RFR’s Fuchs gets “clean break” from wife, but it wasn’t cheap

Judge awards $44M to Alvina Collardeau-Fuchs in bitter dispute

From left: RFR Realty’s Michael Fuchs and Alvina Collardeau-Fuchs (Getty)
From left: RFR Realty’s Michael Fuchs and Alvina Collardeau-Fuchs (Getty)

The divorce battle between RFR Realty principal Michael Fuchs and his estranged wife appears to be coming to a close, and the result might leave neither one satisfied.

A London judge awarded Alvina Collardeau-Fuchs £37.5 million ($44.1 million) in cash and assets, Bloomberg reported.  Collardeau-Fuchs had requested $50 million, citing the lavish lifestyle she grew accustomed to during their eight-year marriage.

Fuchs, who co-founded RFR with Aby Rosen, had called his wife’s demand “greed, not need.”

The judge also ordered Fuchs to make monthly payments for the couple’s two children until they are adults, as well as school fees and money for nannies. The judge said the award should give Collardeau-Fuchs a “clean break” from her estranged husband.

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Fuchs and Collardeau-Fuchs married in 2012, four years before the family uprooted for London. Since the separation, and despite the two having signed a prenuptial agreement, accusations have been lobbed both ways, including Collardeau-Fuchs’ alleging that Fuchs tried to control her spending and made her daily life “intolerable.”

Collardeau-Fuchs claimed Fuchs violated their prenup by failing to set up a joint investment fund for the couple and by failing to meet financial obligations.

The exact breakdown of the assets headed Collardeau-Fuchs’ way remains to be seen. The couple has been fighting over some of their properties, including a six-story, 8,000-square-foot home in Notting Hill where she lives with the children. Court documents put the property’s worth around $35 million.

The couple also had fully staffed homes in the West Village in Manhattan and the Cap d’Antibes in the South of France.

Fuchs, whose firm’s holdings include the Chrysler Building, initially claimed in court documents that his net worth was around $1.1 billion. In a more recent hearing, however, he claimed the “turbulent economic climate” had driven it down to $600 million to $800 million.

Holden Walter-Warner