She never saw it coming.
Married for twenty years to a successful lawyer-turned-hedge fund manager, she trusted her husband, ceding financial control to him while she focused on raising their children. All her illusions were shattered when he confessed he’d been unhappy for years, demanded a divorce, then, with icy detachment, got in his car and drove away.
Belle Burden, a 56-year-old heiress and lawyer recounts the stunning collapse of her marriage and finances in a bestselling memoir “Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage.” Her book is sparking intense conversations about men, women, marriage, and money.
So common is her experience that it seems a cliché. But what makes her story so unsettling are the extraordinary circumstances of her life. Belle Burden is a descendant of railroad titan Cornelius Vanderbilt and a founder of Standard Oil. Family lawyers had built a fortress of trusts to protect her financially. And, yet, in her naïve desperation to prove her love, she’d dismantled those protections and handed the keys to the fortress to her husband.
Belle Burden’s book is a harrowing cautionary tale about protecting oneself in an unpredictable world. Here are a few observations about her story:
- Even the strongest legal armor can be undone. Belle was the beneficiary of sophisticated lawyering. Her trusts were designed to protect her from danger. Yet she willingly shed that protection. She used her trusts’ assets to buy two luxury homes. Then she added her husband’s name to hers on the deeds, effectively giving him 50% ownership of the properties.
A wiser approach would have been to have the trusts provide financially favorable loans to the marriage. - Love can be, tragically, blind and deaf. Just days before her lavish wedding, Belle’s fiancé asked her to sign a new prenuptial agreement that gave him the right to keep all the money he earned during the marriage. Appalled, her lawyer pleaded with her not to sign it. She signed it anyway.
Urgency makes for poor decisions. Any legal document or changes to an existing document proposed at the last minute should be set aside until after the occasion. - Change is inevitable; preparation makes it manageable. Belle took comfort from their domestic routine. Her husband predictably worked, did yardwork, and went to bed at 9 p.m.
Maturity is recognizing that life can change in the blink of an eye. The unimaginable – disease, divorce, estrangement – is commonplace. Death is inevitable. It’s vital to plan for a future that may be different than the comfortable present. - Love – or biology – is powerful. Belle, a lawyer, should have known better than to have stripped away all her protections, leaving herself vulnerable.
Love, passion, jealousy, grief: our emotions have the power to override logic and good judgment. Wise counsel is particularly important when emotions run high. Having advisors who know you and your family well is a powerful antidote to bad decisions.