Posted on 12/15/2009 6:23:37 PM PST by marshmallow
Tiger Woods’ devastated wife has called in California’s top celebrity divorce lawyer, say her friends.
And Elin Nordegren – rocked by her husband’s string of alleged affairs – could get half the £337.5million he has earned in the five years they have been married.
The 29-year-old Swedish model, seen out in Florida yesterday minus her wedding ring, is believed to be meeting celebrity lawyer Sorrell Trope next week.
Trope, 82, a partner in Californian law firm Trope and Trope, has represented big-name stars including Cary Grant, Nicole Kidman, Nicolas Cage and Britney Spears in a 60-year career.
And in another blow to Woods, Elin is believed to be planning to file for divorce in California – where the couple have a home – and not Florida, where they live.
Under California law the “no-fault divorce”, introduced in 1970, means there is an equal division of assets and property.
This could mean that any pre-nup agreement Elin signed with the golf star will be torn up.
A source said: “Mr Trope is the best divorce lawyer in the business and the divorce laws in California are much more favourable than most other states.
“Elin can fight for half of what her husband has earned since they were married. And Trope can bust through any pre-nup – he’s done it many times before.”
Last night, when asked if he was representing Woods’ wife as her divorce lawyer, Trope replied: “Not right now.”
Friends say Elin will spend Christmas in Orlando with the couple’s children, daughter Sam Alexis, two, and son Charlie Axel, 10 months, before filing for divorce in the New Year.
(Excerpt) Read more at mirror.co.uk ...
“Marriage is a partnership. You are taking the view that marriage is a financial arrangement.”
exactly.
Again - it comes down to what the definition of marriage actually is.
I’m confused by this notion that she is less deserving because she wasn’t as wealthy.
I wasn’t aware that both parties to the marriage were supposed to both bring equal amounts of money - or be treated according to how much money they brought in.
I could just as easily turn the argument around and say that a woman who is demanding a $250 million payment instead of say, a $40 million payment is only concerned with the contribution of "money."
I completely agree that from all we know about this, Elin is morally in the "right" and Tiger is a low-class pig. I could elaborate for pages on that theme.
But the question in THIS thread is all about the MONEY - how much MONEY she should get.
She committed herself to him, foregoing other things in life she may have been able to do.
Even were it true that she functioned as some sort of "high level executive assistant" for him (neither of us knows whether that is true or not, unless you happen to be a close friend of theirs), I simply would not put the value of her "share" at $250 million. As mentioned, I would put her share at say, $30-40 million, taking into account the public humiliation he has imposed on her.
Had she taught him how to play golf, had she won half the tournaments, had it really made much of a difference whether he was a bachelor or married in obtaining endorsements (I don't think it does), I would feel she was entitled to a bigger share.
It's obvious from Tiger's actions that he is not capable of loving anyone other then himself. He wasn't even good to his whores - they call him cheap. I suspect he wasn't a "giving" lover either - probably someone who wanted to be "serviced". I wouldn't buy a product with Tiger's picture on it if someone paid me.
Tiger married his wife to inflate his income. Dems can pull off the bullshit about how "it's just about sex" - but the people know the difference between a man having one affair with a person they love - and a Clinton hitting on interns or a Tiger Woods buying 10 blond women (under the age of 25) to have sex with him.,P> Tiger is a pig.
Period.
Again, name some middle aged sports stars who have never been married who have BIG endorsements.
This is about you saying she didn’t contribute financially to the marriage and therefore not entitled to half.
Was your mother a stay at home mom/housewife?
She is an incredibly beautiful, fabulously rich young woman (even if she doesn't get half of the fortune) still in her 20s who nearly everyone in the world (myself included) views sympathetically.
Really, she has practically her whole life ahead of her.
For the record, I value stay-at-home mothers HIGHER than I do career moms (again, except in the extraordinary case of high earners like Oprah).
Indeed, maybe it would bring more clarity to the discussion of these issues to do so in the context of the Oprah-Stedman hypothetical I gave in order to get away from the husband vs wife or stay-at-home mom vs. career woman emotional hot buttons.
