Holder, Kerry to Take Pay Cut

[MADem]

40. No--not true--Kerry only owns half of one of their homes--the rest are Teresa's.

Don't believe me--ask our friends at Snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/homes.asp

John and/or Teresa Kerry do own several valuable properties in the U.S., including:

A five-story, twelve-room brownstone townhouse (with six fireplaces, a rooftop deck, and an elevator) in Boston's Beacon Hill. This home is John Kerry's main residence and was assessed at a value of $6.6 million in 2003
A nine-room colonial home on a 90-acre family farm in Fox Chapel near Pittsburgh. This home is Teresa Kerry's longtime residence, where she lived while was married to John Heinz and where she raised her three children. It is valued at $3.7 million.
A ski/vacation home located near the banks of the Big Wood River in Ketchum, Idaho, fashioned from a reassembled barn originally built in England in 1485 and brought to Idaho by Teresa Heinz Kerry's late husband. It was purchased for $4.9 million in 1988.
A three-story, five-bedroom waterfront estate near the Brant Point Lighthouse in Nantucket's harbor, where John and Teresa Kerry were married in 1995. The beachfront property is valued at $9.1 million.
A 23-room townhouse in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., valued at $4.7 million.

The aggregate value of these five homes is roughly $29 million, but the claim that John Kerry "owns" all of these properties is problematic. John and Teresa Kerry signed a prenuptial agreement and have kept their premarital assets separate. The Boston townhouse (which John Kerry mortgaged in 2003 to finance his presidential bid) is the only one of these homes that they own as a couple; the other four belonged to Teresa before her 1995 marriage to John Kerry, and some of them are even still listed under the name of her late husband.

John Kerry has zero control over the Heinz fortune (or the Heinz real estate). Even if she dies.

I'm sure he'd be permitted to live in the manner to which he has become accustomed, but I'm also sure that he can't spend anything from John Heinz's fortune unless she specifically authorizes it.

He's not "poor" by a long shot--he's probably worth a couple of hundred million. But that pales in comparison to the Heinz empire. That's the point I'm making, here.

He isn't the janitor's kid, but in the circles where he travels, he's most definitely a Lord Grantham. The Missus is the heiress (as a consequence of her marriage to the love of her life, Mister Heinz) and that money is sheltered for the Heinz children.