This Breakdown Of A Billionaire's Wife’s Post-Divorce Spending Will Blow Your Mind
A little background, Harry Macklowe is a billionaire real estate titan whose wife of fifty-seven years divorced him after catching him with a much younger woman. It wasn’t a one-time thing either, Macklowe put his mistress up in a Park Avenue pent house for two years AND bought her a house in the Hamptons directly across the pond from he and his wife’s forty-one million dollar estate. Real scumbag stuff. At any rate, Linda found out and shit hit the fan. Both her and her husband went on a “spite” spending spree according to court documents.
Source - She started with $37 million cash in June 2016 and made $10 million in withdrawals by July 2017. Her biggest outlays were to lawyers and their experts — $7.25 million. But the 79-year-old Guggenheim Foundation trustee also paid art consultants $145,000 and bought herself a $2.7 million painting
Ten-million dollars in twelve months. That’s roughly a Ferrari a week for a year straight. Mind you, she’s eighty years old. Most women her age are having their diapers changed not walking around with eight figure bank accounts. Physical fitness aside, I am a little worried about the mental health of a woman who thinks it’s acceptable to pay seven MILLION dollars for lawyers. Celino and Barnes would’ve done it for $10k. Although I have a harder time digesting the artwork. $2.7 million on a painting is outrageous considering she has like a month to enjoy them before she croakes. The husband wasn’t much better.
“He bought a country house,” Linda Macklowe argued in Manhattan Supreme Court. She was referring to the $10.6 million Georgica Pond love shack Macklowe snapped up in July to share with his French girlfriend.
The lawyer’s justification was gold.
“He had nowhere to live!” Harry Macklowe’s attorney Peter Bronstein exclaimed. “What do you mean nowhere to live?” Linda Macklowe seethed. “Well nowhere to live in East Hampton,” Bronstein clarified.
“Live outside the Hamptons? Poppycock!” The wife reacted by spending $700k on Yachts citing her need for relaxation, and an undisclosed amount on $1,099-an-hour tax dodging lessons. Classy stuff. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Despite the obvious wealth Harry is telling courts he’s worth negative $400 million due to deferred capital gains taxes. Whatever that means.
People are calling this costliest divorce of all time and it’s just getting started. They still need to split up the billion dollar art collection and five-hundred-million dollar real estate portfolio. I try to put myself in that headspace but I just can’t. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I still have a few months until Draft King’s makes me a billionaire.