When Michelle was planning her Malibu wedding four years ago, she remembers feeling an overwhelming sense of safety and security. My husband has me for life, she remembers thinking. The two met when she messaged him on LinkedIn; she was 23, just starting out her entertainment career in Los Angeles, and he was a C-suite executive who was 19 years older. Michelle wanted to pick his brain. Within weeks, they were engaged. Michelle (not her real name) was always aware of their financial disparity — he had worked for longer, had significantly more earning potential, and could retire in a little more than a decade — and while they discussed finances in premarital counseling, listing out their assets and talking through their spending habits, the now–mother of two had never thought about a prenup until a few weeks ago, when she picked up a copy of Belle Burden’s Strangers, devoured it in one night, and then set it on her husband’s bedside table. “I was like, ‘You need to read this immediately.’”
The best-selling memoir details the abrupt dissolution of the 21-year-long marriage between its author, Belle Burden, a blue-blooded Vanderbilt and Standard Oil heiress, and her husband, who abruptly leaves her and their three children for his mistress while the family quarantines at their Martha’s Vineyard home. Compounding the cruelty of his exit is the financial mess. Burden discovers that her husband, whom she long trusted with the family’s finances, kept millions he made in separate accounts. Because of a change to their prenup he proposed days before their wedding, Burden — who emptied some of her trusts to purchase their homes and put her career on the back burner to care for their kids — is entitled to none of it.
