The staggering sums make megabuck divorces more like corporate breakups than tearful farewells to togetherness. Deconstructing these marriages has spawned a booming new industry. She claims, echoing the claims of many spouses, that she was coerced into signing their prenuptial agreement. The pair had signed a prenuptial, but when Spielberg left her for actress Kate Capshaw, Irving successfully maintained that she wasn't represented by a lawyer at the signing. With the validity of prenuptial agreements in question, along comes the postnuptial agreement, the latest twist in predivorce planning.
Postnuptial agreements can supersede some aspects of state divorce laws.
For example, in California, where the law calls for a 50-50 division of marital assets, a husband or wife might bargain away their community property interest. Wealthy people generally have several residences, so couples with big fortunes frequently move from state to state, seeking out the best divorce deals. After six years of litigation in New York, Icahn's estranged wife, Liba, moved to Connecticut and started divorce proceedings there. These are very rich people whose lifestyles are so different from the rest of society. In her 1997 divorce from cellular phone pioneer Craig McCaw, for example, Wendy McCaw of Santa Barbara, Calif., had six attorneys and eight accountants working on the case.