Reply to Belle Burden’s “Strangers”

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I see this differently than a lot of other commenters and don’t necessarily judge him leaving the kids.

I was married to someone with a personality disorder and one of his favorite threats was to threaten to take the kids from me. This was despite me being the primary caregiver.

Would it be better if she was forced to lose primary custody and not see her kids half the time? I believe a child needs both parents, but there is some nuance when one parent has been the primary parent all along.

While she comes from money, she was mostly illiquid, and he was working 24-7 to support that lifestyle. I am familiar with that NY finance lifestyle and you can’t have it both ways. If you want the country house, private school and nice apartment then your husband is mostly absent unless you have generational wealthy to use. It’s not surprising he was mostly absent. I highly doubt she ever offered to return to work so he could scale back and spend time with the kids. She instead probably wanted that Colony Club membership more. Then they get divorced and it makes sense she continued on as the primary and really only true parent.

IMHO the gentlemanly thing to do wasn’t for him to leave her AND take her kids half the time while he was at it. He probably thought he was choosing the lesser of two evils.

I’ve known plenty of these NY women and they are vapid, shallow and their main priority is the lifestyle and social life. I’d be shocked if she’s not similar. [/quote]
Burden says she emptied her trusts to buy their residential properties which were jointly titled and she also contributed to their family expenses with her money. She also did pro bono work as a lawyer and has ramped it up since her divorce. All that the husband did was use her family name and connections to amass his own wealth which he protected with a prenup.[/quote]

Pro bono work and paid for homes doesn’t fund a NYC socialite lifestyle. It requires significant generational wealth or a husband at a hedge fund/private equity.

I have NY friends living similar lifestyles who are spending a million dollars a year on Nannies, vacations, private clubs, private schools etc.

Private school for two kids and the obligatory two nannies is $400k a year after tax money.

She was not funding that lifestyle. His job was. [/quote]

That's not true. She (her family) paid for the private schools and she contributed 50% of their expenses every month. He was meticulous about that. [/quote]

Ouch does she say that in the book that she contributed 50%? [/quote]

Yes joint bank account. Each month he would transfer a fixed amount and she'd transfer the same. 50-50. Even though she paid for the houses from her trust, her parents paid for the kids' tuition, and she put a lot of kid expenses on the credit card she paid herself out of her family's money. He didn't support her at all.[/quote]
He sounds like a leech.[/quote]

I hope she didn’t pay for the properties entirely out of her trust.

If she did pay for the properties he really had it both ways - got to keep all his earnings plus get the home equity plus get grandparents to pay for all the schooling.

I do think that the partner marrying a wealthier person needs to protect themselves with a prenup but this one was really aggressive! He got to keep all his money, have her contribute 50% of living expenses, no need to save for college or pay for private school, and then also got 50% of the real estate that he may not even have contributed to. all that AND he got her services as a SAHM and family connections. [/quote]

I’m in a similar situation but with no prenup and I would have been just as bad off if I’d had that kind of prenup. My liquid assets also got tied up in real estate and we have a significant, massive income differential that came later in our marriage and our life was subsidized for a brief time before that by my family’s funds.

The only way to truly be protected in this situation is with a post up, but by then you are so legally and financially vulnerable that a cunning spouse is not going to sign one.

Rather than find 50 ways to parse how she could have known better, why are we not wondering about his morality? Really frustrating to read.[/quote]

She was an adult and a lawyer, who came from a world of money and financial planning, at the time she signed the prenup. Sometimes we have to hold adults accountable for their bad decisions. To me this is one of the less sympathetic parts of the story. You signed a crummy prenup even though you had all resources on your side? And then you were held to the prenup? Oh, that’s what happens. [/quote]

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