More ink has been spilled, nationally and internationally, on the bitter divorce of Houston billionaire Ed Bosarge Jr. and Marie Bosarge in the last several weeks than in the entire previous duration of the interminable legal wrangling. The newfound attention is perhaps due to the fact that an April trial date was missed amid reports that the billionaire is suffering from COVID-19.
In early April, The Wall Street Journal chronicled the lengthy saga in great detail. “The case had been slated to go to trial in April but has been postponed due to Mr. Bosarge’s health and the coronavirus pandemic,” the piece notes. Private investigator Wayne Dolcefino, hired by friends of Marie, reports that the jilted wife confirmed to him that Ed Bosarge, co-founder of high-frequency trading firm Quantlab Financial, did indeed have COVID-19.
It’s a battle over an estimated $3.2 billion estate, all of which the couple made during their marriage — and all of which he claims is locked in trusts in South Dakota to which she has no legal access. Not a penny. And not an ounce of property, not even the kitchen sponges or an ice cream scooper, much less her eye-popping 43-carat yellow-diamond necklace, all of which are listed as “trust property.”
Houston bon vivants might recall that in 2011, Marie Bosarge, a music lover herself, founded Music Doing Good, a nonprofit aimed at providing music programs for school students. That same year, the couple purchased a $45 million flat on London’s Belgravia Square.
Little did Marie know, as she spent two years decorating the apartment, raising funds for her charity, and hosting charitable events at the couple’s 27,000-square-foot home Chateau Cornarvon, that she would never hold residence there She was also unaware that her husband was wooing a 20-something Russian socialite named Ana Kostenkova. Or that she would eventually be ousted from the chateau and denied access to any of the 12 residences the couple acquired during 30 years of marriage.
Ed Bosarge, now 81, told his wife in 2013 that he was leaving her. In 2017, he filed for divorce.
In short, through a series of secretive trusts established in South Dakota, where knotty trust laws seemingly encourage those who wish to hide fortunes, Marie has been left with nothing other than a monthly stipend until the divorce is settled.
Family law attorney Bucky J.D. Allshouse, who represents Marie, has been quoted as saying that if Ed Bosarge gets away with his scheme of diverting money to locked trusts in South Dakota, then “no wife is safe.”
London’s Daily Mail jumped on the story shortly after the WSJ piece, while Dolcefino has been posting regular updates on his website. Internewscast.com picked up the story on Monday. And CNBC was in Houston earlier this month, working on a story about the tangled divorce involving a complex web of trusts and limited-liability companies that Ed Bosarge established to prevent Marie from accessing cash and the homes they acquired together.
“I want him to be fair,” Marie says in discussion with Dolcefino. “You know, we made our money in Houston. It’s community property. It’s 50-50. I want what’s fair.”
On his personal website, Ed Bosarge is self-described as “a world-renowned pioneer in the application of advanced mathematics to the fields of finance, medicine, and energy.” The title proclaims him as “entrepreneur, philanthropist, visionary.”
This article originally appeared on Paper City.
