everything you read in a news article, and fail to ask anything about even obviously missing facts. How discerning.
They were divorced. His name would have been removed from any of her debts as part of the divorce decree. That’s just the way things are done. Credit cards, car loans etc are all divied up. Check your newspaper sometime. You’ll see things like, “I, John Doe, am no longer responsible for the debts of Jane Doe”.