What happens if Melania and Donald Trump get divorced?

This story was published before the attempted assassination on Trump on July 13. On Sunday, Melania Trump released a statement about the incident, where she described her husband as a “generous and caring man who I have been with through the best of times and the worst of times” and spoke about how horrifying the moment was for her family. Read it here.

“There is nothing more vicious than a man or woman going through a divorce. It is pure hell, like nothing else I have ever seen,” Donald Trump wrote in his 2007 book Think Big and Kick Ass.

With two divorces in his past, the former president has had some practice — and speculation regarding whether the former president and his wife of 19 years, Melania Trump, may be headed for Splitsville, particularly if he wins in November, has been ongoing.

Melania was a reluctant First Lady — focused primarily on their young son Barron Trump. But this week Barron, now 18, made his first appearance at a Trump rally. He was greeted by cheers as he sat in the front row at the campaign event at Trump’s Doral resort in Miami — his mother nowhere to be found.

Where is Melania?

Melania has been seen less and less at Trump’s public appearances since he left the White House. She wasn’t present when the verdict was handed down in his hush money trial in New York (which, to be fair, did involve paying off a woman so she couldn’t tell the story of having sex with Trump while Melania was pregnant) and Melania was missing in action during the fateful debate with Joe Biden in Atlanta on 27 June.

As Trump travels across the country holding rallies, the furthest Melania has ventured is to fundraisers hosted at her own homes — one at Mar-a-Lago and another at Trump Tower.

When questioned about Melania’s absence on Meet The Press last fall, Trump said: “At the appropriate time, she’ll be out there.”

But Barron is there. The former president introduced his youngest son, and only child with Melania, to the crowd on Tuesday, saying “That’s the first time he’s done it,” as Barron pumped his fists and waved to the audience.

“He might be more popular than Don and Eric,” Trump said. “Welcome to the scene, Barron, I don’t know. He had such a nice, easy life. Now it’s a little bit changed. Special guy, right?”

Barron graduated high school in May and has until now mostly remained out of sight.

Trump said he “got into every college he wanted to and he made his choice. And he’s a very good guy.”

The New York Post’s Page Six reported earlier this month that Melania has struck a deal with the former president and 2024 candidate that she would not have to be a full-time first lady were he to win a second term.

She thinks she can be a “hands-on mother and first lady at the same time,” a source told the outlet — although her son will presumably be at college by then.

Prenup is ‘a hard, painful, ugly tool’

Trump’s marriage to Melania is his longest. Ivana, the mother of his three oldest children, lasted as his wife for around 15 years, while his marriage to Marla Maples was over within five.

In 2006, the year after his marriage to Melania, Trump told New York magazine that his prenuptial agreement had made his third marriage stronger. Trump claimed at the time that his two previous wives contested their agreements and lost.

“It’s a hard, painful, ugly tool,” the then-future president said. “Believe me, there’s nothing fun about it. But there comes a time when you have to say, ‘Darling, I think you’re magnificent, and I care for you deeply, but if things don’t work out, this is what you’re going to get.’”

He added at the time that the prenup process can act as a way to foresee if the marriage will last – if the couple can make it through, the marriage may have a chance.

Ivana Trump is reported to have got $14m, an apartment in New York, a mansion in Connecticut, and access to Mar-a-Lago once a year, in addition to $650,000 a year in alimony and child support in their divorce, according to Town & Country magazine. Marla Maples reportedly got $2m.

In 2018, in the middle of Trump’s first term, Washington divorce lawyer Sandy Ain told the Washingtonian that he suspected that “if they got divorced, he would pay her a lot of money, and it would be done in an appropriately dignified way.”

“You don’t say ‘you’re fired’ to your wife.’ You say ‘here’s a really nice severance package—and it’s gonna be more than $130,000,’” he added in reference to the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.

Fellow divorce attorney Cheryl New told the outlet that Trump “would not be able to do this in a way that would be quiet. I don’t think he’s constitutionally capable of that. He’s so cocksure that he would put this out there for everybody to see.”

She added: “I think he underestimates Melania totally. She is a chess player. He is a checkers player.”

Ain said that he thought that what Melania is entitled to in a divorce would be “spelled out pretty carefully.”

“Would he be prudent to pay her more than that, for her silence and for the sake of dignity? Very likely.”

Attorney Jacqueline Newman told Town & Country magazine in 2018 that “I can pretty much guarantee he’s not giving” his New York apartment to Melania. “In situations where I’ve dealt with very high-income, high-asset cases, the moneyed spouse will purchase an apartment for the non-moneyed spouse and the children to live in.”

Any judge would probably seal any court filings to protect their privacy.

Cutting a deal for a second term

At the end of September last year, Page Six reported a source as saying that “Over the last year, Melania and her team have been quietly negotiating a new ‘postnup’ agreement ... this is at least the third time Melania has renegotiated the terms of her marital agreement.”

But the source added that the former first lady has no plans to end the marriage.

“Melania is most concerned about maintaining and increasing a substantial trust for their son,” the source told Page Six, adding that the updated agreement centers on money and property. The new agreement was prompted by Trump’s run for re-election and his current legal troubles.

Melania has seen Trump be convicted on 34 felony counts in relation to the hush money payment to adult actor Stormy Daniels towards the end of the 2016 campaign. Daniels alleged that the two had an affair in 2006, something Trump denies. It was just a year into the Trumps marriage and Melania was reportedly pregnant with Barron at the time.

“Trump remains very rich,” the source said, but added that the former president has “mounting legal bills and judgments.”

The new prenup would “provide a more solid future” for Melania and Barron following a possible divorce, they said.

Another source told Page Six that “she wanted it to provide her with more money, and ... there’s a specific amount at minimum that Barron is supposed to obtain.”

What happens to spousal privilege?

Any divorce could also jeopardize Trump’s criminal proceedings. Trump’s sentencing for his 34 felony convictions in New York has been delayed until at least September, and he faces criminal proceedings in Washington, DC, and Georgia for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and in Florida for his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

The spousal privilege protects communications made in confidence in the course of a valid marriage and removes the possibility that a spouse would have to testify against the other in criminal or other proceedings. Both spouses have the right to invoke the privilege to avoid having the testimony go ahead. But that privilege ends with a divorce.

While the communications privilege in general will survive a divorce, any communications after the end of a marriage will not be shielded.

The spousal privilege also doesn’t apply if the spouses are suing each other in civil proceedings or if one starts a criminal case against the other.

Who would serve as First Lady?

If a divorce were to take place before or during a second Trump term, he could assign a non-romantic partner to the role – previous presidents who were single or lost their wives have assigned nieces and daughters to the position.

Apart from Trump, Ronald Reagan is the only president ever to have gone through a divorce, but he was so far along in his second, and long-lasting, marriage to Nancy Reagan that by the time he ran for president, the previous split never became an issue.

There have also been two widower presidents, John Tyler, and Woodrow Wilson, who moved on to second wives during their time in the White House. One president, James Buchanan, didn’t get married at all.

But Trump could pay a political price for a possible divorce. President Bill Clinton’s presidency may not have survived had his marriage not lasted past his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

On Monday, at the Trump Tower fundraiser for the Log Cabin Republicans, Melania “gave a beautiful speech about the importance of unity,” a guest told the New York Post. 

Time will tell if that includes her marriage.