Vanderbilt heiress Belle Burden warns of financial 'red flags' she missed during marriage to hedge fund exec
Belle Burden is issuing a warning based on the "red flags" she experienced in her marriage.
Burden, a Vanderbilt heiress whose new book, "Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage," details her bitter divorce from hedge fund executive Henry Davis, ignored several issues in her marriage, and she's detailing some big ones in a new interview.
During an appearance on the "Financial Tea with Mrs. Dow Jones" podcast, the author described the way Davis handled the couple's money. She explained that she gave up her career in corporate law to raise their three children and let him focus on his growing career in finance — and in doing so, she let him control their bank accounts completely.
"I think that there was something romantic, almost, about handing this over to him," Burden admitted. "He was like the man in the gray flannel suit who had arrived. And he said to me, 'I'm going to take care of you.' So there was something that felt, like, wonderful about that."
The foundation of this idea, handing over control of finances to Davis, happened early on in their relationship.
Burden had generational wealth from both sides of her family, and when she was younger, she signed a contract with her mother ensuring that she'd sign a prenup when she married. She had two trust funds, which were both protected in case of divorce, and she didn't personally want a prenup, but the contract forced her hand.
Davis suggested a specific amendment to the draft her lawyer had sent ahead of the wedding: instead of splitting everything equally if they were to divorce, he wanted them each to keep what they had in their own names and split anything in both of their names.
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Burden wrote in her book that when she told her lawyer about the change, he "told me it was a bad idea; it was standard to share in what was earned during a marriage, both by [Davis] and by me ... It was fair. I made the counterargument, repeating the words [Davis] had given to me to explain why we should make the change. Finally, [the lawyer] said, 'Okay, Belle, if this is what you want.'"
She admitted to feeling a "wave of anxiety," but went through with the amended prenup because she trusted Davis.
As she said on "Mrs. Dow Jones," another factor was the couple's "financial inequity." She "wanted to make him feel good and feel important" — his family was "essentially broke" when he was growing up, and it wasn't until after they were married that his career took off — and in doing that, she made herself smaller so he could "feel bigger."
Then, after they had their first child, and she gave up her full-time work to be a mother, another factor came into play.
"Over the course of our marriage, as I kind of handed [the financial control] off to him, you start to, or I started to believe I couldn't understand it, even though I'm a former corporate lawyer. I paid our bills, and I signed our tax returns, but I didn't read them and I didn't ask him what his bonuses were. And I just trusted and trusted and trusted. And I thought, 'Oh, it's just so complicated. Only he can understand it.'"
In addition to not looking at the tax returns, Burden explained that a bookkeeper had kept track of every single charge she made on the couple's credit cards.
"It was like a subtle thing that feels protective, like he was very, like, had a strong hand on our spending ... did not want us to spend too much, which felt like protection," she said. "But the flip side of that is that it is controlling, it's really controlling ... it just was like these eyes on me. And I didn't have the same eyes on him."
She didn't find out until the divorce proceedings that over the course of their marriage, he'd amassed "at least eight figures of wealth."
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When Haley Sacks, the host of the podcast better known by her Mrs. Dow Jones moniker, asked if she would see it as a red flag in a future relationship if someone acted the way Davis did in the beginning, she was quick to agree.
"I think it's a real red flag," she said. "I don't think I will get married again. I feel like the idea of co-mingling assets again is really unappealing to me. I'm so happy being in control of my own. So if I was in another relationship, I think I would keep it very separate. But yes, I do see it as a red flag. And I think it doesn't mean your husband is going to walk out the way mine did, but if you ask the questions and ask to be included and ask to understand where the assets are and whose name is on them, and they don't want to tell you, that is a real red flag. And you should really talk to a professional to try and understand what's going on financially in your marriage."
In March 2020, when Burden, Davis and two of their three children were quarantining in their Martha's Vineyard home at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Burden got a phone call from a man saying that his wife was having an affair with her husband. Davis was apologetic at first, but the next morning, he told her he wanted a divorce.
"I try to hold both things in my head, that we really loved each other and had a very happy marriage for a long period of time," she said, "but that he was pretty much programmed from long before the time he met me to really protect himself financially. And I think that was at play in the prenup. I think that was at play at every stage in our marriage. And I think that when he earned money, like when he got a bonus, there was no part of him that was ever going to put it into a joint name."
