TEENAGE RENT LAND
Tycoons battle over kids’ expenses at manse
A California investor on Tuesday lost a bid to lower support payments to his exwife after she claimed she needed $37,500 a month to pay rent to her new billionaire hubby for her teenage kids.
“I have and always will pay for all my children’s needs in excess — I just don’t feel it’s right for me to pay for half of Mr. Salzman’s mansion,” the investor, Andrew Left, told The Post.
Andrea Left last month married Alan Salzman, an early investor in Tesla who pocketed roughly $2.3 billion when the electric-car maker went public in 2010.
In Left’s prenup with Salzman, the 63-year-old founder of Vantage-Point Capital Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, she promised to pay half the monthly upkeep of their $20 million Beverly Hills mansion.
But the 46-year-old newlywed has to share in the upkeep only as long as her two teenage kids spend more than 50 percent of the time in the home, according to the pre-nup.
In a deposition last week, Salzman estimated that total household expenses — which include mortgage, taxes and gardening — would be roughly $33,000 a month, or $400,000 a year.
Andrea Left’s portion, therefore, would come to about $16,666 a month.
Such an arrangement makes the upkeep payments seem like rent payments.
“It’s interesting that the new husband is specifying her contribution based on the time her kids are there, versus just saying each party pays half of all the household expenses,” Lauri Martin, a California divorce lawyer not involved in the case, told The Post.
Andrew Left argues that Salzman is effectively asking that his teenage kids pay rent.
With his ex now married to a billionaire, Andrew Left went to court to try to cut his monthly child support payments to $10,000.
But a judge on Tuesday ruled in his ex-wife’s favor.
In addition to paying child support, Left said he fully funds the children’s tuition and health care — something he will continue to do.
The noted short-seller as recently as July has been shorting Tesla.
It is usually difficult to lower child support payments.
He’s “not going to pay less because she remarried,” Martin said. “Each parent has an obligation to support their children based upon their income.”
Andrea’s court victory on Tuesday wasn’t the first time she has won a court battle against her ex.
In 2009, one year after she divorced Andrew, Andrea seemed to get married to her new love.
A wedding ceremony was held, Andrea wore a wedding dress, and she told her kids she was getting married.
Andrew seemed to be able to get out from under hefty spousal support payouts.
But Andrea never applied for a wedding license — so was not legally married. She called it a “commitment ceremony” — thus Andrew had to continue his $32,547 monthly spousal support payments.
Andrea’s lawyer declined to comment.
For Andrew Left, whose short of Tesla has been a big money loser, the court loss simply gave him another, more personal reason, to hate Tesla.
“Tesla investors find more than one way to stick it to short-sellers,” Left told The Post.
Salzman did not respond to requests to comment. His lawyer, reached by phone, told The Post: “I am not going to talk to any newspaper about the work this firm does.”