In a Newark courtroom last week, hedge-fund billionaire John Overdeck explained that he had always shared his money with his wife — including $685 million of pay deposited into a joint account over the marriage. “In fact,” he said, “she was able to withdraw $75 million the day before she filed for divorce.” He did not flinch. He is offering Laura Overdeck $723 million to settle. She wants 35% of his stake in Two Sigma, which her lawyers value at $6.2 billion and his at $4.9 billion. There is no prenuptial agreement.
Six hundred miles south, in Dallas, the children of banker Gerald J. Ford — including the son who succeeded him as chairman and chief executive of Hilltop Holdings — are suing to wrest control of their 82-year-old father’s 26% stake, worth about $600 million, on the claim that he is suffering cognitive decline and being manipulated by his second wife. His side calls it greed, and he has refused a cognitive test. A $185 million settlement that would have let him keep the Maybach, two boats, the jet, the ranch and the Cowboys box fell apart in June. In July he withheld his votes for the entire board, including his son.
The two documents
| What was missing | What it would have settled |
|---|---|
| A prenuptial agreement (Overdeck) | Whether a founder’s stake — and the market’s appreciation of it — is marital property. Ken Griffin’s 2015 divorce ran on one: $22.5 million plus $1 million a year, done. |
| An incapacity plan with an agreed test (Ford) | Who decides when the founder can no longer decide, and how. The family entities had a clause; nobody agreed on the trigger. |
New Jersey law separates gains on premarital assets that came from a spouse’s work from those that came from the market; the latter is not marital property. That single distinction is why a trial about a marriage has turned into a trial about hedge-fund returns, and why Two Sigma had to tell its investors the founders’ feud is “a material risk.” The Ford case is the same story in reverse: most of the stock’s economics already belong to the children, but the votes belong to a man whose competence is being litigated by his own son.
Why this is your file too
Nobody reading this has $6 billion. Many have a business, a second marriage, adult children from the first one and a stake that will be worth more when they are 82 than it is today. The math scales down; the fights do not. A prenup — or a postnup, which is legal in most states and far less awkward than a trial — is how a couple decides what is “ours” while they still like each other. An incapacity plan is how a family agrees on the doctor and the test before the first forgotten city. Both are signed on a calm afternoon. The alternative is a courtroom, reporters, and a judge deciding what you would have wanted.