Ruth and Bernie Madoff: Ignorance is Wedded Bliss?

Everything may finally be over for Bernie Madoff, but things are certainly not finished for anyone else. The victims of his scheme continue to hope that some of the money resurfaces, prosecutors have suggested that up to 10 more new charges could be coming down the pipeline, and then, of course, there is Ruth Madoff, who was evicted by U.S. marshals Thursday from her $7 million penthouse that she shared with Bernie

Marriages have been in the news plenty this month: Sarah Palin and her "first dude" / trusted (and maybe only) advisor; Mark Sanford's grim declaration that he was ready to work on falling back in love with his wife; Zahra Rahnavard and Mir Hossein Mousavi's two-for-one campaign in Iran. What all of those very different marriages have in common, though, is that they are -- or were, at least, in Sanford's case -- very much joint professional partnerships, in addition to being marriages. Only the Madoffs seem to want to convince us that his professional life had nothing to do with her.

The Madoffs are older than most of the other couples I mentioned, and may have come of age when the expectations of what barriers should be put up between career and spouse were different. It's not quite that simple, though. Among the rolls of Bernie's investors are plenty of Ruth Madoff's friends and associates -- even her bone marrow charity. Do I think Ruth Madoff was directly involved in her husband's Ponzi scheme or that she knew precisely what was happening? Probably not. But, being unaware of how your ill-gotten wealth came to be is certainly no justification for keeping it, nor does it absolve her from any responsibility.

Ruth Madoff is not in a particularly enviable position right now. But, lest we feel too much sympathy for her, remember that she did let millions of dollars be speedily transferred over to her name when it became clear that the house that Bernie built was coming down upon their heads -- seemingly more the actions of a woman desperate to preserve the lifestyle she had become accustomed to than a woman reeling from the finding that her husband of 20 years had deceived her and everyone they knew. While she did eventually give up her claim to approximately $80 million, she still has $2.5 million left over that prosecutors have agreed not to touch -- a much better residual than plenty of Madoff's victims were left with.