Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen have been a strong couple since the moment they went public and it hasn’t always been easy for them. Two months after announcing their relationship, Brady’s ex-girlfriend, Briget Moynahan, announced that she was pregnant with his child.
Through this challenging time, Bündchen stayed with Brady and the two have been together for 16 years. Aside from Jack, the child Brady shares with Moynahan, Brady and Bündchen share two children together, 12 and nine years of age.
Even with rampant divorce rumors in 2015 following “Deflategate,” Brady affirmed that he’s a very lucky man. He told People Magazine that, “I’ve been very blessed with support from my family and certainly her, and there’s no bigger supporter that I have than her and vice versa. I’ve been very blessed to have an incredible relationship with my life partner, and I don’t think anything will ever get in the way of that.”
After reading that quote, it might be shocking to hear the rumors that both Brady and Bündchen have both secured divorce lawyers. How did it get to this point? It might be worth it to look at all sides of the argument here.
Tom has chosen career over family
In 2020, Brady did an interview on ‘The Howard Stern Show’ that exposed where Bündchen was at mentally in the marriage after being together for over a decade. “A couple of years ago, she didn’t feel like I was doing my part for the family,” Brady said in the interview, further saying that hearing Bündchen’s issues were a wake-up call for him to focus more on family.
But did he? Brady continued to play football, a career that takes him away from his family for six months out of a year. That’s six months out of the year when Brady is training, playing, and traveling; leaving Bündchen to handle home matters on her own. Bündchen was so happy when Brady announced he was going to retire earlier this year that she wrote a long Instagram post about how proud she was.
Gisele “knew what she was getting into.”
This is something I’ve heard people say and I think that infuriates me. Could you imagine if Bündchen had said that she was going to go back to Brazil for six months out of the year to resume her modeling career and that Brady had to stay home with the kids on his own? She would never even make it to the airport because there would be people swarming her home with torches and pitchforks or canceling her on social media for being a mom who abandoned her family.
However, Brady gets to do it time and time again, and the argument is that he has always been a football player, so this is a consequence she was supposed to expect from him. Maybe that’s true, but Brady’s career has exceeded the normal football career. According to a study done by the RBC Sports Professional Group, the average playing career averages for seven years in the National Football League (NFL). Brady was drafted in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft by the New England Patriots.
Gisele has a higher net worth
If you compare their net worth on celebritynetworth.com, Bündchen is worth more than Brady. Brady is worth $250 million, with estimates predicting that it will reach $333 million by the end of the 2022 football season. Bündchen’s net worth is closer to $400 million, separate from Brady’s.
Could this be why Brady is constantly going back to his football career? Is it about ego? It doesn’t seem like the family he and Bündchen have created really needs the extra money. Brady has already been at 10 NFL Super Bowls, the only player to do so in history. The only other player who even came close is John Elway, who played in five Super Bowls. You would think Brady would be happy to go out on a win, and maybe he will get another one because his football ambition seems to be driving him more than the support from his family ever did.
At this point, they need to have a conversation
Conversation is supposed to be the key to any successful relationship. And it seems like they will have this conversation in court, which is very sad for all the life that they have experienced together. While divorce is very much a legal term for a breakup, things might be easier than we think because there are rumors that there is a prenup in place.
While the terms of the prenup are unknown to the public, the major question I wonder is how often Bündchen will be able to see Jack, the son that Brady shares with Moyahan, after the dust settles. While Bündchen has no biological ties, she has said that having him be a part of her life has changed her for the better.