Trump Cards

In court, King Donald and Queen Ivana battle overthe nature of relationships and look like jokers.

"I am a single mother, deeply devoted to my children. have no time for any permanent relationship , and am also attempting to be a business woman, trying to allot time between my family, which Will always be first, my business and charitable endeavors, and trying to have a reasonable social life and share male companionship when appropriate."

These words come not from a Murphy Brown monologue, but from an Ivana Trump affidavit. They are among countless such utterances that have rolled off Ivana Trump's lips-many admittedly crafted by her lawyers-in inter-views or affidavits in her post-divorce fight with the real estate mogul she once called "The Donald" but now allegedly calls "Mr. Trump' "

It's tempting to view this escalating legal brouhaha as mere documentation of the frivolous trials and tribulations of a plush lifestyle. But I have second thoughts. I fear that the joke may be oil women. Ironically, this post-divorce squabble by these larger-than-life people, with their-exaggerated, if not repulsively extravagant, lifestyles, could wind up making Donald's most lasting monument not Trump Tower, but a legal decision that determines matrimonial law for the rest of us-and enforces old double standards of behavior.

Dubbed "The P.T. Barnum" of business, Donald has accused Ivana of breaching key clauses in their trumpeted $25 million divorce. He has cut off her alimony and refused to pay the down payment on the $2-plus million East Side Manhattan townhouse into which she reportedly plans to relocate, because he says she is "cohabiting" with a wealthy Italian businessman.

In this "Year of the Woman:' Ivana is no Dianne Feinstein. And, even in the scaled-down '90s, neither are Ivana and Donald your traditional Ozzie and Harriet parents. With numerous houses in assorted parts of the world, it's hard to tell if either of them inhabits--let alone cohabits-anywhere. In a real sense, their true home is the tabloids, where they are almost daily fodder--and mudder.

If Trump v. Trump provides telling imagery about the disarray of modern families, the case also shows the lunacy of invoking mythical "family values" when changed expectations in relationships have made family more a state of mind than matrimony. Just how much a state of mind is now the subject of increasing amounts of psychological research-but no shortage of legal opinion.

The juxtaposition of the antiquated term "alimony" and the modem "cohabit" in the Trump's divorce judgment demonstrates the law's failed struggle to mesh restrictive moral standards from the past with new rulings reflecting society's more permissive attitudes towards relationships.

The case also reveals that single working women no longer need "don" a scarlet letter A if they live in old-fashioned sin. But they can still be branded by other letters, and risk losing reparations for their broken marriages because they live in "SIM".

SIM, Donald's lawyer, Jay Goldstein, explained at a hearing last summer on Ivana's alleged cohabitation, stands for "a serious, intimate, marriage-minded relationship" SIM "is what the parties meant by cohabiting," Goldberg charged, and contends it abrogates Donald's obligation to pay alimony.

In a series of binding pre- and postnuptial agreements signed during her 14-year marriage, Ivana had signed away her rights to equitable distribution of the Trump marital property-and to cohabit. The fourth and last agreement, which Donald gave her as a Christmas present, was signed in 1987, when he was already living in some sort of SIM with Marla Maples, his sometime favorite blonde now playing the role of Ziegfield's Favorite on Broadway in The Will Rogers Follies.

This last post-nup was incorporated into their 1991 divorce. Ivana got a $10 million certified check, $350,000 a year in alimony to continue until "she dies, remarries ... or cohabits with another man," custody of the three Trump children, $300,000 a year in child support, an allexpenses-paid vacation each March in her 130-room Mar-A-Lago Palm Beach home, and the right to keep jewelry and other gifts from Donald, including his Mercedes. The Czech-born former ski champ and model also got the Trumps' 45-room ocean-front mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut (now said to be on the market for $18 million); their two-bedroom condo in Trump Plaza (now said to be rented out for $4,000 a month); and a $4 million "housing allowance" paid in installments through next March, when she and her children are to vacate the 50-room triplex atop Trump Tower. Along with Donald's footing the bills for her living expenses in all three residences, Ivana also got $50,000 a year toward her basic personal staff. a chef, a housekeeper, a houseman and, until Eric, the youngest Trump, reaches his majority, two nannies-hopefully, as one of my own majority children said, with Donald by then paying for at least one nanny young enough for Eric to date.

