{"id":178723,"date":"2026-03-29T08:51:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T08:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/178723\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T08:51:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T08:51:12","slug":"new-york-heiress-belle-burden-says-ex-husband-refused-to-give-their-12-year-old-a-bedroom-after-divorce-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/178723\/","title":{"rendered":"New York heiress Belle Burden says ex-husband refused to give their 12-year-old a bedroom after divorce"},"content":{"rendered":"

Belle Burden<\/a> nearly lost everything in a\u00a0dramatic divorce, but for her, the hardest part was the fallout her children faced.<\/p>\n

Burden, an heiress who shared the story<\/a> of her split from hedge fund executive Henry Davis in her book, \u201cStrangers: A Memoir of Marriage,\u201d made a recent appearance on Molly Sims\u2019 podcast,\u00a0\u201cLipstick on the Rim<\/a>,\u201d where she spoke about just how much her three kids were affected by her ex-husband\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

Two of the children weren\u2019t as immediately affected by the aftermath of the divorce \u2014 their oldest was staying with friends, and their middle child was in boarding school \u2014 but their youngest, Burden said, \u201creally wanted a bedroom\u201d at her father\u2019s new apartment.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was sending him links on Pottery Barn for her room,\u201d Burden explained of their daughter, who was 12 at the time. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he just really held firm about he was done with that stage of his life where he would parent a child in that way, with homework and dinners and all that kind of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

As she recounted in\u00a0her memoir, Davis told her that he wanted a divorce after she discovered he\u2019d been having an affair. <\/p>\n

They\u2019d been married for 20 years. <\/p>\n

He eventually moved into a two-bedroom apartment, then turned his spare bedroom into a home office.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s been the hardest part of this, and the most lasting part,\u201d Burden admitted.<\/p>\n

\"BelleBelle Burdin appeared on Molly Sims\u2019 podcast,\u00a0\u201cLipstick on the Rim,\u201d to discuss the downsides of what happened after her divorce was finalized. belleburden\/Instagram<\/p>\n

When Sims and her co-host, Emese Gormley, expressed disbelief at Davis\u2019 choice, Burden added, \u201cI should be clear that it\u2019s not a circumstance where he moved across the country and had a whole new family. He lives blocks away from us. He keeps in touch with the kids. He\u2019s very kind and sweet with them. But he was very clear that he was not going to do the day-to-day, apply to college, all that kind of thing. And that really was like a switch going off.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her book, Burden explained that when their children were young, she devoted all her time and energy to raising them while Davis focused on his career, often joking, \u201cI don\u2019t do bath, bed or homework.\u201d <\/p>\n

While he didn\u2019t deal with the daily work of\u00a0parenting, he did pay attention to them, she wrote, taking them on special outings and trips regularly.<\/p>\n

But in one of the conversations they had shortly after he left her, Burden wrote that he told her, \u201cYou can have the house and the apartment. You can have custody of the kids. I don\u2019t want it. I don\u2019t want any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burden had her lawyer send Davis a\u00a0custody agreement, one that gave them each 50\/50 custody, assuming he \u201cwould have realized his mistake\u201d in not seeking more time with their children by then. Instead, she wrote, he \u201creturned the document stripped of all his time, including vacations, holidays, weeks during the summer. He included only dinner on Thursday nights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WomanBurden said that while two of the children weren\u2019t impacted by the divorce, her youngest child \u201creally wanted a bedroom\u201d at her father\u2019s new apartment, which was denied. belleburden\/Instagram<\/p>\n

She admitted that she believes he genuinely thought he was being \u201cselfless\u201d by not formalizing the agreement and that he argued their children were old enough to decide for themselves when they wanted to see him. <\/p>\n

For bigger moments, like when their son had surgery, she said that he showed up, but \u201cfor everyday issues, he responded with irritation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sims asked Burden during her podcast whether Davis had ever spoken to her about what happened and why he distanced himself so firmly from her and their children.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only things he\u2019s ever said were right at the beginning,\u201d she answered. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018I felt like a switch went off. I feel like a switch has gone off.’\u201d<\/p>\n

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About a year after the split, she said she texted him late one night seeking answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he said, \u2018I wish I had an answer for you. It\u2019s not your fault. Something broke in me.\u2019 And that\u2019s the most I\u2019ve gotten. And that\u2019s where my head has to rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that when she thinks about it, she envisions the switch going off, \u201cbut also like he was playing this role of\u00a0husband and father, and he wanted to play it, and he was all in. And then, like an actor on a stage, he just was like, \u2018I\u2019m done with this role,\u2019 takes off the costume, leaves the stage and can\u2019t do it gracefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sims asked how the children are coping with not having Davis in their lives as a true father figure, and Burden said, \u201cThey are amazing because they love him, and they\u2019re protective of him, and they\u2019re actually very good now at reaching out to him to do things that are comfortable for him, like going to a hockey game or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said they\u2019re \u201cwonderful in navigating that,\u201d but added, \u201cFor me as a mother, I think the biggest challenge for me is to acknowledge their reality, to say \u2018this is what\u2019s happening, this is unusual, that you do not live with your dad\u2019 \u2026 So I would say to my 12-year-old, \u2018Your dad, I don\u2019t know why, but he can\u2019t create a home for you right now. And that has to do with him, and that\u2019s not you.’\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Davis\u2019 reaction to the book\u2019s release, Burden admitted that she\u2019s heard he\u2019s \u201cnot happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

She first published a snippet of her story in an essay for a column in\u00a0The New York Times<\/a>, which he had to sign off on \u2014 she said she thought \u201che didn\u2019t really see anything wrong with the narrative, like, you\u2019re a man, you\u2019re allowed to leave in this way.\u201d But now that, as Sims put it, \u201cthe whole world, every woman in America hates you,\u201d he\u2019s \u201csurprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018I don\u2019t think I come off well in this,’\u201d Burden shared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belle Burden nearly lost everything in a\u00a0dramatic divorce, but for her, the hardest part was the fallout her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9830,488,157,9,11,10,7994],"class_list":{"0":"post-178723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-celebrity-divorces","9":"tag-celebrity-marriages","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-podcasts"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}