Live data from Hacker News

Elon Musk: Correcting the Record About My Divorce

huffingtonpost.com

11–20 of 134 posts

Re: Elon Musk: Correcting the Record About My Divorce

#11
post #7
post #2

"The legal and accounting bills for the divorce total four million dollars so far, which is an average of roughly $170,000 per month for the past 24 months." Wow.

He is paying for both party's so she has no reason to skimp on legal fee's. But assuming a 50/50 split it works out to ~500$ / hour * 40 hours a week, for each of them. Which is probably just 1 full time layer + some part time help for each of them.

Serious question, does a divorce like that really require 2 years of full time work for each party?

Re: Elon Musk: Correcting the Record About My Divorce

#12
post #8
post #3

Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1498914 Curiously, neither site says where this comes from.

What do you mean? The Huffington post is written by Musk himself.

Did he spam this to a bunch of news sites or did he send it to one and the others copied it? Usually there's more attribution. e.g. if BusinessInsider copied it from HuffPo then they should probably give credit.

Re: Elon Musk: Correcting the Record About My Divorce

#13

This whole thing is a bit surprisingly to me since it seems like Elon covered his bases with the separate property agreement. Yet it still has been a major hassle for him money wise. Gene Simmons (from the band kiss) has an interesting approach to this which he wrote about in his book. He never married his long time partner and playboy playmate Shannon Tweed. But he took it even a step further having her and other li…

vest your marriage over time

AFAIK some state laws have this feature; the wife only gets half after ten years or something.

Re: Elon Musk: Correcting the Record About My Divorce

#14
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is paying for both party's so she has no reason to skimp on legal fee's. But assuming a 50/50 split it works out to ~500$ / hour * 40 hours a week, for each of them. Which is probably just 1 full time layer + some part time help for each of them.

Serious question, does a divorce like that really require 2 years of full time work for each party?

If you think you can get hundreds of millions of dollars out of a divorce, of course you'll spend tens of millions of dollars of legal fees to get it.

Especially if some of those tens of millions of dollars essentially pay someone else to tell you you'll get hundreds of millions of dollars out of it.

Re: Elon Musk: Correcting the Record About My Divorce

#15
It's amazing that someone could have enough genius to revolutionize the internet (paypal enabling easy ecommerce), revolutionize space flight and are attempting to revolutionize personal transpost, but can not successfully navigate the california legal system.

All jokes aside, Elon Musk is a freaking inspiration and it sucks to see their creative potential squandered by a lame court battle.

Re: Elon Musk: Correcting the Record About My Divorce

#16

The lesson here is: marriage is a very risky proposition, particularly if you are male or much richer (even just potentially) than your partner. (PS: Much respect for Musk.)

The lesson here is: marriage is a very risky proposition

That depends who you are, who you're marrying, and where you live. Divorces are only this expensive and drawn out in a handful of countries, and milking your ex-partner for all they're worth is a similarly non-universal trait.

Further, some people simply don't have this mentality or a single retributory bone in their body. Those are the people you marry.

Re: Elon Musk: Correcting the Record About My Divorce

#18
> What caught me by surprise, and forced me to seek emergency loans from friends, were the enormous legal fees I had to pay my ex-wife's divorce lawyers. In a California divorce, the wealthier spouse must pay both sides of the battle even if they are not the aggressor.

> The legal and accounting bills for the divorce total four million dollars so far, which is an average of roughly $170,000 per month for the past 24 months. Journalists were quick to mock the poor "broke" guy that had $200k a month expenses, failing to note that legal fees constituted the majority.

That's utterly despicable - Grellas, can you help us put together a plan to disbar and exile everyone involved in the divorce racket or something? Talk about a destruction of wealth, energy, time, and life - it's embarrassing that we let this happen to people in the United States.

Our family/divorce courts and the associated personnel are destructive, vindictive, and capricious. This needs to change. Why do people stand for it? What can we do?

Re: Elon Musk: Correcting the Record About My Divorce

#19

The lesson here is: marriage is a very risky proposition, particularly if you are male or much richer (even just potentially) than your partner. (PS: Much respect for Musk.)

The lesson here is: marriage is a very risky proposition That depends who you are, who you're marrying, and where you live. Divorces are only this expensive and drawn out in a handful of countries, and milking your ex-partner for all they're worth is a similarly non-universal trait. Further, some people simply don't have this mentality or a single retributory bone in their body. Those are the people you marry.

Guess you'd better be psychic enough or psychologist enough to be able to assess someone's "retributory bones" ...or their ability to grow them when they feel aggrieved against you.

Re: Elon Musk: Correcting the Record About My Divorce

#20
post #17
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? The Huffington post is written by Musk himself.

[deleted]

I don't know either, and I don't know why he's getting voted down :S

Anyway, looks like there is a time difference. The Huffington post seems to be from earlier in the day (possibly an original).

Post reply on HN