"You were using your trust to pay for the children's school, for the houses," Sacks pointed out. "And he was building like a vintage Rolex collection."
Burden wrote briefly about the Rolex collection in her book, claiming that, under his watchful eye, she put purchases like birthday presents for the children and clothes for herself on her personal credit card that he didn't monitor, and her family paid school tuition and made college funds for the kids, while he spent money on things like "a dozen rare Rolex watches, several motorcycles, rare coins, custom suits from Zegna, a small vintage boat that had been used in 'Live and Let Die,' and expensive red wine, hundreds of bottles."
The book is also where she wrote about using her trusts to purchase the family's two homes — homes she went through extra effort to make sure were in Davis' name as well.
In 2001, they bought a four-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, something that was "much bigger" than she thought they needed, but that Davis loved. She emptied one of her two trusts to purchase it and listed Davis as a joint owner, "even though he had not contributed to the purchase." She said she was happy to do it.
A few years later, she used her second trust to purchase a summer home in Martha's Vineyard. Davis had gone to look at it alone, and he'd loved it, so she wired him the funds from the trust, emptying it completely, and, as with the apartment, she made sure Davis was listed as a joint owner of the property.
Burden told Sacks that she'd had to write a formal letter to the trustees of her trusts to release the funds so she could make the purchases — another option would have been to simply buy the homes with the trusts so they would have stayed protected, but she felt like it was important for Davis' name to be on the deeds as well.
"I felt like I was doing something so important for our marriage, for our family, that I was curing something for him," she said.
It wouldn't be until after Davis filed for divorce and requested the prenup be enforced that she realized the situation she was in.
In their initial conversations after she learned of the affair, she wrote in "Strangers" that he'd told her she could keep the apartment, the house and custody of their three children. While he continually refused any custody throughout the divorce proceedings and after, the enforcement of the prenup meant that while she wouldn't be able to touch anything he'd earned in his very successful career, he would be entitled to half of the two homes.
Burden called Davis to talk to him about this after receiving a summons from court. She wrote that during the call, she asked, "Why are you doing this to me?" to which he answered, "I'm not doing anything to you."
"I said, 'You left us. You’ve never told me why,'" she recalled. "His voice was calm, cold. 'I didn’t leave you. I changed residences.'"
She wrote that she felt herself "losing control" at that response, and started sobbing and telling him that he had left her and their children. In response, "he said, in a singsong voice, like a taunting child, 'Boo-hoo. Poor Belle. Always the victim.'"
Later, she made the decision to file a counterclaim that would fight the prenup — for years, she said she and Davis agreed they should amend the prenup "since it was no longer fair" to her, given her decision to give up her career while his took off. They never went through the process, and when push came to shove, she couldn't afford to buy Davis out of the two homes, meaning she'd be forced to sell both.
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Six months later, a judge dismissed the counterclaim and enforced the prenup, then set a trial date to resolve the issue of child support and their joint property. Davis, Burden wrote, hadn't brought up her counterclaim in the months after she initially filed it, but after it was dismissed, he was "inflamed by it."
"He said he would give me only the minimum child support required by law," she claimed. "He said I would have to face the consequences of the prenup, of my failed counterclaim."
She grappled with the idea of her children losing the homes they'd known all their lives and with losing what her family had left to her, as well as her own financial security.
"There was no reason for it, given [Davis'] resources, given his desire to shed, given his refusal to make a home for the kids," she wrote. "It felt like he was playing a game, or running a deal, one he was going to win at all costs, by a wide margin, regardless of the impact on me and our children."
In the end, an hour before their trial was to begin in October 2021, Burden and Davis reached a settlement on their own. He negotiated the terms, and she said that she "had to be calm, deferential, grateful," and that if she got her lawyer involved or "pushed him," he would withdraw the offer altogether.
He gave up his interest in the two properties they owned and agreed to child support and to pay the children's medical expenses and school tuition. Meanwhile, he'd keep all the money he'd earned throughout their marriage.
"I don’t know what finally made him decide to settle," Burden admitted. "I have several guesses, but I will never know for sure. Maybe he always planned to resolve it before trial, to give me the house and the apartment. But only after he brought me to my knees."
She told Sacks, "I had given up the fantasy of having any settlement from him, because he was not going to give me any of his money ... I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what I didn't get or what was lost financially. I really just focus on what I have now."