{"id":168,"date":"2026-05-23T11:05:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T11:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=168"},"modified":"2026-05-23T11:05:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T11:05:33","slug":"whats-missing-from-belle-burdens-strangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=168","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Missing from Belle Burden\u2019s \u201cStrangers\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Belle Burden\u2019s \u201cStrangers: A Memoir of Marriage\u201d is the runaway publishing phenomenon of the year. In January, it d\u00e9buted at No. 1 on the Times<\/em> hardcover nonfiction list. Four months after its publication, the book, in its ninth printing, still hovers near the top of the rankings. On NPR\u2019s \u201cAll Things Considered,\u201d the co-host Juana Summers summed up the popularity of \u201cStrangers\u201d by asking, \u201cHave you ever had that experience, no matter who you talk to\u2014your mom, your friend, your co-worker\u2014they\u2019re all telling you, \u2018You\u2019ve just got to read this book\u2019?\u201d Burden has sat for interviews on \u201cGood Morning America,\u201d and with Oprah Winfrey, Billy Bush, and Drew Barrymore. After a bidding war for the film rights, Gwyneth Paltrow is reportedly set to star in and executive-produce an adaptation for Netflix, with a screenplay by the acclaimed playwright Heidi Schreck.<\/p>\n

Read more Is the Working Class Finally Turning on Trump?<\/a><\/p>\n

The opening chapter of \u201cStrangers,\u201d which is expanded from a viral essay that Burden published in the Times<\/em>\u2019 \u201cModern Love\u201d section, is fittingly cinematic. One evening early in the coronavirus pandemic, after Burden\u2019s family left their Tribeca apartment to quarantine in their second home, on Martha\u2019s Vineyard, Burden receives a phone call in which she discovers that her husband of twenty years is having an affair. By the next morning, he has left the island and is asking for a divorce. He rejects their life together; he doesn\u2019t even want to share custody of their three children or any day-to-day parenting responsibilities. Burden had thought that she was happily married.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s easy to see why Burden\u2019s story has resonated with so many readers. \u201cStrangers\u201d is a poignant account of how the end of a relationship can cast everything that came before it into shadow and uncertainty; it captures the panic and sorrow of suddenly not being able to recognize the person you are closest to. And, while some of the book\u2019s emotional notes are near-universal, the author\u2019s ancestry adds an irresistible sheen of money and glamour. Burden is a descendant, on her father\u2019s side, of the railroad-and-shipping titan Cornelius Vanderbilt and, on her mother\u2019s side, of Henry Morgan Tilford, one of the founders of Standard Oil; her maternal grandmother was the socialite Babe Paley.<\/p>\n

In \u201cStrangers,\u201d Burden also weaves a gripping tale of financial imperilment\u2014of a scion of a Gilded Age fortune brought low when she places too much faith in a secretive husband. The media response to Burden\u2019s book has portrayed it as offering hard-won lessons in personal finance for all women in heterosexual partnerships. When Barrymore praised the book as \u201can incredible tutorial\u201d on the hazards for women of ceding control over money to their husbands, leading to \u201cscenarios where they are very financially hurt,\u201d Burden replied, \u201cAbsolutely. And if I am a cautionary tale on this one subject, I am happy with that.\u201d On NPR, Burden told Summers, \u201cI\u2019ve heard about all-girls schools where they\u2019re going to be creating financial-literacy classes in response to the book, and that makes me incredibly happy.\u201d In an interview with the Daily Beast<\/em>, Burden said, \u201cIf anything comes out of my book, I hope that younger women or contemporaries really take a look at their financial life and think about what would happen to them if the marriage ended.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a similar vein, a Wall Street Journal<\/em> feature took the headline \u201cShe Almost Lost Everything in Her Divorce. Now Women Are Learning from Her Mistakes\u201d and called Burden\u2019s memoir a \u201ccautionary tale of financial naivet\u00e9.\u201d Real Simple<\/em> asked, \u201cIf a woman who comes from generational wealth can forfeit her financial security in a divorce, are any of us safe?\u201d A feature in the Times<\/em> described \u201cStrangers\u201d as in part a \u201cfinancial thriller,\u201d featuring an \u201coppressive prenup.\u201d The personal-finance influencer Chelsea Fagan, the host of \u201cThe Financial Diet,\u201d marvelled that Burden, despite her lineage and law degree, \u201cstill managed to end up completely at this man\u2019s mercy and being dragged through an absolute humiliation ritual in divorce court to hold on to the few things that she had.\u201d Fagan added, \u201cIf it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what happened to her, exactly? A close reading of \u201cStrangers,\u201d and of the media coverage surrounding it, leaves the answer surprisingly muddled. Court documents pertaining to Burden\u2019s marriage and divorce that I obtained, including her prenuptial agreement and her divorce settlement, complicate the issue further.<\/p>\n