Ivana, her lawyers, and other supporters initially decried this settlement, claiming it represented scarcely more than one percent of Donald's net worth. But since hard times have sent the former billionaire plummeting to millionaire-and perhaps perilously close to bankruptcy-the divorce may have left Donald more impoverished than Ivana.

At the hearing, even Donald's lawyer admitted "this is not about people making a small amount of money." Indeed, despite her contractual right to alimony, the millions Ivana netted in her divorce made her countersuit against Donald for non-payment of alimony look almost laughable. "I'm financially secure," she is quoted in countless articles and talk-show interviews reprinted in a bulging sheaf of legal papers Donald's lawyer toted to the hearing. "I don't need a man to pay my bills. I need a man only for love, friendship, and companionship. I don't want to be without a man in my life, but I don't need a man to take care of me.'

A reminder of women's dependent status, the term "alimony," referring to the award of financial aid, is seldom used anymore in divorce settlements. By contrast, "cohabit" is a relatively new term in divorce-law lingo. It was meant to express the law's supposed acceptance of changed lifestyles stemming from new sexual and social freedoms. For example, the law no longer expects brides to be virgins.

But as lawyers for Ivana and Donald agree, the law is "not clear and unambiguous" on cohabiting. It is understood by lawyers and laymen to mean "living together," but until the hearing, I had not realized how vaguely defined this widely practiced concept is in law-which, as one lawyer reminded me, "is always at least 40 years behind the rest of society."

Ivana and Donald's failure to specify in their settlement precisely what they meant by cohabit-as in perhaps "to live together for a period of at least six months"-makes the interpretation of cohabiting in their case unusually problematic.

Worse yet, as Judge Phyllis Gangel-Jacob noted, the word is really a misnomer in Trump v. Trump. Ivana and her alleged cohabitee, Riccardo Mazzucchelli, have too many roofs between them to fit the basic common sense and legal definition of habitually dwelling together under one roof. "Both seem to be world travelers on a regular basis," the judge said in a masterful understatement. "So it is unlikely they'd be under the same roof."

Ivana's lawyer, Robert Stephen Cohen, accuses Donald of "trumping" up the cohabiting charge to duck any further financial payments to Ivana, and says she and Mazzucchelli have merely "dated" no more than five times. But Ivana's own words are more ambiguous. She says she met the 48-year-old Mazzucchelli in London, a month or so after her divorce, through a mutual friend who thought Ivana could be a "reference for possible business contacts he was seeking in Eastern Europe.'

Since then, Ivana admits that almost everywhere she went, Mazzucchelli, a "wealthy Italian divorcee" and "owner of a Zambia-based construction firm;' was sure to go-though not always on the same day or for as long.

In the next 10 months-in which Donald insists they were cohabiting, but Ivana says they were merely "attempting to establish the parameters of what has been only a periodic (dating) relationship"Mazzucchelli escorted Ivana on foot or ski boot, in his Rolls or her Mercedes, by Concorde or by yacht, to dinners, balls, charity events, the movies, ski slopes, the opera, the theater, and to Ivana's book-signing parties during her whirlwind, month-long promotion tour last spring.

During these outings, Mazzucchelli entertained Ivana, and she Mazzucchelli-Donald says in her bedroom, Ivana says in her guest room or guest quarters, often as one of her 10 or more house guests-in her rent-free New York, Greenwich, and Florida homes; at her rented apartment in London, her rented house in the South of France, her rented Swiss chalet in Celerina; in Mazzucchelli's homes in Rome and Prague; in their separate hotels in Prague, Venice, London, Aspen, and New York.