I disagree with your assesment. Perhaps some research into when the biggest endorsements rolled it... pre or post marriage would answer the question. There is no doubt that marriage increased his endorsement value, by how much will be one of the things looked at by the lawyers and the bean counters.
The real bottom line for Tiger Woods, Inc. is that in order to prevent his bimbos from cashing in is that he is going to have to cash them out. He will be in a similar situation with his wife. Silence is expensive and she knows more about his dirty laundry than anyone else.
Such flagrant breech of contract tends to be expensive and punitive damages are supposed to hurt or they aren't really punitive.
I can guarantee you from experience that Mrs. Woods is in the position of executive assistant on the domestic front. Mr. Woods has neither the time nor inclination to tend to the minutia of supervising domestic staff, particularly if he is to focus on his golf game.
Elin herself, from all accounts is very child centric and family oriented and I have not seen any accounts in the press that indicate that they have a nanny or au pair nor a large domestic staff, so she may very well be handling the bulk of the childcare herself, particularly if she breastfeeds.
If they have much domestic staff, it's quite a miracle that they haven't been bought off by the tabbies to tell tales.
I do know that Nike and Buick were long before his marriage. I haven’t checked the other major ones. I think Gatorade was more recent. Some brands might be more sensitive to marriage vs bachelor; I really don’t think, for example, Gatorade is one of those. One might argue that Gillette is.
I agree with you that I expect Tiger and Elin to reach some sort of negotiated settlement.
If Tiger has competent estate and tax lawyers, then I don’t expect that she will be able to successfully claim California residence and get California law to govern the divorce and void the pre-nup and get 50%.
On the other hand, I don’t think Tiger will try to stick her with the strict terms of the pre-nup, in part for the reason you cite regarding dirty laundry, and perhps just from a sense of guilt.
But she ain’t gonna end up with half, or anything close to half.
I don’t think she’s going home to Norway, buck naked and riding a zebra - lol
I'm with you there. He didn't just cheat on her, he publicly humiliated her -- repeatedly -- as well as threatened her health. That should cost him.
I find it really interesting that on a Conservative (pro-marriage, pro-family) website, there is so much sympathy for Tiger not being "hurt too much financially" for his disastrous behavior. Worse, there are some men here turning his wife (who did no wrong that we know of) into some "gold-digging, free-loading floozy" who "didn't contribute as much to the marriage".
I've got news -- it's guys like Tiger and his defenders here who were the reason that feminism was born in the first place! Men close ranks when it's one of their own being punished, so why shouldn't women do the same?
The conservative principle involved has to do with upholding the right to the fruit of a person’s labor and talents from arbitrary court confiscations.
Speaking for myself, it has nothing to do with males closing ranks.
If Madonna were to marry one of her aerobic trainers who a few years later divorces her after learning (surprise) that she has slept with the Los Angeles Lakers between his back, I do not agree that is proper for a court to award him half of her vast fortune.
Perhaps you would expect me to side with him because he is a male; I don’t.
While I think what Madonna did in my example was reprehensible morally, nevertheless her vast fortune has resulted almost entirely from her talent (if one can call it that) and her labor.
I think the aerobic instructor/husband should receive a healthy settlement, as he is the wronged party, but a fair amount for that bears no relation to a large percentage of her entire fortune.
Or let’s say Britney Spears marries one of her back-up dancers. Perhaps he even fathers a child or two of hers. After a few years, the back-up dancer discovers that Britney has been having sex with all of the husbands of the Real Housewives of L.A., and he divorces her.
Even though the back-up dancer/husband has been wronged by the cheatin’ Britney, in my view it would be arbitrary and unfair for a court to award half of Britney’s fortune, which has been achieved almost exclusively through her “talents” and efforts, to the wronged spouse, although he is deserving of a meaningful amount in a divorce settlement.
The answer is a little more complicated than men choosing to close ranks.
A lot of guys confuse their choosing evil women with a general status of all women being evil. I think that the same may hold true for women also.
