The battle over a crumbling marriage and a burgeoning art collection touching six countries continues to simmer in New York.

No two divorce cases, like snowflakes and sunsets, are alike, but the one playing out between Swiss businessman Maurice Alain Amon and his wife, Tracey Hejailan-Amon, is particularly unusual.

Amon filed for divorce from Hejailan in Monaco, where the couple has a $40 million home, at the end of September. The couple, married in Hong Kong seven years ago, has homes in London, Paris, Gstaad, Monaco, and New York, according to court filings.

Hejailan filed suit last month, claiming her husband was trying to abscond with a $25 million art collection by having his art consultants whisk roughly 20 artworks off the walls of their Fifth Avenue apartment and into storage in Queens while she was out of town. A day after all of the paintings were removed, she was informed of Amon’s divorce filing.

Upon learning that her husband was trying to put a Basquiat, which had been hanging in their Paris apartment, up for auction at Christie’s in November, Hejailan’s attorney, Aaron Richard Golub, filed for a temporary restraining order that would freeze the couple’s global art collection. The judge granted the request without hearing from Amon’s attorneys, something the court does not usually do, because Hejailan’s representatives presented it as an emergency. In addition to the Basquiat, the collection includes an Alexander Calder, a Damien Hirst, a Takashi Murakami, a Warhol, and three works by Richard Prince.

The pair’s lawyers met in court Thursday in front of New York Civil Supreme Court Judge Robert Reed, who said he was “embarrassed” and felt “bamboozled” that he had been persuaded by Hejailan side’s claim of urgency. He modified the restraining order to only include the 20 works of art that were held in the couple’s New York apartment; the remainder of the global collection is no longer under a freeze. The temporary restraining order that still remains on the New York works will hold until the judge reaches a decision, which he has 60 days to do.

Neither Hejailan nor Amon appeared in court.

Amon, who inherited the bulk of his wealth from his family’s security company, SICPA, which prints secure ink for most of the world’s banknotes, did not sign a prenuptial agreement, according to court documents. Amon’s attorneys claim that the invoices for the artwork are all in his or his company’s name, and thus, they never belonged to his wife. They made the point that freezing the collection is potentially damaging, due to the frothy-but-fickle contemporary-art market, which could hamper his ability to reap any sale’s highest potential.

Hejailan’s lawyers argued that their client has equity rights to the art collection. Golub invoked Amon’s “maze” of business operations, comparing his business accounts to those of O.J. Simpson, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi. If he sold the artwork now, before a divorce settlement was reached, Golub said, “you’d never see that money again.”

Judge Reed said that he had tried to send the case to matrimonial court—even arguing and pleading with its judges after hours—but said they rejected it because they do not have jurisdiction, since the divorce was filed in Monaco and the couple has multiple residences. It’s a point Amon and his attorneys have gone to great lengths to prove, since Monaco’s matrimonial laws are much more favorable to his case.

According to court filings from his lawyer, Peter Bronstein, Hejailan would have no claim to the art under Monaco’s law. In New York, she would be entitled to at least a share of the works. Amon’s divorce filings include a report from a bailiff in Monaco detailing her vast collection of shoes—about 80 pairs—as well as closets brimming with color-coded clothes, drawers and trays filed with toiletries, and a jewelry box spilling out necklaces.

“One need only look at the number of pairs of shoes in her closet to conclude she lives there,” Bronstein wrote in a filing. He also filed evidence of the couple’s membership to the Yacht Club de Monaco, the Cercle club in Monte Carlo, and an invitation to celebrate someone named Tracey as further proof of their settled life in the tiny European city-state.

Golub contested this claim in court Thursday, saying he believes his client only spent one weekend in Monaco since the couple finished renovation in their waterfront apartment this spring, for the “car race.” He said she will vigorously fight that the case not play out in Monaco, and that it would “likely” take place in England or Switzerland, where matrimonial laws more closely resemble those in New York.