Filed under: Celebrity News, Personal Finance, Dr. Boyce Money
It's finally over. Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren are officially divorced. Woods and Nordegren appeared at the Bay County Circuit Court in Panama City, Florida to execute the final agreement.
The divorce was a financial bonanza for Elin, the 30-year old woman who walked away with no less than $100 million dollars after five years of marriage. This amount gave her an income that would rival the wealthiest players in the NBA. Some would say that Elin paid a price for the money, which consisted of having a husband who spent quite a bit of his free time with quite a few women.
"We are sad that our marriage is over and we wish each other the very best for the future," the couple said in a statement. "While we are no longer married, we are the parents of two wonderful children and their happiness has been, and will always be, of paramount importance to both of us."
The statement doesn't give the details of the couple's divorce settlement. But both Woods and Nordegren claim that they wanted to do what was best for their children. One of the key issues in the divorce settlement was the custody of their two children, Sam and Charlie, who are three and one years old.
Tiger Woods' life has appeared to be on an odd spiral since his car accident last November. What many thought to be a simple crash opened up a Pandora's Box of complexities about Woods' personal life. Out of that box came a long list of models, porn stars and cocktail waitresses, leading America to conclude that the golden boy of Madison Avenue was actually a little rusty under the hood.
Since that time, we've come to redefine what we know about Tiger. My hope is that he is now more comfortable with himself, given that he must no longer carry around the facade of perfection that was likely stressful to maintain. He has grown a goatee (clearly the sign of a man with a propensity for devious behavior - I have a goatee myself, just kidding...or maybe not), and his golf game appears to have suffered from his distractions.
While we might be tempted to see recent events as the downfall of Tiger Woods, the truth is that some feel that he is going to be just fine. He still earns more money in a year than any of us will earn in a lifetime. He is still the #1 ranked golfer in the world. He has won 14 major championships, more than almost any golfer in history. I also hope he's still going to be a good dad.
As I discuss in my book "Financial Lovemaking 101," the truth is that men like Tiger shouldn't get married until they're over the age of 35. I am not one to judge whether it's right or wrong to have a lot of girlfriends, but the things you can do freely as a single man can cost you all of your money if you're married. If a person is not ready for monogamy, they should avoid the commitment of marriage and not feel guilty about it. But you see celebrities ignore this warning regularly, and in nearly every single case, "infidelity" is cited as one of the reasons for the marital breakup, costing the celeb millions of dollars. Secondly, our greatest wealth comes from things that are non-financial. So, even though Tiger has more money than any of us can even fathom, I wouldn't trade places with him for anything. I imagine that if the rumors of his personal life are even partially true, the troubles of his divorce are only the beginning of deeper issues.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.