The only bad thing I can say about Tiger’s wife is that up to this point, she has not demonstrated the ability to choose a good man. I wish better for her in the future.
I see darkness and tragedy for Tiger if he doesn’t get straightened out. Some people have to get to the hereafter for their justice, I suspect that his suffering is going to start in the here and now.
No, the basic principle is contract law and breech of contract. Since there is no practicable way to enforce specific performance of the marriage contract, the partnership must be dissolved.
BTW, the 50-50 split wouldn't have involved his pre-marital assets in the first place. Only the assets or increase in value that were acquired during the marriage would be in the pot to be divvied up.
I'm assuming the pre-nup spelled out what those assets were, that would not be in the marital pot.
Before no fault divorce, she might well have gotten more than half and possible all the marital assets due to the flagrancy of the breach of contract.
The beauty of faulted divorce is that it quelled infidelity because adultery could bankrupt the transgressor. Plus it discouraged "homewreckers" because a)the wronged spouse could refuse to divorce, denying the wrecker the spoils or b) a person had to be very very wealthy to afford the loss of assets a divorce would entail, so it was only common in the rarified upper, upper crust.
Men thought no fault would make serial monogamy cheap and easy, but the fact is, if the spouse gets half the assets plus child support, she defacto gets more than half and the man is bankupt or nearly so.
Moral bankruptcy leads to fiscal bankruptcy for men under both systems, but as it currently stands women fare better almost all of the time, even when she is the transgressor.
This is why feminists are against a return to faulted divorce, so they can continue to have their cake and eat it too.
I wonder what kind of remedy is offered for adultery in Tiger’s pre-nup?
Fair enough. As a female who once got sued for alimony, I can certainly grasp that concept. (And I didn't even do the Lakers or anyone else!)
But let's look at another way and instead of this being a marriage, let's look at it as an equal business partnership. Let's say that Tiger and his wife agreed to be equal partners in a venture called "The Tiger Woods Show". Both of them agreed to have different roles to contribute to the Show -- she raised the kids and handled the home front and he went out played golf and got company endorsements. Now, no one forced Tiger into this partnership against his will, he chose it, and Tiger didn't complain about his wife not directly earning money before this, nor did Tiger seek to end the partnership because "she wasn't directly earning money". Money was a non-issue because there was more than enough of it not to make a difference.
So if this were purely a business partnership, any business partnership, what would Mrs. Woods be entitled to when the business partnership ended? If I were the judge, I'd say half the assets, bought or earned during the life of the partnership, with no claims on his future earnings other than child support (which is for their kids, not for her).
IMHO, marriage is an equal partnership, regardless of how the bread-winning and child-rearing is divided up. You are either a team/partnership or you aren't. And if you are a team, then you deserve half of whatever the team produces whether you stay together and share it or end it and divide it.
A lot of guys confuse their choosing evil women with a general status of all women being evil. I think that the same may hold true for women also.
I agree. But I also think that the perceived/actual male/female roles in marriage complicate things.
Men and women are not the same -- it doesn't mean that they aren't equal. Men don't carry babies for nine months and it's far more rare (Madonna, not withstanding) for men to take a backseat to a woman's career than the other way around. That doesn't make her a slacker. Also, just because some infantile guys are like Tiger who can't keep their peepee in their pants, doesn't mean that all men are like that.
I'm mostly irritated by this whole thing because my doctor brought the conversation up the other day, showing sympathy for Tiger and his wayward pants. Like I said to him, if Tiger was your business partner and "poor Tiger" had a gambling habit that destroyed your business practice, I doubt that you'd be so sympathetic. He agreed.
LOL - Thank you, Bokababe - you made my day. If that "favorite freeper" thread was still running, I'd put your name in...
Gosh, GOPJ, thanks! LOL! I was so worried that I wouldn't get picked for the team!
If Tiger had made a mistake and had turned from his evil ways, I would have some sympathy for him.
I have no sympathy for him now.
I don’t particularly care about his wife, she picked him. The only thing that gets a rise out of me is seeing people trying to paint her as the evil one. She has poor picking skills, she is not out defiling the marriage, there is a difference.
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