"In a California divorce, the wealthier spouse must pay both sides of the battle even if they are not the aggressor."

"I even had to endure her attempt to enjoin my companies, which would have required her participation and permission in every significant corporate decision."

Holy misaligned incentives, Batman.

If Musk wrote this kind of piece about her, he'd come across as a massive asshole. But then, he's clearly the one with far more power, and he'd be punching down the power gradient, kicking her when she's down. Does that make a difference? I'm genuinely not sure.

All that said, surviving the loss of a child is rare. It's a nuclear explosion of the rawest emotion and pain that I've only, luckily, observed from the outside looking in. If things weren't rock solid before, it's difficult to imagine they would survive what must be the most horrible experience a human being can suffer.

"In addition to paying all of her household expenses and anything related to the children, I send Justine $20,000 (after tax) per month for clothing, shoes and other discretionary items."

I guess two lessons HN readers can take from this are:

a) Don't get married if possible. If she was just his girlfriend, this would be only a bad breakup story apart from the kids, which leads to....

b) If you do get married, don't have kids with the person you married if you are having constant interpersonal conflicts with them. Five kids probably turned the divorce pretty messy. No kids + the post-nup she signed might have made it more clean-cut.

Keep your dirty laundry private - nobody wants to see that and it's ugly.

And then, in a instant, he handed her his credit card and all that talk about bartending jobs and becoming an aspiring writer get pushed aside. Instead its about postnuptials, and how a life without him was unthinkable. He also seem equally changed, with "I am the alpha in this relationship", which sound completely absurd and nothing two equals adults would ever say to each other. When the divorce comes, the focus is solely on the entitlement from being a wife.

Edit - I don't get the downvotes - to me my family is the most important thing in my life, and anything I can learn to make things better for us is well worth it. I figured it was sort of relevant to an article about a divorce, especially since Sherry has advice for regular people who are not billionaires.

Entrepreneur's first quality is to assess situation without the filter of emotions, it logically has a tendency to induce this as a routine. And it is wise.

So be it induced or be it a professional hazard, entrepreneur's will grow their tendency for control and maximimizing their utility in any dimesions without regard for emotions.

She is just a minor collateral victim of a normal trait that brilliant entrepreneur should have.

Elon is not a cold bastard, he is a cold visionaire: when he says all IT success are based on monopolies and that governments should allow them, he is right. Never go for competition, but always tell the one going for competition they have "fire in their eyes", this way you will have less competition on your monopoly. It is wise.

Morally he may be not be your cup of tea. But, what he is doing is socially profitable for at least some of us (investors, customers, employees, state (through taxes)).

As stated in Plato's Republic, the wisest amongst us should not be under the scrutinity of the people that don't understand what is required to rule the city.

All that whining about how badly she was treated. He asked her to dye her hair, the horror. She had financial access to pretty much any activity one can imagine, and she chose to be bored and whiny instead of busy doing something cool.