Rudy and Judith Giuliani Resolve Divorce Without a Trial

(Bloomberg) -- Rudy Giuliani and his soon-to-be ex-wife Judith said they settled their bitter divorce case, avoiding a potentially messy courtroom fight over their assets that was due to get underway at a critical time for the former New York City mayor.

Judith Giuliani’s settlement with President Donald Trump’s embattled personal attorney will remain confidential and the pair intend to stay friends, her lawyer Bernard Clair said Tuesday in an emailed statement.

The resolution comes at a critical time for Rudy Giuliani, who’s a central figure in Trump’s ongoing impeachment inquiry. Giuliani is also said to be under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan who have already indicted two of the ex-mayor’s associates for campaign finance violations.

A divorce trial that had been scheduled to start in early January would likely have highlighted Rudy Giuliani’s spending on luxury items and expenses for Maria Ryan, a woman with whom he’s been associated in the tabloids. His allegedly extravagant spending on that woman had angered Judith Giuliani, who is his third wife.

“I am very pleased that the Giulianis were able to come to an amicable resolution of their divorce action and wish them both the best,” Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Faith Miller, said in an email.

The judge overseeing the case frequently told the parties that a trial was a bad idea, given the personal nature of the dispute and the intense media scrutiny of each hearing.

Rudy Giuliani’s appearances in the divorce case have been marked by bitter verbal exchanges, including an outburst in which he angrily told his wife’s lawyer that it was a “cheap shot” to mention Ryan by name in a courtroom discussion over use of the Giulianis’ Hamptons summer house. At another hearing, Judith Giuliani loudly denied a claim that she’d stripped their Manhattan condo of items that didn’t belong to her.

The former mayor has also complained openly in court about his need for money, underscoring the central dispute in the case. Despite working for Trump -- a billionaire -- Rudy Giuliani said he wasn’t charging the president for his services. In July, he told the judge he’d been forced to borrow $100,000 from Marc Mukasey -- another of Trump’s lawyers -- to pay his taxes because his money was tied up in the divorce.

Miller, Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, complained at the July hearing that Judith Giuliani refused to take a job to contribute to their estate, which is valued at about $30 million, including real estate and retirement accounts.

Judith Giuliani also had complaints, including claims that her husband was wrongfully deflating his income by turning down a high-paying job as a lawyer in February and squandering his money working for Trump.

To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Anthony Lin

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