MAINTAIN AGENCY

“My whole thing is like, I want to redefine what it means to contribute because way too many people hold this very narrow minded view that we can only contribute by earning money. And that money is the only way in which we give to our family. And that is just simply not true. Caregivers provide in many ways. We provide in the way that we love our family, our children, our elders, our community, we provide in the way that we share our time. And also, those folks who have chosen to spend their life focusing on caregiving make so much of the income earning spouses' time and energy and, you know, ascension in their own career possible.”

“That change was effectuated, I think something like five days before they married. I'm going to draw that parallel to the end where he brought her to the courthouse steps in terms of negotiating their divorce. Timing matters here. No, you should not have been still negotiating this five days before your wedding. He basically wore her down. That's what it felt like to me. He wore her down. There wasn't really time. Like you don't want to negotiate under pressure. I mean, and look, like it's just timing mattered here too. And it just, it felt, it felt, it felt wrong to me.”

“He wants to come after her to get his fair share of the homes that they own. So now this is like really bad news for her because yes she's an heiress but she had used basically she'd emptied her trust accounts to buy these homes and had put them in his name and her name.”

“The social pressure and the appearance and the betrayal of realizing who would really stand by, what are these friendships and these relationships? What do they actually stand on, aside from the status quo of you both being rich and married and whatever those rich married things are that you do together? Like, I think she was realizing, like, how hollow it all was.”

“I think of this as the things are good trap. I think it's very easy for folks with enough financial stability to fall into a trap of, well, things are good. We can do everything we want to do. Our kids can go to the camps they want to go to. We go on our vacations, we own our home. I mean, of course, I'm generalizing, but I think that at many income levels, people kind of say to themselves, can talk themselves into this idea of like, I'm going to not rock the boat with this. I'm not going to ask too many questions because I'm doing my thing, he's doing his thing, and things are good, or at least I believe things are good, until they're not.”

“And to try and find a way to politely say, and provide the tough love of saying, like, this is not about trust. This is about more agency. It's about your options, about visibility and transparency. Transparency and trust are mutually exclusive.”

“There's definitely a reason why he held the homes as a major piece of leverage in that negotiation and why he held on for so long. I'm sure he was just instructed by his lawyers because you're right, like split personality. But I've heard that that's not that uncommon. You receive that advice by a divorce attorney. Obviously, it's in poor form. It's in terrible taste, especially against someone you've—I don't understand. Personally, how could you ever treat somebody that you've ever loved that way? And you're the bad actor, but it happens. My point is that it happens all the time.”

“Slowly over many months, as my head came out of the sand, a form of joy set in. Joy born of replacing the not knowing with knowing, the nub of worry with clarity, the lack of control with control. I love that she wrote it so politely and so evenly. Like, it wasn't like, look what he did to me, you know? Like, took accountability, took accountability where she needed to. You don't have to choose to be a caregiver, a full-time caregiver provider, or someone who knows about the finances of your life. It's not mutually exclusive.”

“This is not about trust. This is about more agency. It's about your options, about visibility and transparency. Transparency and trust are mutually exclusive. I know many women that say, like, I stepped away from the family finances because it felt like the only thing I wasn't responsible for. She romanticized it in a way that, like, it's not the way I viewed it, but she basically said, like, what a beautiful thing that he could provide for our family in this way. And I provided in this way. And we basically both just stayed in our lanes. But that can't be how we do things.”

“You have this dynamic where the woman, as a young girl, you are under the sort of financial domain of your family, obviously, and then you get older and then you then sort of immediately get into the financial domain of your partner. Like there's no independence in between. You don't get to ever practice your own financial independence, which is essentially what Belle experienced, right? Even her nanny would force her to go to service and use her allowance to donate. Even then, she was forced to do things with her money she didn't want to do and would do it. She was a financially obedient person, even as a kid.”

“It is a masterclass in what can go wrong when you opt out of your financial life. And not because someone hid something from you, but because you chose to not look. And that's in part what makes this story hit so hard. We're going to go deeper into all of it.”

“I think of this as the things are good trap. I think it's very easy for folks with enough financial stability to fall into a trap of, well, things are good. We can do everything we want to do. Our kids can go to the camps they want to go to. We go on our vacations, we own our home... until they're not, until they're not.”