By Bagudu Mohammed
A quote attributed to Elon Musk titled “Why I Can Never Get Married” makes for a fascinating and curious read. My wife was the first to draw my attention to it, laughing over a line she found particularly absurd: “When a rich man gets married and has, let’s say, three kids with his wife, she’s going to wake up one day and divorce him with the excuse ‘Oh no! My husband was too perfect for me.'”
At first, I laughed along. The tone carried that satirical bite one might expect from Musk part genius, part provocateur. Yet, as I reread it, something didn’t sit right. The message felt too cynical, too steeped in bitterness to ring true, even for a man as eccentric as Elon Musk. So, I read it again, and again, until my skepticism paid off.
The supposed quote went like this:
“I can never make the mistake of getting married. If I marry any woman right now, she will surely divorce me so she can have half of my wealth. People often say that if they’re not in love or married, they won’t be happy, but the truth is, if you aren’t rich enough to take care of yourself and your family, you won’t be happy. I am not married, and I can never make the mistake of getting married. Love itself is a fantasy, and that’s why most people who believe in it, especially men, always end up crying.”
The piece continues with Musk lamenting that “divorce has become a lucrative business for women” and predicting that any woman who marries him will one day claim half of his $500 billion fortune.
While it read like a manifesto of self-preservation, it also felt strangely un-American in tone more like something born of internet satire, or perhaps written by someone projecting Nigerian logic onto an American predicament. The language was too casual, too hyperbolic, too steeped in the idea of love as a trap.
Still, the notion intrigued me. Could the world’s most advanced democracy really have a law that compels a man to hand over half his fortune simply for falling out of love? Why would such a law exist in a country that prides itself on liberty, reason, and individual rights?
To my surprise, my curiosity led to enlightenment. While the quote itself turned out to be fake, the idea behind it laws that divide wealth upon divorce was very real, and its rationale far nobler than I had imagined.
In the United States, there is no single federal law forcing a husband or wife to split assets evenly. Divorce laws are largely state-driven, following two main doctrines: community property and equitable distribution.
In community property states like California, Texas, and Nevada, assets acquired during marriage are presumed jointly owned and are typically divided equally. In equitable distribution. The division is guided by fairness rather than strict equality. As Justice Potter Stewart once observed, “Fairness is what justice looks like in motion.” Courts may award 60% to one party and 40% to another, depending on their contributions, sacrifices, or needs.
But the soul of these laws is not greed, it is fairness. They were born out of centuries of inequality when women’s economic worth was tethered to their husbands’ fortunes. Under the old English doctrine of coverture, a woman’s property automatically became her husband’s upon marriage. She ceased, legally, to exist as an independent person. The evolution of marital property law in the U.S. was therefore a triumph of justice and modern feminism, a recognition that homemaking, child-rearing, and emotional labor are no less valuable than paid employment.
As sociologist Arlie Hochschild observed in her classic The Second Shift, marriage often demands unpaid, invisible labor from women that sustains the home but rarely receives economic recognition. Laws ensuring equitable division seek to correct that imbalance, not to punish success, but to honor contribution.
I remembered the high-profile case of Bill and Melinda Gates, a divorce that stunned the world not because of scandal but because of what it revealed about the human heart. Here were two intellectual giants, philanthropists, and visionaries, whose partnership had changed the course of global health. Yet even such a marriage could dissolve, and under the same law Musk is said to have mocked, Melinda received a share of their fortune. Not as spoils, but as acknowledgment of a joint empire built on shared vision.
The more I pondered, the more I saw the quiet wisdom in those laws. They reflect the understanding that marriage is a partnership, a union of not just assets but sacrifices, time, and dreams. In Nigeria, where marital roles are often skewed by culture and economy, such a law could be revolutionary. It could force society to reckon with the invisible value of women’s labor.
How much, really, can a man pay for the sleepless nights a mother endures? For the nurturing that allows children to thrive? For the domestic harmony that enables him to build his fortune? The economist Gary Becker once argued that “marriage is a production unit,” where both partners contribute to creating value, even if one’s contribution is unpaid.
In our culture, however, this truth is often ridiculed. The phrase “What is she bringing to the table?” has become a weapon to belittle women whose contributions are intangible. Yet, when the home collapses, it is usually those same “jobless” women who hold its remnants together.
I know men who forbade their wives from working so they could “focus on the home,” only to discard them years later leaving them without income, identity, or dignity. I know women who sacrificed careers, bodies, and futures to stand by their husbands through illness, poverty, and failure, only to be repaid with rejection once prosperity arrived. In such cases, the law Musk is said to have mocked could serve as their only refuge, their only justice.
That is why, despite its flaws, I find beauty in the American principle that no spouse should walk away empty-handed from a shared life. It affirms that marriage, like business, carries mutual investment, and every investment deserves fair accounting.
Of course, like every human institution, the law can be abused. There are those who see divorce as an escape hatch, or worse, a payday. Yet, even that risk is preferable to a system that allows one partner to walk away rich while the other walks away broken.
If Nigeria adopted a version of this principle, it might reduce the hypocrisy of “forever” vows turned into lifetime servitude. It might compel couples to treat marriage as collaboration, not ownership. And perhaps it would remind us that love, stripped of respect and reciprocity, is nothing but an illusion.
In the end, Musk’s alleged lament was not about law but fear-the fear of loss, betrayal, and vulnerability that comes with loving in a material world. But as the philosopher Erich Fromm once wrote, “To love is to commit oneself without guarantee.” Love without risk is mere convenience; marriage without fairness is bondage.
And perhaps, just perhaps, when the law ensures fairness, divorce itself ceases to be tragedy, and becomes justice served.
