Flobelle ‘Belle’ Fairbanks Burden once enjoyed an idyllic existence with her wealthy husband, Henry Davis, and their three children.
However, her world turned upside down when Davis, a prominent financier, confessed to having an affair with a younger woman and abruptly ended their marriage.
In the bitter aftermath of their unexpected breakup, Davis took a drastic step to distance himself entirely from their children.
The 60-year-old millionaire purchased a modest two-bedroom apartment in New York City, deliberately too cramped to accommodate his three kids.
Burden, who hails from the prestigious Vanderbilt lineage and works as an attorney, revealed that their 12-year-old daughter was particularly affected, yearning for a room of her own in his new abode.
‘She was sending him links on Pottery Barn for her room,’ Burden, 56, said during a recent appearance on Lipstick on the Rim podcast.
Nonetheless, Davis maintained that he had moved on from that chapter of his life, including the responsibilities of parenting, homework assistance, and family dinners.
‘That’s been the hardest part of this, and the most lasting part,’ Burden said.
Adding insult to injury, Davis also turned his one spare bedroom into a home office.
Society heiress Flobelle ‘Belle’ Fairbanks Burden, 56, made an appearance on the ‘Lipstick on the Rim’ podcast, to share how her children handled the divorce
Burden explained while two of her kids were not immediately impacted by the split, her 12-year-old longed for a room in Davis’s new NYC apartment
Society heiress Burden with her husband of 20 years, 60-year-old Henry Davis, they abruptly split after he revealed he was having an affair with a younger woman
While the podcast hosts were stunned, Burden assured them the move was ‘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’s very kind and sweet with them,’ the heiress said.
‘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,’ she added.
Burden previously wrote in her memoir that Davis had long been ‘career-focused,’ while she devoted herself to raising their children.
Though he didn’t handle most of the parenting, she said the financier stayed involved, regularly taking the kids out on trips.
But she wrote that shortly after the split, Davis told her: ‘You can have the house and the apartment. You can have custody of the kids. I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it.’
Assuming this was a mistake, she asked her lawyer to draft a 50-50 custody agreement, but Davis returned it, stripping away his time and vacations, according to Burden.
‘He included only dinner on Thursday nights,’ she wrote.
Burden with her daughter, Georgia Davis, who celebrated her 21st birthday last month
The 56-year-old at her $4.7 million Martha’s Vineyard holiday home with her son Finn
Burden unboxes her new memoir, which offers details about how her husband’s secret relationship was unearthed
When Davis walked out, he let Burden keep both their apartment in NYC and the Martha’s Vineyard estate (file photo of the latter area)
Burden said she believes her ex-husband thought he was being ‘selfless’ by not formalizing custody, arguing the kids were old enough to choose when to see him.
Lipstick on the Rim podcast host Molly Sims asked how the heiress’s children were coping with the upheaval, and she said they’re doing ‘amazing.’
‘They are amazing because they love him, and they’re protective of him, and they’re 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,’ she said.
‘For me as a mother, I think the biggest challenge for me is to acknowledge their reality, to say “this is what’s happening, this is unusual, that you do not live with your dad.”
‘So I would say to my 12-year-old, “Your dad, I don’t know why, but he can’t create a home for you right now. And that has to do with him, and that’s not you.”‘
