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Obama’s Gonna Need A Bigger October Surprise Than This
American Thinker
Rosslyn Smith
It looks like that Gloria Allred’s October Surprise is Maureen Stemberg, the woman who divorced the Staples founder a quarter of a century ago in a bitterly fought contest and who seems to try to re-litigate the matter every few years since then.
Ace of Spades located a less than sympathetic 2006 Boston Herald article in which the former Mrs. Stemberg was trying to embarrass her ex husband and his politically ambitious friend Mitt Romney into giving her more money because….. Well just because. (Link is to a posting of the Herald article on a blog. Original is behind a subscription firewall):
Maureen Sullivan Stemberg, ex-wife of Staples founder, sits in her $5,200 a month, 14th-floor, concierge-at-the-door, elegantly furnished Back Bay apartment and tells you she’s broke. She can’t work. She can’t afford a car, her medications, her rent, even the family springer spaniel, J.J., who she just gave away.
She produces doctors notes detailing medical woes: possible lupus, bouts of pneumonia requiring hospitalizations, a history of cancer, petit mal seizures, plus recommendations for thrice weekly psychotherapy and psychiatry. She says her insurance won’t cover mental health care.
“I’m going to be out on the street,” says Sullivan Stemberg, a tiny, 50-ish woman who alternates between an overanxious recitation of worries, and tears. “I’ve had a change of circumstances.”
And now she wants her ex-husband, Tom Stemberg, whose worth has been estimated at upwards of $150 million, to dramatically increase his support, guarantee health insurance forever and buy her another home in a concierge building. “I’m sicker and thinner every day,” she says. “I’m not asking for anything more than he did for his other wife and girlfriend.”
It seems that Maureen Staples sold half the Staples stock she received in the property settlement before the company went public. She also seems to have spent most that money on lawyers to further contest the settlement. The comments to a nonpolitical blog where the Herald article was posted back in 2006 under the title Should this wealthy executive’s ex wife get more money? are mostly negative.