The lawyers disagreed on whether all this togetherness on the run meant Ivana and Mazzucchelli were cohabiting. But I was amazed that at the end of one of Mazzucchelli's days-far longer than the head nanny's grinding 6:30 A.M. to 9:30 P.M. stint-he had the energy just to hold himself upright, let alone hold himself out as a husband in all but name, which is how, I learned, the law basically looks at cohabiting.

Along with these frequent travels, Donald and his lawyers cite other "evidence" of Mazzucchelli's alleged cohabitation with Ivana. This includes Mazzucchelli's occasional chauffeuring and chaperoning the Trump children, flying them to Disney World, buying them gifts-including "some kind of pet believed to be a turtle"cooking, and even raking leaves with Ivana and the children at the Greenwich mansion-perhaps the only non-Donald-financed activity left for Ivana to tackle.

As added proof of the alleged cohabiting, Donald's lawyer told the judge at the hearing that Mazzucchelli has his own key to the Trump triplex, enters unannounced without being logged in in the lobby, or without ringing; gets his mail, and keeps "his clothes, perfumes, and European vitamins" in the apartment, pays for Ivana's vacations and the pasta he cooks for her and her family-in contrast to Ivana, who says, "I don't cook in the Trump Tower apartment"-and generally treats Trump Tower like it is his own."

He also claims that by having given her a 10-carat canary diamond ring from Tiffany, Mazzucchelli is engaged to Ivana, and is "frequently intimate" with her, and that along with their having been glimpsed "hugging, kissing, and holding hands," Mazzuccheli has been seen on "many occasions walking out of Ms. Trump's bedroom early in the morning wearing nothing but a robe.'

For Ivana's chef, Vaclav "Billy" Juza, who served as a witness for Donald, another key to whether Mazzucchelli has slept in Ivana's bedroom is the tea. He states in an affidavit that at Ivana's rented Swiss chalet, he was instructed by Steve, the chauffeur, to "place two teacups and two teabags on the kitchen table every night ... because that's what they do all the time in Greenwich and New York." The chef says that each morning the tea and teacups would be gone. "I would go into Ms. Trump's bedroom and remove two teacups into the kitchen to be washed."

But Ivana, her lawyer, and others in her retinue denounce most of these charges as lies, from the key to the travel dates to the cooking to Mazzucchelli's footing her bills. Ivana says that even when they travel, they go Dutch. Or the bills are not on Donald's house, but on her publisher's.

At the hearing, Ivana's lawyer, Cohen, also pointed out that Ivana and Mazzucchelli actually live a continent apart: he in London, she in New York. Cohen also argued that "a tryst, vacation, occasional traveling, are not close to cohabiting" but "the intermittent socialization of a 1990s dating relationship."

In court papers, Cohen also accuses Donald of trying to use the divorce agreement to force Ivana back into a "chastity belt" that other women have long since shed for the money belt.

"The emancipated woman with full equality is the law of our land," Cohen states. And it is "not any of Mr. Trump's business whether his ex-wife is involved in a relationship, be it business, friendship, or an intimate friendship."

Another of Ivana's lawyers also argued at the hearing that even if Ivana and Mazzucchelli were actually shacked up as alleged by Donald-which he emphatically denied-they still would not be legally cohabiting because they were not com mingling their bodies in bed and their money in the bank. Citing an earlier case in which a court ruled that a man and woman had not cohabited though they slept together for years, this lawyer pointed out that for a couple to legally cohabit, they must file joint taxes, list the same address on their drivers license, and generally "hold themselves out as a couple" in all but legal name.

Following this same logic-or illogic-you could not live together, like Mia and Woody (whose case was initially before the same judge), and yet be legally found to be cohabiting because you did publicly hold yourself out as a couple.

Donald's lawyer dismisses the chastitybelt charge. He claims Ivana is free to be as promiscuous as she wants and to date as many men as she can handle-she just cannot be supported by two men.

