Divorce from Wife No. 2 — Elizabeth
Fliehr left his wife in February 2005 for his "safety, health and wellbeing."
In the divorce settlement, Elizabeth accused Fliehr of "cruel and barbarous treatment," which included all of the following: abandoning the family, failing to provide love or affection, slapping her, kicking her, choking her, biting her, pulling her hair, verbal and emotional abuse, demeaning her in public, exposing his genitalia to the parties' friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers, excessive use of alcohol and prescription drugs, steroid use and attendant bouts of rage and violence, adultery, exposing the children to his "paramour," crippling them financially because of his spendthrift ways, starting a fistfight with his son Reid at a wedding reception, taking his son to a strip club and serving him alcohol, opening up wrestling scars in order to appear bloody after he called the police on her, insulting her friends with racial slurs, bragging about the size of his genitalia, calling Beth fat, old, and a slut, accusing her of dressing "sexily" for other men, saying she would be "nothing in this town" without him, demanding sex, and, finally, forcing her to have sex.
She withstood it all, she noted, despite suffering from a cracked lumbar, osteopenia, and high cholesterol, and stood by Fliehr "in the midst of his nervous breakdown and frequent anxiety attacks." Not to mention the times she played his "loyal wife" during skits, bleached his hair, picked out his wardrobe, and helped in developing the "Nature Boy" persona.
In turn, Fliehr had some accusations of his own. Elizabeth, he said, was emotionally unstable, "as verbally abusive as any person [he'd] ever known," and physically violent. She spoke in a vile and profane manner, using the word "fuck" as a "noun, adjective, adverb, exclamatory remark and in every other way one can imagine." She told her kids to "fuck off" and told Fliehr to "get fucked." She projected her weaknesses and faults on others, was "mentally and physically slovenly," and lounged around the house. She was mean-spirited, belligerent, and had nothing nice to say about anyone. Further, she refused to engage in a meaningful or intimate relationship, and even encouraged him to look outside the marriage. She would often assault him in an attempt to provoke a fight, and was compulsive in her habit of making things up about Fliehr to humiliate him.
In her original affidavit, Elizabeth gave some insight to the couple's lifestyle and subsequent debts. She and Fliehr were accustomed to spending $5,500 per month on clothing and more than $2,000 per month on dining out, as well as $750 per month for a home lease that had expired. In Fliehr's response, he noted that Elizabeth had requested $17,000 per month for child support, despite the fact that both children were grown and out of the house, and $950 per month in gas. These demands were curtailed in later versions of the affidavit.
The Fliehrs acquired more than $750,000 in jewelry throughout the course of their marriage. He owned 20 guns — nine Magnums, four shotguns, four rifles, one 9mm semiautomatic pistol, and two other 9mm handguns.
But the truly lasting legacy of the marriage, especially for Fliehr, would be debt. Before the settlement was finalized, the couple already owed more than a million dollars. Most of those debts stayed with Fliehr and were aggravated when Elizabeth was awarded a lump sum of $140,000 and $15,000 per month in alimony for two years (a total that declined gradually as the years went by). Fliehr would eventually owe her more than $700,000. Combined, they were also liable for $1.15 million in taxes.
Lost somewhere were the two children, particularly Reid, who Fliehr admitted had "significant difficulties in the past two years, some of which are the result of the dysfunctional family dynamic in our home." He had been arrested during the divorce proceedings (he was bailed out by Fliehr's lawyer), and Fliehr attributed this at least partly to his upbringing. Reid Fliehr has since been arrested for assault and battery, possession of black tar heroin, and DWI. Ashley Fliehr, too, would clash with the law. In 2008, she was arrested for kicking a police officer after her father got in a fistfight with her boyfriend.
Each child used a Yukon Denali, Jet Skis, a Sundancer boat, and a Land Rover between them.
In April 2005, the IRS began to seize Fliehr's WWE earnings to pay back taxes.
In November, while stuck in a Thanksgiving weekend traffic jam, Fliehr was charged with assault after a motorist on I-485 in North Carolina said Fliehr grabbed him by the neck and kicked the vehicle's door. Witnesses to the incident never showed up for court, and the case was dropped.
2006: Gary Wright of the Charlotte Observer reported that Elizabeth's attempt to have Fliehr held in contempt for not sharing his Carolina Panthers season tickets failed.
A company called Conbraco Industries, which manufactures water valves, filed a suit against Fliehr for repayment of a $300,000 loan. According to a source close to the situation, Conbraco provided Fliehr with the financing to open 10 Gold's Gyms. When the gyms were sold or closed, Fliehr still owed more than $200,000. He stopped making his regular payments in April 2003.
