The Wendts
Lorna and Gary Wendt met in a small-town high school in central Wisconsin, and both attended the University of Wisconsin. They were engaged during Ms. Wendt's junior year in college and married in 1965 when she graduated. She had a bachelor of music degree and he a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. Neither had any money to speak of. After graduation, they moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he attended Harvard Business School. She worked briefly at MIT during his first year and then as a music teacher in Sudbury during his second year.
After he received his MBA, they moved to Texas, where he took his first job as a real estate developer. She continued to teach music for a little over a year but stopped when their first child was born in 1968. Over the next several years, the couple moved from Texas to Georgia, and then to Florida, each time for job-related reasons. In 1972, their second child was born. In 1975, he took a job with G. E. Capital in Stamford, Connecticut, and the family moved again. He remained with G. E. Capital, rising to CEO in 1986, and they continued to live in Stamford.
In 1995, after thirty years of marriage, Mr. Wendt asked for a divorce and offered his wife $10 million, saying that surely was more than she “needed” to be comfortable. While accountants for the two parties disagree on the value, it seems that the estate was worth about $50 million
Ms. Wendt said that equitable distribution of assets was not about “need,” but about the value of her contribution to the marriage and that $10 million dollars, 20 percent of their assets, did not constitute equitable division. She then sued to obtain 50 percent of the estate.