But what was SIM? Amidst the arguments at the hearing, the judge and Donald's lawyer briefly tangled-and admitted their respective confusion-about the difference between friendship, dating, courtship and the cohabiting that "intimates a sexual relationship." When Donald's lawyer also defined Ivana's alleged SIMMING as "a serious, intimate, marriage-scheduled or -proposed relationship," and still later, as "a mutual, serious, marriage-minded relationship," my own head was swimming.

I later found that others were just as confused. Trump v. Trump has actually pitted common sense against nonsense, men against women.

Their series of nuptial agreements marks Donald and Ivana as a new, but increasingly common, breed of man and wife who differ only in degree from their unwed, uncommitted cohabiting peers. They hope they are tying a lasting knot, but signal their fear that it will soon become unraveled. This not-so-hidden distrust of one another can act like a self-fulfilling prophesy. In keeping the marriage partners' mythic sense of "we-ness" from developing, these agreements can actually hasten the marriage's demise-if not insure it altogether.

Psychologist Judith Minton, adjunct associate professor in the department of psychiatry at New York University Medical Center, agrees. "These agreements turn marriage into purely renewable business contracts," she said.

Nevertheless, the case puts Ivana in what many see as the unlikely position of standard bearer for women's equality under the law. Ivana ... a feminist.?

Unlike Dan Quayle, who made a fictional character real, Ivana has managed to make her real self into fiction: as the made-over creation of Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon, as the best-selling fiction writer whose novel (soon to be a major motion picture) chronicles a wealthy WASP (ship)builder who dumps his wife for a younger woman. In her latest incarnation, she was transformed from "the ultimate '80s-style wife" into the ultimate "'90s-style struggling, divorced mother balancing family, career, and social life," becoming the ironic heroine of thousands of real-life Murphy Brown fans by lecturing (at a reported $20,000 a pop) on "Daring To Be Yourself," "Breaking the Cinderella Myth," and similar topics.

"Her wealth is relative, and it shouldn't be held against her," Ivana's naturally biased lawyer said. "She did a great deal [to help build Donald's career and wealth], and then he threw her out. But she didn't let a huge egomaniac destroy her."

Others, like psychologist Minton, remained appalled at the thought. They contend that Ivana in fact makes a mockery of many feminist ideals, and totally blinds people to the reality that divorce leaves few women's fortunes greatly improved. In fact, it has largely feminized poverty in the United States. "The wealth is relative?" Minton said incredulously. "She's struggling? That's ridiculous!"

I had to admit that I also felt a certain skepticism about Ivana's improbable transformation-and her too-casual dismissal of her earlier, non-heroic, non-struggling-divorcee self. "In the '80s we were all a little crazy!" Like many others, I couldn't shake the thought that her stance as a feminist-type working mother might be a ploy cynically calculated to dispute Donald's charge of cohabitation.

Despite the legalities, which make Trump v. Trump's outcome unpredictable, and Donald's own behavior, which makes the binding clauses in their divorce look lopsidedly unfair, I was bothered by another issue: the law's own ambivalence towards today's supposedly newly sanctioned cohabitation and other sexual freedoms.

In the same papers in which Ivana's lawyer denounces Donald for trying to force Ivana back into an outdated chastity belt, he twice uses the antiquated word "paramour" in citing rulings on cohabitation. The quaint delicacy of that word, referring to a lover but suggesting disapproval of the illicit nature of such a relationship, is painfully familiar. So was the lawyers' delicate skirting around the issue of "sexual intimacy" in their talk of cooking, travel, and clothes discretely kept in guest rooms. They date back to the same years when traditional family values ruled-and men could galavant like Donald, but women had no power at all.

If Ivana loses, it will mean that men can do what they want but a woman still cannot have a lover without severe financial repercussions. And living in SIM will turn out to be not that different from living in sin.

PHOTO: The Trump tower

PHOTO: Ivana and her "paramour," Riccardo Mazzucchelli.

PHOTO: Ivana and Donald in the salad days.

PHOTO: The Plaza Hotel, New York: showpiece of the tottering empire.

PHOTO: In a real sense, the Trumps' only home is in the middle of the tabloids.

Photographs by GAMMA LIAISON