After nearly 24 years of marriage, billionaire hedge fund founder John Overdeck and his wife, Laura, are going through a messy divorce that could become one of the most expensive in American history.
John is the co-founder of Manhattan-based investment firm Two Sigma, which manages roughly $80 billion in assets. At the centre of the dispute is John’s stake in the company, which Laura values at roughly $6.2 billion and argues should be included in the couple’s marital assets, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
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But there’s one thing they didn’t do before getting married: sign a prenup.
John has offered Laura $723 million to settle their divorce. But she believes she’s entitled to considerably more: roughly $2.2 billion, or 35% of what she estimates his stake is worth.
“Laura, I think, was alongside me for all of this, and I think it is fair that she received some amount of the appreciation, the net appreciation that occurred during the marriage,” John testified in court, according to the New York Post.
“On reflection, I think that $600 million approximately is a fair amount of that appreciation for her to receive in final judgment,” he added.
The $600 million figure refers to what John considers Laura’s share of the growth in his Two Sigma stake, rather than the entire proposed settlement. The rest of his offer accounts for other marital assets.
The prenup they never signed
According to the WSJ, John proposed to Laura in March 2002, shortly before Two Sigma began investing with more than $20 million in capital. By the time they married later that year, the firm was managing roughly $350 million.
Since the couple didn’t have a prenup and under New Jersey law, the increase in value of a business during a marriage can be subject to equitable distribution, depending on the circumstances. That means the wealth John built could potentially be divided between them.
Prenups are becoming more common especially among younger Americans. A May 2026 Harris Poll conducted for Bloomberg found that 53% of engaged or married Americans under 45 had signed one.
While prenups may have once carried a negative connotation, they give couples a chance to decide how their money, property and other assets would be divided if they divorce, rather than leaving those decisions up to state laws and the courts.