Love Is Grand, Divorce Is a Hundred Grand
Tim and Edra Blixseth spent 25 years building a $2 billion life together. When they decided to divorce, they spent a single afternoon in the Beverly Hills Hotel, dividing it all up. With just two notebooks and a bottle of wine, the Blixseths — California real-estate tycoons and founders of the famed Yellowstone Club — finished the job in a matter of hours. No attorneys. No accountants. No judges.
She kept their 420-acre estate. He got the house in Mexico. He kept his land businesses. She kept the dogs. They each got a Rolls Royce, and they will share their three private jets.
“We have always tried to live our lives with dignity and respect,” Tim says. “We wanted to do the same in divorce.”
At a time when most billionaire breakups follow a predictable pattern — the torn pre-nup, the flying Wedgwood china, the army of lawyers, the incriminating photos and, finally, the exasperated judge — the Blixseths have come up with a refreshing alternative. Call it the do-it-yourself divorce, billionaire style.
Rather than fighting over every piece of silver, the Blixseths decided to keep what’s most important to each of them and split the difference. Life’s too short, they figured. And why give the lawyers all the money if you can work it out yourselves?
Their peaceable parting marks a triumph of hope over history, and reason over money. Most wealthy spouses follow the greed principle: The more stuff you have, the more there is to fight over. From supermarket maven Ron Burkle, whose bitter 2003 divorce has just been unsealed, to former Beatle Paul McCartney, who’s trading daily insults with ex-model Heather Mills, the rich almost never split amicably. And money is usually at the center of the acrimony. Wealth, as the saying goes, is a magnifier, especially in divorce.
“When you get to this level of wealth, the greed element usually sets in,” says Bill Zabel, the New York attorney who mediated George Soros’s split from his wife in 2004 and represented Jane Beasely Welch in her 2003 divorce from former GE chief Jack Welch.
illustration { Boddington Export Beer ad }