The details of the prenup were \u201ca big whisper,\u201d Burden told Winfrey, that something was awry in her marriage-to-be. The signed document, she writes in \u201cStrangers,\u201d \u201cglowed like a burning ember in my inbox.\u201d As Burden tells it, her fianc\u00e9, Henry P. Davis (called \u201cJames\u201d in the book), who was an attorney at the time of their marriage and who later, in 2016, took a position at a hedge fund, had insisted on adding a clause to the prenup, which Burden\u2019s lawyer opposed, stipulating that all income and investments made during the marriage remain separate unless placed in joint name. The couple, who wed in 1999, agreed to share household expenses, but Burden, an attorney who later became a stay-at-home mother, would have no claim on Davis\u2019s income in case of divorce. Likewise, Davis would have no claim on Burden\u2019s income, including that which she received from her inheritance. (Davis did not respond to requests for comment.)<\/p>\n

After Davis filed for divorce, Burden writes, she was shocked to discover that he had kept millions of dollars of his income in separate accounts. With much trepidation, she writes, she filed a counterclaim; the claim was dismissed by a judge. Elizabeth Carter, a matrimonial-law professor at Louisiana State University, told me that the couple\u2019s arrangement, in which they kept income separate and shared expenses, is not uncommon. The terms of the prenup might appear more questionable, she said, if one spouse leaves the workforce and loses their only source of income\u2014but this scenario didn\u2019t apply to Burden, who had inherited wealth. \u201cIt could be unfair to him if everything she brings in is separate, but he has to give her half of everything he earns,\u201d Carter said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Margaret Ryznar, a visiting professor at Brooklyn Law School who specializes in trusts and estates, had a somewhat different view on the prenup. \u201cOur modern idea of marriage is that it\u2019s a partnership, and that would be reflected by dividing his earnings in the divorce,\u201d Ryznar told me. \u201cPresumably she enabled him to make those earnings by taking care of the home, taking care of the children, putting his career first,\u201d whereas Davis had no role in generating Burden\u2019s inheritance.<\/p>\n

On the podcast \u201cLipstick on the Rim,\u201d Burden remarked that she had \u201cinherited wealth, shall we say, on both sides\u2014it wasn\u2019t a ton of money.\u201d Her \u201cprimary assets,\u201d she explains in \u201cStrangers,\u201d \u201cwere held in two trusts.\u201d Burden used the funds in one of these trusts, \u201cin their entirety,\u201d she writes, to purchase the apartment in Tribeca. According to publicly available records, Burden bought the apartment for just under four million dollars, with a million-dollar mortgage, in 2002. \u201cMy last trust,\u201d she writes, was put toward the Martha\u2019s Vineyard house. The assets in this trust, she explains, \u201cmatched the purchase price exactly, minus a small mortgage.\u201d She paid $5.4 million for the house; the \u201csmall mortgage\u201d was, in fact, for three million dollars, according to publicly available records.<\/p>\n

Burden returns to the matter of the two trusts often in interviews, usually stressing that they had held most of her assets and that she had drained them to buy the two properties. \u201cI had emptied my trusts to purchase our homes,\u201d she writes in the book. Despite the terms of the prenup, Burden decided to place Davis\u2019s name alongside hers on both deeds. (\u201cI thought that was what you did when you were married\u2014share everything,\u201d she writes.) As a result, when Burden and Davis split up, Davis had a fifty-per-cent stake in both homes, and, for a time in their divorce proceedings, he appeared ready to lay claim to his half of each.<\/p>\n

The prospect of losing these homes is an integral plot point in \u201cStrangers.\u201d \u201cI could not afford to buy James out of either home. I would have to sell both,\u201d Burden writes. \u201cMy children were going to lose the house they loved, the center of our life as a family, and the apartment where they lived, in addition to managing the emotional toll of their father leaving. I was going to lose what my grandparents and my father had given me, betraying them too. I was going to lose my financial security.\u201d This period\u2014the weeks after the judge dismissed Burden\u2019s counterclaim, when she felt herself slipping into financial quicksand\u2014is the emotional nadir of \u201cStrangers.\u201d \u201cI fell into a deep well of despair and shame,\u201d she writes, adding, \u201cIt was the same paralysis I\u2019d felt in the first weeks after James left, but it felt much darker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burden\u2019s interviewers have lingered over this episode as well. \u201cYou had to worry about your finances, about losing your home,\u201d Summers said to Burden. \u201cWalk me through how you found yourself in such a precarious financial position.\u201d The podcaster Haley Sacks, of \u201cFinancial Tea with Mrs. Dow Jones,\u201d told her audience that \u201cBelle was forced to confront the most terrifying financial reality.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. She was standing on a trap door with basically no cord to pull.\u201d<\/p>\n