Conbraco eventually received a favorable judgment; Fliehr owed them $185,000 plus interest from 2003 and $10,000 in attorney's fees.
Fink's Jewelers filed an action against Fliehr for $81,000 plus interest. Receipts show that Fliehr bought at least $76,000 of jewelry in a four-month period between November 2004 and February 2005. The case is ongoing.
On May 27, Fliehr married his third wife, Tiffany Vandemark. As his marriage to Elizabeth came to an end, he allegedly cashed in an annuity to buy a $100,000 engagement ring for Tiffany. He also bought her a Louis Vuitton bag and a Rolex watch. The wrestler Triple H was his best man.
2007: Greg Leon, who owns seven restaurants in South Carolina, loaned Fliehr $47,750 in October. According to Leon, Fliehr and Tiffany visited him at the time of the loan to decide on collateral. Fliehr offered to give him the engagement ring off Tiffany's finger, but a female friend of Leon's balked at the notion, and Leon reluctantly said no.
"I should have taken the ring," he said, "but that's just degrading." Instead, Fliehr gave him a Rolex watch, a motorcycle, and a boat. When it became clear that the debt wouldn't be repaid, Leon sold the Rolex. The boat and motorcycle, however, turned out to have no proper title. The boat is at a marina and the motorcycle stays in Leon's garage. A South Carolina judge awarded Leon a full judgment against Fliehr in early 2008, but the full amount hasn't been repaid.
When asked what it was like dealing with Fliehr, Leon said he regrets ever having done business in the first place. "I thought he was an honorable man."
But Fliehr had been a victim, too. Earlier in the year, he and his ex-wife finally began to realize the extent of their financial mismanagement. They filed a complaint against Scott Storick (among others), a man who had been their financial advisor and had gradually milked them in a staggering multiyear process.
The Storick Episodes
In the simple version of the story, alleged in a lawsuit, Storick repeatedly convinced Elizabeth to purchase replacement life insurance policies for herself and Fliehr. He told her that it would be a better deal for both, when the truth (speaking broadly) is that life insurance policies accrue money as they age, and prematurely dumping one before it pays off is a waste of money.
The problems began in 1994. At the time, Fliehr had whole life insurance with Guardian, a low-risk policy that accrued value over time. The beneficiaries were Fliehr's parents and Elizabeth. Scott Chamberlain, a representative of Principal Life, convinced the Fliehrs to switch their coverage to a universal life policy by showing that the premium payments would be less and the death benefit more. What he didn't explain was that because universal life policies oftentimes fluctuate more wildly with the market, less cash is guaranteed. Also, the new policy essentially meant that the insurance company could charge higher premiums if they determined over time that Fliehr — already an aging professional wrestler who would later admit to using steroids — was increasingly likely to die.
When Fliehr and Elizabeth figured out what happened, Storick entered the equation. Also a Principal Life agent, he "exhibited great concern" about Chamberlain's mismanagement and guided the Fliehrs into buying a Principal whole life policy. But he left out the fact that Fliehr's original Guardian policy, with all its accrued value, had yet to expire and could still be used. Instead, he led them through the process of surrendering that policy in favor of the new one. The new annual premium was more than twice the Guardian rate, and Storick benefited from the commissions. (The policy was put in Elizabeth's name "to prevent Mr. Fliehr from borrowing against the cash value of the policy.")
Storick became close to the couple as time went on. He was their main financial advisor and became so trusted that "Mrs. Fliehr confided to him the combination of her home safe."
That's when the policy churning began. In 1998, he sold Elizabeth a life insurance policy from Guardian, his new company. When he became a Travelers agent in 1999, he convinced Beth to replace both of Fliehr's Principal policies with Travelers universal policies. In 2000, he had Beth replace her own policy with a Travelers option.
Every time he made a switch, Storick approached Elizabeth as a friend, promising her that he'd found a better deal. Instead, Fliehr and his wife forfeited any accrued money, exposed themselves to greater risk, and lined the pockets of Storick and his successive companies.
In 2002, when Storick went to General American, it happened again. Two new policies for Fliehr.
By the time it was over and the divorce was settled, every active policy was surrendered to Elizabeth, though none of them were worth anything like their purported payout value. Fliehr was left without life insurance (at a time in his life when he was becoming less and less insurable) and with a net cash loss around $270,000.
