Justine Musk, the Canada-born novelist who was once married to Elon Musk, asked for stakes in Tesla and SpaceX during their divorce. But Musk made sure she got none, according to a Forbes report.
Before becoming a global tech icon and father to 14 known children, Elon was a husband. He met Justine Wilson at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.
They reconnected in the mid-1990s when Justine moved to Silicon Valley, living with Musk while he built his first startup, Zip2.
In 1999, Elon sold Zip2 to Compaq for $300 million. He reportedly walked away with $20 million.
He spent $1 million of that on a McLaren F1, which CNN filmed being delivered. Justine stood beside him and remarked, “It’s a million dollars for a car. It’s decadent. My fear is that we become spoiled brats, that we lose a sense of appreciation and perspective.” Elon later totaled the car.
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They married in 2000 and had six children together. Their first child died as an infant, followed by twins and triplets.
Justine published three novels between 2005 and 2008, while Elon launched SpaceX and invested in Tesla.
By 2008, their marriage ended. During divorce proceedings, Justine asked for their house, child support, $6 million, a glacier-blue Tesla Roadster, and 10% of Elon’s Tesla shares and 5% of his SpaceX shares.
Forbes estimates if she had received that package, she’d be worth $17.3 billion today—ranking her among the world’s richest. Instead, she walked away with much less.
According to Elon, he had offered Justine an $80 million settlement before taxes. She declined, preferring stakes in Tesla and SpaceX, both still young companies at the time.
But a post-nuptial agreement signed in March 2000 derailed her efforts. Justine wrote in Marie Claire: “I trusted my husband — why else had I married him? — and I told myself it didn’t matter. We were soul mates. We would never get divorced.”
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She added, “I had effectively signed away all my rights as a married person, including any claim to community property except our house, which was to be vested in my name once we had a child.”
Justine later took Elon to court in 2008, arguing that he failed to disclose the pending merger of his payments company X.com with Confinity. That merger eventually became PayPal, sold to eBay for $1.5 billion. Musk’s take was reportedly over $100 million.
The lawsuit lasted two years and cost Elon at least $4 million in legal fees. The court ultimately ruled in his favor.
According to Elon, Justine received $20 million after taxes—half in the form of their Bel Air home and half paid in monthly installments. She also received $20,000 per month for clothing, shoes, and discretionary spending, plus full coverage of household and child-related expenses.
She later sold the Bel Air mansion for $6.5 million in 2011 and bought a new home for $4.3 million. That property is now worth over $8 million.
While Elon is now worth around $364 billion, Justine’s estimated net worth stands at $15 million—just 1/24,000th of her ex-husband’s fortune.
Their daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, a transgender woman, told Teen Vogue in March that her mother was fully supportive of her transition: “She is very supportive of my transition. When I came out to her, she pretended to be slightly surprised for 30 seconds and then was like, ‘Yeah, honey. Okay.’”
Her father? “He was not as supportive as my mom.”
Vivian said she has been financially independent from Elon since 2020. “I will say I do not actually know how many siblings I have, if you include half-siblings. That’s just a fun fact. It’s really good for two truths and a lie,” she joked. “I found out about the Shivon Zilis thing the same time everyone else did. I had no idea before that.”
Justine, for her part, has kept a low public profile in recent years. In January 2024, she tweeted: “Electing a man for President of the United States even though he has an admitted history of sexually harassing women and has been found guilty of sexual assault and defamation in a court of law, seems the very definition of rape culture. Just saying.”
She added the next day, “There is always something deeply ironic about a powerful white man complaining about being the object of a witch hunt.” She has not tweeted since.
(FORBES)
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