During Burden\u2019s \u201cLipstick on the Rim\u201d appearance, one of the hosts, Molly Sims, explained that, at the time of the divorce, Burden had \u201cno<\/em> income coming in for her family, and she has to give up half of both homes, and if you don\u2019t pay off the other, they\u2019re gonna make you sell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, exactly,\u201d Burden replied. \u201cAnd then he had amassed a fortune but it was in his name alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he gave you none of that,\u201d Sims said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2014no, he gave me none of that. He gives me child support, but I have nothing from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Dana White Thinks Everyone\u2019s a Fighter<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAfter twenty years,\u201d Sims said, \u201che gave you nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s evident from the book, however, that Burden did have her own income, because she affirms that she and Davis shared expenses, as agreed to in their prenup. She also maintained a separate American Express account for purchases that she did not want Davis\u2014whom she portrays as controlling and selectively thrifty\u2014to see. Documents filed in the divorce show that, in 2019, Burden reported an income of a little over eight hundred thousand dollars, including a hundred and ninety thousand dollars from the sale of her mother\u2019s house in the Catskills. (A spokesperson for Burden said that her income that year was atypically high. Davis made well into the seven figures in 2019.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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An examination of the prenup may also undercut the sense that Burden\u2019s long-term financial situation was precarious. Davis\u2019s financial disclosure, as of 1999, listed a little more than two hundred thousand dollars in base salary, plus slightly less than that in \u201cmarketable securities\/cash,\u201d and noted that he was \u201centitled to profits\u201d in a seven-figure investment fund. Burden\u2019s disclosure, by contrast, tallied her \u201cTotal Financial Assets and Interests in Trusts\u201d at approximately sixty-three million dollars.<\/p>\n

These monies included the two trusts that she eventually tapped to buy property. The majority of it was a forty-five-million-dollar share in a trust created from her late father\u2019s estate, which was, and remains, inaccessible to Burden. (The trust is structured to provide resources for Burden\u2019s stepmother until her death, at which point the remainder of its assets, minus any estate taxes, will go to Burden and her brother, its two beneficiaries.) Additionally, Burden had an eight-million-dollar share in a charitable trust and a four-million-dollar interest in WAMBCO<\/em>, her family\u2019s limited partnership; she had also received a three-hundred-thousand-dollar commission for serving as a trustee of this estate, which included a Hamptons property that sold to the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman for thirty-four million dollars, in 2006, and an eleven-room co-op at 1020 Fifth Avenue, across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that sold for twenty-two million dollars, in 2012. Burden\u2019s statement closes by noting that \u201cBelle has additional potential, contingent, remote or minor interests in a number of other trusts.\u201d The over-all picture is of a person whose long-term financial security appeared guaranteed.<\/p>\n

In the eventual divorce settlement, Burden is listed as a beneficiary of no fewer than five trusts. Apart from those trusts, Burden\u2019s net-worth statement, filed in December, 2020, showed that she had her own Vanguard account and a six-per-cent stake in WAMBCO<\/em>; the combined value of the two exceeded ten million dollars. All of these resources would remain Burden\u2019s alone in the divorce.<\/p>\n

In \u201cStrangers,\u201d Burden describes her mounting dread as the divorce ground on: \u201cAs my lawyer and I prepared for trial, I told people what was at stake, what James was threatening.\u201d She writes, \u201cGradually, as the trial date approached, I started to accept what was going to happen.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. We would sell the house. We would move to a smaller apartment. I told myself every day, like a mantra, I can do this. I can make a life for us.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, suddenly: \u201cJames and I reached a settlement an hour before our trial was set to begin, with terms determined by James.\u201d Burden goes on, \u201cIn our limited negotiations, by email, without our lawyers, I had to be calm, deferential, grateful. I had no wiggle room.\u201d Davis agreed to give up both marital properties, and made other concessions, and she can only speculate as to why: \u201cMaybe he always planned to resolve it before trial.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. But only after he brought me to my knees.\u201d On Sacks\u2019s podcast, Burden recalled, \u201cI ended up, in my divorce, having it threatened until forty-five minutes before trial that I would lose half of my house and half of my apartment and have to sell them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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According to court records, Burden and Davis never had a trial date scheduled. All the ex-couple had on the docket was a \u201cstatus conference,\u201d in which parties typically discuss logistics and set future deadlines. (A spokesperson for Burden said that this status conference would have effectively marked the beginning of the trial process.) When I spoke to Carter, she emphasized that the process of reaching a settlement would have been more drawn-out than Burden describes. \u201cThe lawyers draft the settlement\u2014there would have been draft settlements going back and forth between the camps during all this time,\u201d Carter said.<\/p>\n

