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What is the value of a marriage? When all is said and done, how do you tally the intangibles that make up everyday life? For the sake of argument, let’s throw some numbers out there. A goodnight kiss: $10. Breaking from work to drive your child to the emergency room: $250, plus wages that would have otherwise been paid. Dinner night after night, factoring in labor: cost untold. Yet in a divorce, these things get boiled down into monetary values by necessity. Settlements can’t be doled out in hugs or spankings (except maybe in R. Kelly’s fantasy world).
Hence, in lieu of turning back time, lawyers for Maya Polsky netted her a cool $183+ million on Monday. She filed for divorce from her engineering tycoon husband Michael in 2003 after 31 years of marriage. The couple emigrated to Chicago in 1980 from the Ukraine with just $500. Michael Polsky started his own engineering firm in ’91, sold it and started energy firm Invenergy; his assets are now judged at $370 million. Maya was a stay-at-home mother, raising two sons while her husband worked. She opened a gallery in River North in 1989, but if she were to go on “Jeopardy,” most likely she would have been introduced as a housewife.
Despite Michael doing the heavy lifting, Maya insisted he couldn’t have done it without her help and inspiration. That’s why her lawyers insisted on splitting the Polskys’ assets right down the middle, including homes, jewelry and fine art. Naturally Michael’s attorney, Joseph Tighe, had a major problem with this, saying the 50-50 split was a “fundamental error of law.” An appeal is a no-brainer. But consider what one of Maya’s lawyers, Howard Rosenfeld, queried concerning his client: “If you don’t treat a long-term spouse as a partner, what is she? A servant?” Now that’s a loaded question if we’ve ever heard one. On the one hand, she raised the kids while he went off to the corporate world, striking only after she encouraged him. On the other, he was the one actually bringing home all that bacon. It takes us back to that vague, indefinable logic that makes up all divorce proceedings. Who deserves what, and for what deeds done? And is anything worth $184 million to begin with?
Image via allposters.com.
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for future reference, you're allowed to pick your own occupation when you go on jeopardy. i bet she would have picked "gallery owner."
oo. i learn something new every day.
This judge is on power trip.
She should have done a better job of not becoming old and ugly so he would have reason to stay with her. She should get nothing.
I felt I needed to say something here.
Being a mom is f-in' hard work. Unpaid, merciless, 24/7, tears, blood and sweat. People have tried to put a number on it, but you can't really: you're helping your kids and husband survive, helping them become participants in our capitalist democracy. It's important, vital work in our society. As a former teacher, I saw what happens to kids who are ignored or pushed aside-- it’s a shame, and it’s not pretty.
A lot of moms stay at home so that their husbands can work, sacrificing their own goals for the good of their family’s well-being. The idea here is that, as a unit, this family earned the money over time: he, in the workforce, she, at the homefront. She should be entitled to something. Look at all her husband has-- she should be given some adequate compensation for her role in their fortune, and enough for her to live on. See, he keeps making money. This is all she has. Had she spent those years climbing the corporate ladder herself, she wouldn’t need the settlement as much. But-- she sacrificed, so she gets a payout.
And “matty”? Seriously? Is that something you’d say to your own mom?
Not to argue for renumeration for housework exactly, but just to say if she had not been 80% time corporate wife, mother, homemaker who knows what she would have earned in the workplace?
Every decision is a trade off and for couples who decide to keep someone home there is a implicit promise that, because you haven't spent 31 years working on your career I will take care of you financially.
Since chicagoist already said there really isn't much worth $148 million why even debate sharing it with his wife of 31 years? He can put a tangible monetary figure to his life's pursuits but she can't, as largely she has been the housewife for their family.
"And is anything worth $184 million to begin with?"
Depending on how big of a jerk/shrew your spouse has become, freedom could be well worth that and then some....
It's not who is worth what it is how to split the joint assets. Her husband was an idiot not to have things set up so she couldn't tak3e half in the first place. He also could have settled with her out of court. Stupid people let the judge decide who get's what in a divorce. He probably low balled her in the first place at like 5 or 10 million. Instead of offering her 100 million. Then if she didn't except the judge would have probably sided with the husband and maybe gave the wife less for not accepting 100 million dollars. He is supposed to be a smart business man well he wasn't too smart in this case. Plus you don't know all the facts. Was he sleeping around on her etc.