first wife, had serious money. Do you know
470 the Fincher Galleries at the Fine Arts Museum? A gift of her
471 grandparents. Dr. Stephanie is a bit of an outlier, not a WASP,
472 no family money, too short. Her dad was only a doctor, also a
473 dermatologist. But he was frugal and he believed in real estate.
474 He left her, free and clear, two apartments in the Beresford.
475 She lives in the smaller one, eight rooms. [Pause] I’m not sure
476 she’ll get to walk down the aisle. [Pause] You shouldn’t think I
477 was brought up to talk about money. I wasn’t. My mother, who
478 was a rigorously honorable, straightforward person, imposed
479 an absolute embargo on money as a subject of conversation;
480 she thought talking about money was common. It offended
481 her, the way Nixon’s hate list and anti-Semitism offended her,
482 as a sign of bad breeding. I was never allowed to say how much
483 anything cost. I must have looked an idiot. I went to school
484 with the children of professors and lawyers. They knew what
485 everything cost, including their parents’ psychiatrists. [Pause]
486 I don’t talk about the price of things, that lesson has stuck,
487 but I am prepared to acknowledge certain obvious facts about
488 my life and my upbringing. I was brought up rich and I have
489 the exaggerated sense of entitlement that money confers. I
490 don’t always get what I want, but not because of money. That
491 makes me very different from most other people, including my
492 husband. He never had money until recently. He likes it, having
493 it and spending it, but success is more important to him.
494 Q. What about other assets? Savings and the like?
495 A. Daniel makes the money, and he handles the
496 investments. I don’t think he’s hiding anything. He has
497 retirement funds with TIAA-CREF in the neighborhood
498 of $600,000. He also has a 401(k) plan with approximately
499 $300,000 in it. Other assets include about $700,000 in stocks,
500 $90,000 in treasury bills, and $80,000 in a savings account.
501 He does a quarterly accounting; I got the figures from the one
502 he did in early October.
503 Q. Any insurance policies?
504 A. Daniel is insured for $1.5 million; I’m insured for
505 $200,000—to pay Luz’s salary in case I conk. He’d need
506 somebody.
507 Q. Could you provide a salary history? And a few other
508 particulars? [Note to Hannah: I handed Mrs. Durkheim
509 copies of the Divorce Work Sheets: Summary Biographies for
510 her and her husband.]
511 A. Of course.
512 Q.Does your husband have any separate assets? Any
513 inheritances?
514 A. Daniel’s an orphan. His father died in 1992, his mother
515 in 1998. He inherited a 1989 Honda Accord and $16,000.
516 His parents owned a printing business. They never made
517 much money, but they saw that their son, their only child,
518 was well educated. And praised, praised for everything
519 he did, every bowel movement, every report card, every
520 titration. They didn’t much care for the grandchildren. They
521 couldn’t hold a candle to their father. And they certainly had
522 no use for me or Helen. We weren’t worthy of him; we didn’t
523 appreciate how extraordinary he was. If I made them dinner,
524 they thanked Daniel; if he didn’t visit them, it was my fault.
525 They made sure they didn’t die in debt. They were fierce
526 about not saddling Daniel with nursing home costs and the
527 like. They had long-term-care insurance for nurses and that
528 sort of thing, and they belonged to burial societies and had
529 prepaid their funerals, coffins, headstones, plots, even the
530 cantor. God, my father never prepays anything. You lose the
531 float.
532 Q. Have you begun to think about