Belle Burden's book 'Strangers' highlights key financial red flags for women — here's how to avoid them

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“Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage” is a book about betrayal, heartbreak and loss. But for women, the financial lessons in it are paramount.

In her bestselling memoir, author Belle Burden recounts the deeply personal dissolution of her marriage after her husband admitted to an affair and left her abruptly in the early days of the Covid pandemic.

Although Burden and her husband lived a lavish lifestyle, with homes in both Manhattan and Martha’s Vineyard, she wrote, an ill-advised change to their prenuptial agreement in the days before her wedding left her with no claim to the wealth they had amassed over two decades of marriage. Although Burden was born into a prominent and wealthy family, she wrote that, at the time, she had no income of her own.

Like many women, Burden, a lawyer, had sidelined her career to care for their children and support her husband and the demands of his job at a hedge fund in New York.