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Chrysler building owner Michael Fuchs in messy legal drama with ex

Principal of RFR, worth $1.7B, wants ex to dial back Amex card use to $25K a month

Michael Fuchs and Alvina Collardeau circa 2011 (iStock, Getty Images, Illustration by Kevin Cifuentes for The Real Deal)
Michael Fuchs and Alvina Collardeau circa 2011 (iStock, Getty Images, Illustration by Kevin Cifuentes for The Real Deal)

Billionaire real estate investor Michael Fuchs, whose RFR Holding owns New York’s Chrysler and Seagram Buildings, is entangled in a messy divorce drama.

Fuchs is fighting claims by his ex-wife, Alvina Collardeau-Fuchs, that he’s tried to control her spending since they split and made her day-to-day living “intolerable,” Bloomberg reported. He listed his net worth at $1.7 billion, according to court papers.

Fuchs countered that his ex-wife “abused the unfettered use” of his Amex credit card. He denied behaving “oppressively,” and said in the court filings he’d had to cap her credit card limit at a mere $25,000 a month. She spent $1 million on a four-month stay in Dubai, according to the documents, and was spending more than $200,000 a month in the late summer of 2021.

Collardeau-Fuchs said Fuchs had simply been ignoring bills, including utilities and salaries, and said bailiffs were turning up at her door.

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Before their divorce, the pair’s spending was entirely unrestrained, Collardeau-Fuchs’ lawyer, Nicholas Cusworth, told the news service. “They ran a number of fully staffed homes in fashionable areas of the world, traveled extensively and spent according to their means, which were effectively unlimited,” Cusworth said.

London’s family courts have been a popular draw for expensive legal fights because judges are typically prepared to order a more equal share of a couple’s assets, Bloomberg reported. The courts are gearing up for one of the world’s biggest divorce claims between Vladimir Potanin, Russia’s second-richest man, and his former wife.

Fuchs, a passionate art collector who shys away from the limelight, formed RFR in 1991 with his childhood friend, Aby Rosen. The two grew up together in Frankfurt, Germany, before separately moving to New York. RFR oversees about $10 billion of real estate worldwide and and have expanded into Las Vegas, Miami and in Germany.

[Bloomberg] – Dana Bartholomew

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Chrysler BuildingDivorceMichael FuchsRFR Holding