Question: Say you have a net worth of a billion dollars before marriage. After marriage you do whatever business or trading of your excess money through your offshore company in some tax haven (not under US jurisdiction). While you passively generating income from your 1 billion dollar assets in the US. Fast forward 5 years, you divorce her with a net worth of 1.5 billion (all passive income, excluding your offshore assets). Will she be entitled to some of those passive income? Assuming that you did not reveal about your shell company to anyone.
Anyone worth a billion dollars before marriage is going to have a pre-nup. Hell, anyone worth eight figures is highly likely to have a pre-nup. The risks are just too great.
Nobody can answer that question with certainty. The fact that a lot of billionaires who divorce have to pay expensive lawyers and have long negotiations about who will get what, shows that there is no simple answer. If there was a simple answer every divorce would be finalized outside of the court and in no time.
Yep. If you want a real kick in the nuts - read about how insanely messy Elon Musk’s first divorce was. And there was a pre-nup. He had made $20M on the sale of his first startup just weeks before the wedding - and according to his ex-wife Justine she said that it was explained to her as a “financial agreement” so she signed it without having an attorney review it and explain it to her. Which apparently in California is a good enough reason to litigate in a very adversarial family court system.
Take Jeff Bezos: "Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie announced that they are divorcing. Each is one-half of the world’s richest couple, thanks to Amazon, making their divorce potentially one of the most complicated. It needn’t be: MacKenzie should walk away with a clean half. This is already the law in Washington state, where the couple lives (they have other residences as well, but Amazon is headquartered in Seattle). In “community property” states like Washington, any assets accumulated during the marriage are communal and divided 50-50 if the marriage ends. The Bezoses have been married for 25 years, before Jeff Bezos started Amazon, making most of the family wealth communal. But we can predict now that it won’t be so simple." Bezos gave 38 billion to his ex and kept 118 billion. They were married without prenups and all the money Bezos made was made AFTER they married. So he had to give his ex 50% but he did not. That's reality instead of what the law says.
HOT NEWS: https://www.tmz.com/2020/08/04/dr-dres-wife-is-challenging-prenup-in-1-billion-divorce/ Signed prenup and now pretends she was forced. So she wants $400 million. typical way how things go. That's what prenups are worth today. Nothing.
Family Court in the US is big business worth many billions per year that makes divorce attorneys very good livings and it’s the financial lubricant that keeps many legal practices going. It is adversarial by intent and design. Former lawyers become family court judges and practicing attorneys contribute to their election campaign funds. Psychologists, Private Investigators and Forensic Accountants are also heavy feeders at the trough.
%% But perhaps strangely, they were still friends+/. So kindness payed well for both of them. He may have told her ''honey we have a higher standard than the law=love''