Wall Street billionaire John Paulson is all smiles in sun-soaked family portrait posted to Instagram on Friday as he is seen wrapping his arm around his glamorous, much-younger fiancée who is holding their baby daughter.
As the 69-year-old hedge fund titan posed with 36-year-old Alina de Almeida and their five-month-old baby girl Jacqueline, his estranged wife Jenny Zaharia, 55, is preparing for another round in the brutal, high-stakes divorce battle that’s already dragged on for four years – and shows no signs of ending.
And while Paulson is publicly embracing his new beginning, behind courtroom doors he’s fighting to keep the mother of his first two daughters from claiming a massive chunk of the $4.7 billion fortune he says is meant for his girls and not his ex-wife.
In the the couple’s first public appearance with their child, Paulson, dressed in a navy blazer and shades, beams as he cuddles baby Jacqueline – named after his mother – while Almeida glows in a white beachside ensemble.
The pair got engaged in April 2023 after dating for two-and-a-half-years.
De Almeida, who has a degree in Food & Nutrition Sciences, is the founder of health counseling company, Effective Lifestyle.
Paulson, who famously made $20 billion betting against the housing market before the 2008 crash, is still in the midst of a high profile divorce from his ex-wife, Jenny.
Paulson filed for divorce from Jenny in 2021 after 21 years of marriage and two daughters, Danielle, 22, and Giselle, 20.
Wall Street billionaire John Paulson is all smiles in sun-soaked family portrait posted to Instagram on Friday as he is seen wrapping his arm around his glamorous, much-younger fiancée who is holding their baby daughter
Paulson, dressed in a navy blazer and shades, beams as he cuddles baby Jacqueline – named after his mother
The pair got engaged in April 2023 after dating for two-and-a-half-years
But instead of it ending quietly, the split has spiraled into one of the most acrimonious and expensive divorces in recent financial history.
At the heart of the legal feud is a series of family trusts – allegedly containing more than $2 billion – which Paulson claims were created to benefit their daughters.
Jenny says otherwise and alleges Paulson hid millions in a ‘secret trust’ during their marriage and is now trying to lock her out of assets she’s entitled to.
She is suing him, arguing the trusts were structured to ‘evade his lawful obligations in the event of divorce.’
Paulson, for his part, says Jenny’s legal crusade could devastate their daughters’ future, slicing their inheritance in half just to secure a bigger payout for herself.
‘Her attempt to break the trusts will cost her daughters about $1 billion in future taxes and rob them of their inheritance,’ said Paulson’s attorney, James Smith.
‘For someone who will be one of the richest women in America regardless of how this ends, her greed is unconscionable.’
Jenny, a Romanian-born former secretary, was described by Paulson in a 2009 biography as ‘a breath of fresh air.’ The pair met when she worked for him in his hedge fund office and married in 2000.
John and Jenny Paulson had been married for 24 years. He filed for divorce in 2021
The former couple were seen at the US Open tennis in New York in September 2018
Paulson’s ex-wife (pictured with him) turned down a multi-billion-dollar settlement from the hedge fund billionaire and decided to take the divorce battle to court
Paulson announced his engagement to new love Alina De Almeida in April 2023 and around the same time the couple hosted a fundraiser at his Palm Beach mansion attended by Donald Trump and his wife Melania
Now, two decades and one of the world’s largest fortunes later, she’s locked in a bare-knuckle legal brawl with her former boss and husband.
Her attorneys deny claims of greed, instead accusing Paulson of ‘spousal abuse by stealth’ – allegedly siphoning funds into opaque financial vehicles during their marriage.
They say Jenny was never made aware of the trusts and are demanding that Paulson formalize his supposed offer to settle in writing.
‘Put your offer in writing, in the form of a court-filed public stipulation,’ her attorney Robert Cohen told DailyMail.com in 2024. ‘We ask him now, on the record: Yes or no.’
As his legal team sparred in court, Paulson was busy making headlines for other reasons.
In April 2023, he proposed to Almeida, a striking dietician and founder of a lifestyle company, after two and a half years of dating.
he engagement coincided with the couple co-hosting a mega-fundraiser at Paulson’s $110 million Palm Beach estate, raking in over $50 million for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
De Almeida sips on some juice as she poses in an off-the-shoulder top showing her beauty
Alina debuted her massive engagement ring at the 2024 fundraiser which raked in an estimated $50.5 million for the Trump presidential campaign
The 2006 letter that Paulson says proves that his Romanian-born wife knew of his ‘secret tust’
Almeida’s name appeared on the invitation alongside Paulson’s, and she debuted a massive diamond ring at the event.
Tickets for the glitzy evening went as high as $814,600 for a seat at Trump’s table.
Trump and Melania attended, as did a slate of mega-donors and elite political operatives, turning the couple’s mansion, a sprawling 30,000-square-foot palace on the Intracoastal Waterway, into ground zero for Trump’s 2024 money machine.
Last year Jenny recently won a key legal victory when a New York appeals court rejected Paulson’s motion to close oral arguments from public view, setting the stage for a courtroom clash with the world watching.
Adding another twist, Paulson’s legal team has raised concerns that the daughters’ share of the trust could be ‘diluted’ if he and Almeida have more children.
While Jacqueline may currently be a beneficiary of the trust, the idea that new offspring could impact the daughters’ inheritance has become another point of contention – especially as Paulson offered, in rejected settlements, to ‘remove future spouses and children’ from the trust’s terms.
Jenny, left, and John Paulson have two teenage daughters, Danielle, 22, (right) and Giselle, 20, (pictured as a family in 2021 in The Hamptons)
Paulson, who is worth $4.7billion, moved on with dietician Alina De Almeida shortly after splitting with Jenny
Jenny’s team argues this shows Paulson’s intentions were never concrete – and that he’s trying to rewrite the financial legacy of a marriage that spanned more than two decades.
With neither side backing down, a public trial now looms that could see explosive financial records, internal family communications, and decades-old trust documents all laid bare.
Meanwhile, Paulson continues to project the image of being a doting father. But in divorce court, it’s Jenny who still holds the cards and potentially billions of dollars in leverage.