
“I Was a Starter Wife”: Inside America's Messiest Divorce (2010) - iwh
http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/advice/a5380/millionaire-starter-wife/
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bryanlarsen
Elon's perspective: [http://www.businessinsider.com/correcting-the-record-
about-m...](http://www.businessinsider.com/correcting-the-record-about-my-
divorce-2010-7)

~~~
hedgew
Marriage is probably a high risk factor for entrepreneurs.

"In a California divorce, the wealthier spouse must pay both sides of the
battle even if they are not the aggressor."

"I even had to endure her attempt to enjoin my companies, which would have
required her participation and permission in every significant corporate
decision."

------
Zarkonnen
Pretty conflicted about this story. I am... not surprised by any of the
details in it, and I'm not fond of startup founder hero worship. But I'm
uncomfortable with this kind of public airing of grievances.

If Musk wrote this kind of piece about her, he'd come across as a massive
asshole. But then, he's clearly the one with far more power, and he'd be
punching down the power gradient, kicking her when she's down. Does that make
a difference? I'm genuinely not sure.

~~~
bsbechtel
I remember seeing this when it was originally written. While I laud Elon's
professional accomplishments, it's not hard to accept that he has some massive
faults when it comes to personal relationships, not unlike many successful
entrepreneurs before him. At the same time, my immediate reaction to this
piece was that Justine Musk is a professional novelist. Her job is to use
words and her writing to entertain people, part of that entertainment being
making people feel certain emotions and thoughts through the stories she
tells. I couldn't read this without taking her side of the story with a grain
of salt.

~~~
facepalm
Why "faults"? It sounds as if he said "take it or leave it", isn't that fair?
Why do you have to have a specific personality to be accepted? Nobody is
forced to marry the guy.

------
bryanlarsen
What an awful title. "Messiest divorce"? The only thing that makes it messy is
the staggering amount of money involved and the fact that Elon lives in the
public eye. It sounds like there is no dispute over the kids, which is what
really makes a divorce messy.

------
themartorana
There's a lot of pain here, and the article is of course one-sided and feels
rather unnecessary to me (but I'm sure necessary to her).

All that said, surviving the loss of a child is rare. It's a nuclear explosion
of the rawest emotion and pain that I've only, luckily, observed from the
outside looking in. If things weren't rock solid before, it's difficult to
imagine they would survive what must be the most horrible experience a human
being can suffer.

------
SFjulie1
Well, that is what you get for marrying a psychopath.

Entrepreneur's first quality is to assess situation without the filter of
emotions, it logically has a tendency to induce this as a routine. And it is
wise.

So be it induced or be it a professional hazard, entrepreneur's will grow
their tendency for control and maximimizing their utility in any dimesions
without regard for emotions.

She is just a minor collateral victim of a normal trait that brilliant
entrepreneur should have.

Elon is not a cold bastard, he is a cold visionaire: when he says all IT
success are based on monopolies and that governments should allow them, he is
right. Never go for competition, but always tell the one going for competition
they have "fire in their eyes", this way you will have less competition on
your monopoly. It is wise.

Morally he may be not be your cup of tea. But, what he is doing is socially
profitable for at least some of us (investors, customers, employees, state
(through taxes)).

As stated in Plato's Republic, the wisest amongst us should not be under the
scrutinity of the people that don't understand what is required to rule the
city.

------
sergiotapia
This is funny to me. If these people were poor they would be doing the exact
same thing on Facebook. But since they have a couple of million they don't
post this on their wall but on actual journalism website.

Keep your dirty laundry private - nobody wants to see that and it's ugly.

------
belorn
The start of this article sounded like any modern story. Two adults going
through education and trying to make a carer, both having long term plans and
has jobs in order to support themselves.

And then, in a instant, he handed her his credit card and all that talk about
bartending jobs and becoming an aspiring writer get pushed aside. Instead its
about postnuptials, and how a life without him was unthinkable. He also seem
equally changed, with "I am the alpha in this relationship", which sound
completely absurd and nothing two equals adults would ever say to each other.
When the divorce comes, the focus is solely on the entitlement from being a
wife.

------
parennoob
I don't know why this is on HN, but here is Elon's version of things:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/correcting-the-record-
about-m...](http://www.businessinsider.com/correcting-the-record-about-my-
divorce-2010-7)

"In addition to paying all of her household expenses and anything related to
the children, I send Justine $20,000 (after tax) per month for clothing, shoes
and other discretionary items."

I guess two lessons HN readers can take from this are:

a) Don't get married if possible. If she was just his girlfriend, this would
be only a bad breakup story apart from the kids, which leads to....

b) If you do get married, don't have kids with the person you married if you
are having constant interpersonal conflicts with them. Five kids probably
turned the divorce pretty messy. No kids + the post-nup she signed might have
made it more clean-cut.

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davidw
In case you guys haven't seen it, there is some great discussion of
(bootstrapped) startup life here:
[http://zenfounder.com/](http://zenfounder.com/) \- not all the episodes cover
things that interest me, but there are some good ones.

 _Edit_ \- I don't get the downvotes - to me my family is the most important
thing in my life, and anything I can learn to make things better for us is
well worth it. I figured it was sort of relevant to an article about a
divorce, especially since Sherry has advice for regular people who are not
billionaires.

------
sigzero
Why are we re-visiting this 5 years later?

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epx
A perfectly unbiased text :D

~~~
jpdoherty
Since she's one half of the divorce in question, wouldn't it be a little
sociopathic if it were unbiased?

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imaginenore
I know of at least a billion women who would trade places with her.

All that whining about how badly she was treated. He asked her to dye her
hair, the horror. She had financial access to pretty much any activity one can
imagine, and she chose to be bored and whiny instead of busy doing something
cool.

