I was wrapping some content the other day in jQuery and couldn't find a good way to unwrap the elements, so after some digging I found some code close to what I was looking for, modified it a bit, and built an extension to make this whole process a heck of a lot easier.

The Extension

jQuery.fn.extend({ unwrap: function(){ return this.each(function(){ $(this.childNodes).insertBefore(this); }).remove(); } });

Usage

Simply call it just like any other jQuery function.  For example, if I had previously wrapped an element (or even just some text) with , I would use the following code to unwrap it:

$('.example').unwrap(); 

Simple as that! You can find some other functions out there, but most are a lot heavier than they need to be. This should get the job done for almost any occasion - it's worked great for me so far.