Ivana Trump’s Divorce Was NEVER What America Was Allowed to See

New York, December 1987. Three years before Ivana Trump’s marriage ended, she signed an agreement containing ten different ways she could not publish its story without Donald Trump’s written permission: diary, memoir, letter, story, photograph, interview, article, essay, account, or description. America later watched their divorce explode across newspaper front pages and remembered Ivana as the woman who told everyone everything. In 1992, she went to court for greater control over what she could publish. She lost. Twenty-five years later, she finally released Raising Trump and described the marriage, the affair, and the divorce in her own words. Start with those ten words, because they reveal what the public spectacle concealed. Ivana was not permanently forbidden from speaking, and she did eventually publish her account. What she lost was the freedom to decide when her story appeared, what form it took, and whether she needed someone else’s permission. The settlement gave her money and gave Donald control over a page. The money was spent. The page remained on the record.