NEW YORK -- The marriage lasted just 20 months, but the divorce case is nearing its third anniversary with no amicable end in sight.
Ron Perelman vs. Patricia Duff is an interminable fight freighted with so much excess that even other rich New Yorkers are appalled -- and entranced -- by its many vanities.Duff, a major fund-raiser for the Democratic Party, so far has run through 20 lawyers and $3 million in fees. But when the target is worth $6 billion, why scrimp?
The case now focuses on custody of 4-year-old daughter Caleigh. Though both parents profess to want the best for their child, the trial judge has seen otherwise.
"We have two very rich, two very willful people locked in a dispute which I'm absolutely certain is causing severe damage to Caleigh," Judge Franklin Weissberg complained last week. "The two have been too focused on attacking, torturing and slandering each other."
Such acrimony seemed impossible when the power couple first locked eyes at a Los Angeles charity ball in 1992. The attraction was instant.
They'd both been down this aisle before, with five failed marriages between them. Perelman left each union poorer -- $80 million poorer after his second divorce -- while Duff invariably prospered.
Her net worth after divorce No. 3 was in the area of $30 million.
Descriptions of Duff, who raised money for President Clinton's campaign, inevitably focus on her looks and are inevitably flattering: "gorgeous, green-eyed" . . . "man magnet" . . . "luminous, like Grace Kelly."
Descriptions of Perelman inevitably focus on his money: He is the chairman and chief executive officer of McAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., through which he owns the Revlon cosmetics company. He travels by private plane, private helicopter, private yacht. He's dropped $1 million on legal bills fighting Duff.
Noted divorce attorney Raoul Felder, asked about the case, laughed mirthlessly.
"It goes on because they have the money to fuel it," Felder said. "There's a different justice for people with a lot of money."
In one of the trial's more petty episodes, the Jewish Perelman accused his wife of sacrilege: letting their daughter join an Easter egg hunt during Passover.
Another time, testimony was interrupted by this objection: "Your honor, if Mr. Perelman can stop smirking and laughing, I would appreciate it."
Snapped Perelman's attorney, "My client is not smirking and laughing."
Is too. Is not. Is too. Is not.
The divorce case, launched in September 1996, seemed simple. There was a prenuptial agreement; under it, Duff receives $125,000 a month in alimony and $12,000 a month in child support.
Now Duff, 45, wants child support bumped to $100,000 a month, allowing Caleigh to live in the same ultra-glamorous style with her mother as she does with her father.
The hard feelings escalated when both sides decided they wanted full custody of Caleigh, who was born one month before her parents' January 1995 wedding. She was Duff's first child and Perelman's sixth.
Duff, concerned that her husband could somehow buy victory in the case, moved last year to open the trial to the public. The public then learned probably too much about Duff, the 56-year-old Perelman and their parenting:
-- Duff portrayed her ex-husband as an absentee father who never spent more than five minutes alone with his daughter.
-- A court psychiatrist testified that Duff was "paranoid . . . narcissistic . . . histrionic." The psychiatrist added that Perelman needs long-term therapy to control his volcanic temper.
-- Perelman testified that when Caleigh is with him, she eats about "$3 a day" in food -- less than half the price of a Manhattan restaurant appetizer.
-- The couple has squabbled over whether their daughter can receive riding lessons; where she should attend summer camp; and whether her afternoon nap should be cut short for private schooling.
Neither combatant has given up on love. Duff was recently linked with Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., while gossip columnists have spotted Perelman canoodling with actress Ellen Barkin.
Lost in the muddle is Caleigh, now a child of both privilege and pain.