“She was a smart girl, until she fell in love.” I keep thinking about the scene in Sex and the City where the girls are given a cautionary tale by a woman in the bathroom while they are at an auction of a socialite selling all her jewelry after her husband left her. 

This feels like that cautionary tale. 

The flags are all red, and I’m sure after writing the book, even Burden can see them. 

The fiancé wanted to revise the prenup so that they both kept separate whatever they bring into the marriage, but share what is in both their names. Against her lawyer’s advice, Burden agrees to this deal. Then she buys properties with her trust fund and puts it in both their names and quits her job. (The way I was screaming when she did this!)

She’s an educated lawyer at a good firm, she makes all these financially illiterate mistakes and then she quits her job to be a housewife? I wasn’t aware women still did this?! 

She then proceeds to tell us about a marriage that is “happy”- in her world that means: they had kids, played tennis at the country club, he was never affectionate or adoring, and they never fought. Ok, girl. 

I would feel sorry for her, but she has an apartment in New York, a vacation house in Martha’s vineyard and 63 million in her trust to land on, so I think she’ll be fine. 

I felt absolutely no urgency in any way during this book. It seemed like the worst thing that could possibly happen was that she wouldn’t get to keep the country club membership. (Only allowing one member from a family to stay a member after a divorce is some crazy rich people sh*t!)

Maybe I’m just too Scandinavian (or single) to relate to this, because here it’s all 50/50. The parents have no choice – if they split up the custody is automatically split 50/50 by law. The fact that the richest people in America can still get screwed by a bad prenup, a cheating partner and alimony just shows that the justice system over there isn’t just. The Norwegian justice system isn’t built on who can outsmart the other, but on what is fair. It’s not fair that the woman gives over half her assets to a man that is keeping everything he ever earned to himself and abandons not only the wife, but also the kids. That’s the part that stung the most for me, that he would leave the kids behind with no second thought.

Seems like the land of the free is only applicable to men, who can ditch all responsibility without blinking twice and society just lets them. While the home of the brave are the women who carry the burden of all the free men. 

Thankfully Burden has resources to lighten the load. Imagine if she didn’t!