Marla Maples walked away from her divorce from Donald Trump with roughly $2 million, half of it earmarked for a house, no alimony, and $100,000 a year in child support for their daughter Tiffany. The Marla Maples divorce settlement, finalized in Manhattan Supreme Court on June 8, 1999, tracked almost exactly the terms of a prenuptial agreement she had signed about 24 hours before the couple’s 1993 wedding. After two years of trying to overturn that prenup in court, she dropped the fight and accepted its original numbers.1New York Daily News. Marla Caves on Prenup
What the Prenup Paid Out
The financial terms were spare. If the marriage ended within five years, Trump would pay Maples $1 million in cash plus another $1 million to buy a house. She would receive no alimony and no claim on his future income or inheritances.2Vanity Fair. Marla Maples’ Prenup With Donald Trump
Child support for Tiffany, born October 13, 1993, was set at $100,000 per year. Those payments would stop when she turned 21, or earlier if she took a full-time job, enlisted in the military, or joined the Peace Corps.3Newsweek. Tiffany Trump Child Support Payments
The financial disclosures attached to the agreement listed Trump’s net worth at $1.17 billion, though a later Vanity Fair review noted he was “in all likelihood” not actually a billionaire at the time given significant business losses, and his accounting firm Spahr, Lacher & Sperber attached a disclaimer that it had not audited or reviewed the figures. Maples had $100,000 in the bank; her most valuable asset was a $250,000 engagement ring from Trump.4Salon. Donald Trump’s Prenuptial Agreement With Marla Maples Revealed
Signed the Day Before the Wedding
Trump and Maples married on December 20, 1993, at the Plaza Hotel.5People. All About Donald Trump’s Wives The prenup was signed roughly 24 hours earlier, after weeks of contentious negotiations in which Trump was represented by Stan Lotwin and Maples by Sharon Stein.2Vanity Fair. Marla Maples’ Prenup With Donald Trump
Maples reportedly sought $25 million during negotiations but got nowhere. According to sources who spoke with Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman, Trump “utterly refused to budge,” and his position was that without the prenup there would be no wedding. With a thousand guests arriving, she signed.6Vanity Fair. Marla Maples’ Prenup With Donald Trump
Maples later told a journalist she believed the terms were temporary: “We basically came to an agreement that for the first few years we would agree on something and then tear it up.”7New Zealand Herald. Donald Trump’s Ex-Wife Marla Maples Reportedly Under Duress Over Prenup That understanding was never put in writing. Divorce attorney Raoul Felder, reviewing the document for Vanity Fair, called it “ironclad” and said Trump “was leaving nothing to chance.”8Vanity Fair. Marla Maples’ Prenup With Donald Trump
Why She Stopped Fighting
The couple separated on May 2, 1997, after about three and a half years of marriage.9Deseret News. Trump, Maples Confirm They Plan to Separate The timing hurt her. The prenup contained a five-year milestone Maples had been counting on as her chance to renegotiate, and she fell roughly a year short. Trump filed for divorce later that month.10New York Post. Marla Settles With Donald for Mere $2M
For two years she fought to throw out the prenup, arguing she had been coerced into signing it days before the wedding without time to review it.1New York Daily News. Marla Caves on Prenup Her attorney, William Beslow, called the agreement “terribly unfair” and said he was confident it could have been overturned.10New York Post. Marla Settles With Donald for Mere $2M Trump’s attorney, Stanford Lotwin, countered: “She knew what she was giving up, and she certainly knew what she was getting.”
Maples abandoned the challenge. Part of the reason, according to sources, was fatigue from an unrelated criminal retrial in which she had been forced to testify against her former publicist Chuck Jones, who represented himself and cross-examined her about her personal life. The experience left her unwilling to sit through another public trial.1New York Daily News. Marla Caves on Prenup
The 1999 Decree
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Joan Lobis signed the divorce decree on June 8, 1999. Neither Trump nor Maples appeared. Maples accepted the original prenup terms: approximately $2 million total, half for a home, and no alimony.11South China Morning Post. Donald Trump’s Divorce Settlements On top of the $100,000 annual child support, the settlement added undisclosed payments covering Tiffany’s nanny, private school tuition, and medical expenses.1New York Daily News. Marla Caves on Prenup
How It Compared to Ivana Trump’s Settlement
Ivana Trump, Donald’s first wife, had received roughly $14 million in their 1992 divorce, along with a 45-room estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, a unit in Trump Plaza, and annual access to Mar-a-Lago. Child support for their three children ran $650,000 a year.11South China Morning Post. Donald Trump’s Divorce Settlements The Maples prenup was drafted in the shadow of that outcome, and the gap between the two settlements reflects it.
The Confidentiality Clause and the Escrow Fight
The prenup also contained a sweeping confidentiality clause barring Maples from publishing “any diary, memoir, letter, story, photograph, interview, article, essay, account or description or depiction of any kind whatsoever, whether fictionalized or not” about the marriage. The agreement warned that “Donald will suffer irreparable damage and injury in the event of any such breach.”12Vanity Fair. Marla Maples’ Prenup With Donald Trump
Later in 1999, during Trump’s brief presidential exploratory run, Maples gave an interview to London’s Daily Telegraph calling him “ego-driven” and unfit for the presidency. Trump responded by withholding the remaining $1.5 million of her settlement and placing it in escrow, citing a breach of the clause. His attorney, Jay Goldberg, told the New York Post the move was a warning: “Our purpose was to send a message that she was playing close to the fire. That should slow her down.”13BuzzFeed News. During 1999 Run, Trump Refused to Pay Ex-Wife’s Alimony Justice Lobis ordered Trump to release the funds and declined to rule on the alleged breach.14New York Post. Court Tells Trump to Pay Marla on Time
What Happened After
The confidentiality clause has shaped Maples’ public life ever since. HarperCollins commissioned a book from her in 2001 titled “All That Glitters Is Not Gold”; it never reached stores. During the 2016 campaign she worked with publisher Judith Regan on another memoir, “It’s About Time,” but lawyers involved worried Trump would sue, and the draft was described as “sanitized” because of the NDA.15Page Six. Trump Vetoed Marla Maples Tell-All A Vanity Fair account reported that Maples met with Trump and Ivanka Trump at Trump Tower, where, a source said, “they really double-teamed her” and talked her out of publishing.16Vanity Fair. Marla Maples’ Prenup With Donald Trump
Maples has denied being paid for her silence. “People saying, ‘He pays her not to talk about him?’ — that’s not true,” she told People in 2016, describing their split as rooted in differences over worldview and raising Tiffany. Trump told the same magazine: “I’ve been very generous to Marla and am happy to have been so.”17People. Marla Maples Opens Up About Life After Split From Donald Trump
The specific dollar figures, the child support termination triggers, and the confidentiality restrictions were not public in detail until June 2019, when Gabriel Sherman reported on the full prenup in Vanity Fair based on a copy provided by an unnamed source. Maples declined to comment for that article.18Vanity Fair. Marla Maples’ Prenup With Donald Trump