In contested divorces, even between couples of significant means, the family home will typically go to the custodial parent, Ryznar told me, in order to minimize disruption to the children\u2019s lives. If such a division isn\u2019t possible, the sale of the property is typically deferred until the youngest child turns eighteen. And, even if Davis had pursued his claim on the properties, it isn\u2019t clear why Burden wouldn\u2019t have been able to keep at least one of the homes. (A spokesperson for Burden said doing so would have been \u201cneither feasible nor financially responsible.\u201d) Burden placed the Tribeca apartment on the market last year for just under twelve million dollars, about three times what she paid for it, and the Martha\u2019s Vineyard house was recently assessed by the town for about $7.7 million, well over two million dollars more than what Burden paid for it.<\/p>\n

In the settlement, in addition to letting go of his half of the properties, Davis gave his ex-wife three million dollars out of an investment he had made in WAMBCO<\/em>. Burden kept the key to the private Black Point Beach, on Martha\u2019s Vineyard, which Davis purchased for her birthday in 2016, and which was most recently valued at more than four hundred thousand dollars. He also agreed to pay Burden fifty thousand dollars per month in baseline child support until their youngest child\u2014now eighteen\u2014turns twenty-two. This six-hundred-thousand-dollar annual tally does not include a raft of additional itemized expenses for each child until he or she reaches age twenty-two, including private-school tuition and associated school fees, tutoring and test prep, summer camps, extracurricular activities, transportation costs, health insurance, and medical, dental, and orthodontic expenses.<\/p>\n

When Burden sat for a Q. & A. with New York<\/em> magazine, the interviewer praised her for being \u201cvery frank\u201d about the \u201crarefied world\u201d that she comes from. \u201cI did want the reader to trust me,\u201d Burden replied, \u201cso it felt like I had to be very open about it.\u201d In \u201cStrangers,\u201d Burden repeatedly acknowledges that she is \u201clucky\u201d and \u201cprivileged.\u201d During the settlement process, she reminds herself, \u201cI had tried to have perspective, to see how privileged I still was, no matter what happened in the divorce. But my fear had made me myopic again, only able to see what I would lose.\u201d No reasonable person would demand that she provide a forensic accounting of her finances in the memoir. Yet its impression of candor may suffer in light of what Burden leaves out of the narrative.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Burden\u2019s publisher, Dial Press, declined to comment. In a statement, Burden said, \u201cWhen I wrote Strangers<\/em>, I shared my heartache, my mistakes, and my shame. I owned my privilege as plainly as I could, and I respected the privacy of sealed court records. I stand by everything I wrote, including the fear I felt from my ex-husband\u2019s threats, the contributions I made and could make to my family, and what happened to me financially and emotionally in my marriage and divorce. While I didn\u2019t intend it, I am glad that women have taken my story as motivation for insisting on financial transparency in their marriages.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2007, Mary Karr wrote, in an essay about crafting her acclaimed memoir \u201cThe Liars\u2019 Club,\u201d that personal narrative \u201cis not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt.\u201d Is writing about money an act of history or of memory? This framework may determine how readers resolve the tensions between \u201cStrangers\u201d and the dry financial statements and citation-clogged legal filings behind some of the book\u2019s pivotal events.<\/p>\n

In Burden\u2019s bleak, stunned \u201cModern Love\u201d column, published three years ago, she scarcely mentioned money at all, yet the spectre of financial jeopardy is a key element of \u201cStrangers.\u201d After the book\u2019s publication, as the all-points media campaign has gathered momentum, the narrative has attuned itself even more to money, and the lack of it.<\/p>\n

The version of Davis depicted in \u201cStrangers\u201d\u2014a man who walks away from his partner and his children with no explanation or apparent remorse\u2014has struck a chord of anguished recognition among many of Burden\u2019s readers; she portrays her ex-husband so convincingly as an emotional villain that her audience is naturally primed to accept him as a fiduciary villain. She is a gifted writer, sensitive to pacing and elegant restraint\u2014for example, the agonizing suspense she creates over the question of whether she might lose both her homes effectively eclipses the fact that she didn\u2019t lose them. Her long-term financial security, as opposed to her emotional security, was never at risk. It might be difficult for anyone in her position to separate one from the other.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more Where Do Men Go from Here?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the biggest books of the year weaves a tale of financial peril, but court documents complicate the narrative. 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