Melania Trump could get a substantial payout from her husband in their prenuptial agreement if the pair divorce, it has been claimed.
Rumours have long circulated about the stability of her marriage to US President Donald Trump.
Trump’s former aide and U.S. Apprentice star, Omarosa Manigault Newman wrote in 2018 book “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House”, that Melania is “counting every minute” until “she can divorce” the President.
Melania’s former aide Stephanie Wolkoff previously told BBC Newsnight the pair have separate bedrooms in the White House and that it is a “transactional marriage”.
She also claimed Melania is negotiating a post-nuptial agreement to give Barron an equal share of the Trump fortune.
The details of the prenup are secret but speculation is rife in legal circles, Mirror Online reports.
Peter Stambleck, from New York-based legal firm Aronson Mayefsky & Sloan, told Town and Country magazine that he would have recommended a title controls prenup.
He explains: “It makes it very clear that, in the event of a divorce, everything in his name will be his and everything in her name will be hers.
“Billionaires have complicated asset structures. They have shell companies, LLCs [limited liability companies], investments in other companies, and it’s very, very complicated.
“One main purpose of a prenup is to avoid having to share in that, but also to avoid the headache that goes into producing all the documents and having accountants come in and look at all of it. Theoretically, that’s what could happen in the absence of a prenup.”
He also claims that Melania would probably be allowed to keep any jewellery she has been given during the marriage.
When it comes to the couple’s son Barron, Jacqueline Newman, managing partner at Berkman Bottger Newman & Rodd, believes Melania could get a lot of cash to look after the 14-year-old.
She told the magazine: “If she has $50 million [£37.8m], she can afford to buy something. But $50 million, while it’s definitely a lot of money, in New York City, for what she’s used to, she wouldn’t be able to replicate what she has now. He probably had a good sense of what kind of lifestyle they’d be living, so I would imagine the payout would be fairly generous.”
However, a book about the First Lady claims she used his election victory to renegotiate the conditions of her prenup.
She didn’t move into the White House straight away, remaining in New York so the couple’s son Barron could finish the school year.
But Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan claims another motivation was that it gave her time to work out her finances.
In her book The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump, she wrote: “She wanted proof in writing that when it came to financial opportunities and inheritance, Barron would be treated as more of an equal to Trump’s oldest three children.”
Trump’s first two wives also had prenups, but both successfully contested them.
After his first marriage to Ivana broke down, she argued her case and was awarded $10 million [£7.5m] from the businessman and a further $650,000 [£491,000] a year of child support.
She also got an apartment in New York and a huge Connecticut mansion.
His second wife, Marla Maples, got far less – around $2 million [£1.5m].
Melania’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement to PEOPLE in 2018: “Mrs Trump rarely, if ever, interacted with Omarosa.
“It’s disappointing to her that she is lashing out and retaliating in such a self-serving way, especially after all the opportunities given to her by the President.”