But it didn't end there. If it was so easy for Storick to churn their life insurance policies, why not sell them annuities too? An annuity is a stock market investment, with the idea that at a specified date you'll receive annual payments. Many investors use them as retirement security, but the key aspect of an annuity is that it acts slowly. There's rarely an immediate benefit, and taking money out early often comes with associated penalties.
By telling Elizabeth that annuities were good substitutes for a savings account, he convinced her to buy 12 annuities for $1.24 million between 1994 and 2003.
In one particularly ruthless case in 2003, he advised Elizabeth to repay money borrowed from Fliehr's mother by purchasing two final annuities totaling more than $700,000. He didn't tell her that annuities are perhaps the worst kind of investment for debt purposes since they take too long to pay out. In the end, almost all of this money was levied by the IRS for back taxes.
In early 2000, Storick told Elizabeth that in order to use $150,000 she'd made from the sale of Fliehr's gyms as collateral for a different loan, she would have to put the money in a mutual fund. This advice, nearly absurd in its inaccuracy, was swallowed hook, line, and sinker. She listened, and lost $53,000 to the market by 2003.
After the divorce Fliehr received less than $150,000 on all annuities, after an initial investment of $1.24 million.
Storick couldn't keep the Fliehrs to himself. In 1999, he introduced Fliehr to Peter Wirth, the contractor who would later sue the family for unpaid work. Within a year, Storick and Wirth convinced Fliehr to invest $220,000 in a commercial real estate project. Next came a new project and an investment of $142,000. Then another for $101,000. A series of maneuvers by Wirth followed (including contracting the construction of an office building to his own company, Testa & Wirth, at a discount rate). By the time Fliehr's divorce went through, he'd made no return on the property investments and had lost almost $150,000.
Fliehr sued both men, eventually settling out of court for $230,000. Of that total, $60,000 went to his lawyers, and the remaining $170,000 went to pay part of the $708,000 he owed Elizabeth in back alimony payments.
After it was all over, Elizabeth Fliehr still considered Scott Storick a close friend.
2008: A Charlotte golf club, The Tournament Players Club of Piper Glen, received a $5,000 judgment against Fliehr for unpaid membership fees.
Blair Academy, a New Jersey private school attended by Reid, won a $33,859 judgment for unpaid tuition.
Chris Porter, a business partner, sued Fliehr for $115,000 on a $140,000 loan.
According to Fliehr's response to the lawsuit, Porter had convinced Fliehr to start a company called Ric Flair Finance, which was "intended to use the fame popularity of Fliehr in order to build a lead generation company for mortgages." Porter told Fliehr that they didn't need a lender or broker license to start the online company, which would generate leads and pass them to lenders for a fee. Fliehr advertised the company on WWE television broadcasts and before a NASCAR race in Delaware. When RFF finally launched, the "business model … turned out to be completely illegal." North Carolina shut down the company for noncompliance.
C&G Leasing sued Fliehr for $130,000 plus interest owed on a loan to rent gym equipment. In a deposition with C&G lawyers, Fliehr said he stopped making payments because "I couldn't afford to make them," and continued: "I'm saying that the crux of the matter is, I will make it good. I just can't do it today. That's where I'm at with a couple other things. … Right now, I can't do it. I'm going to court for a divorce on Tuesday, and things are tight again. The last divorce cost me $5 million. This one is costing me a lot, too. I never really saw it coming."
William K. Diehl, Fliehr's former attorney, demanded $180,000 in fees. "In the past, you have promised to pay me, but you have failed to do so," Diehl wrote in a letter. "I will also want you to bring me up to date on exactly the status of your obligations to Beth. You mentioned last night that she's excited that you have left Tiffany and she wants you to come home. Great idea!"
The letter also reveals that Fliehr signed a consulting deal with WWE and was planning to start a reality television show.
In August, Fliehr signed a security financing agreement with Conbraco. As collateral for the $185,000 he owed the company, he put up two championship belts, wrestling gear, a Rolex watch given to him by Shawn Michaels engraved "To Be the Man," framed magazine covers, an autographed poster of Michael Jordan, a poster of Fliehr and Vince McMahon, and any future earnings from the Storick lawsuit (these were never collected by Conbraco since they went to paying Elizabeth's alimony).
In September, Fliehr got in a fight with the 22-year-old boyfriend of his daughter Ashley at an apartment in Chapel Hill, N.C. When officers responded, they found Fliehr bloodied and bruised, lying on a bed. They described him as "elusive," and said he "just wanted everything forgotten." The Associated Press reported that Ashley "became belligerent and kicked an officer." She was charged with resisting arrest.