Paulina Porizkova found her husband dead. Then she received an envelope.

Paulina Porizkova was 19 years old when she met Ric Ocasek, 21 years her senior, on set of his music video Drive. At the time, the Cars lead singer "forgot to mention" he was married with kids, and Paulina thought she had met her "perfect soulmate".

Looking back as a 59-year-old woman, void of rose-coloured glasses, the Sports Illustrated model can now see the signs of control masked as love.

"Ric didn't really want me to model because he didn't want to share me with anybody," she told Mia Freedman on Mamamia's No Filter podcast. "Which I thought was such an incredibly romantic thing to do and say. I didn't realise quite how isolated I would get by acquiescing to his wishes."

In 1989, Paulina starred in a movie called Her Alibi alongside actor Tom Selleck. Ric would show up on set to keep a close eye on things. While her body rejected the overbearing proximity, the Vogue model ignored it.

Paulina was 19 years old when she met Ric, 21 years her senior. Image: Getty

"I couldn't really work. I couldn't really do my job with my boyfriend sort of breathing down my neck and telling me that I shouldn't get so close and don't look so into (Selleck)," she recalled.

"We had a lot of arguments during that movie because of all the things that Ric thought that I should do, instead of the things that the director thought I should do."

The Swedish-American model added: "My own personality, my own wishes were sort of completely immaterial. Director wants this, the producer wants this, and my boyfriend wants this. What do I want? I don't get a say."

Things between Paulina and Ric got particularly bad towards the end of their almost 30-year marriage.

"We were in a desert, blundering around alone, starving, thirsty and having absolutely lost sight of having once been a couple. It was terrible," the author described.

Not knowing how to get Ric's attention, Paulina suggested therapy, self-help books, and even vacations - to no avail.

"When your husband says, 'No, you do therapy, you go on vacation. I'm fine. I'm just gonna wait until you return to the woman I met, the 19 year old girl'. That's kind of not gonna happen."

After almost a decade of trying, Paulina "couldn't take it anymore".

"I went downstairs to tell him (it was over). I still was hoping that maybe it would wake him up, and he just kind of shrugged and went, 'Oh, okay, that's what you want. Fine.'"

The pair stayed living together with their two teen boys. But with Paulina dating someone else, she and Ric had become nothing but roommates.

Then he died.

Ric, who had hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, was at home recuperating after surgery when Paulina found him.

"Our two sons, Jonathan and Oliver, and I were making sure he was comfortable, ordering food and watching TV together," the actress wrote on Instagram in September 2019.

"I found him still asleep when bringing him his Sunday morning coffee. I touched his cheek to rouse him. It was then I realized that during the night he had peacefully passed on."

Speaking on No Filter, Paulina described it as "the most hideous moment of her life". Then another shock came her way.

"Three big envelopes arrived at the house, one for me and one for each of my sons," the Czech-born model told Mia.

"I opened it, and it said last will and testament. I'm barely processing anything and I've seen this note that sort of stuck in the front on top of it, and it just said in somebody's handwriting, 'my wife is not going to inherit anything, because she abandoned me'.

A note claimed that Paulina was removed from Ric's will. Image: Instagram/@paulinaporizkova

"I couldn't comprehend it. I just thought it was like a post it note that he had stuck on because he was pissed off or was having a bad day."

Ric – who had four children before he met Paulina from two previous marriages – also cut his first two sons out of the will. Family members were pitted against each other, and it became - as Paulina described it - "a shit show".

"I know my husband well enough to know that all these decisions were made sort of flippantly at the moment where he wasn't feeling it, where he was mad at somebody," she said. 

Paulina ended up successfully suing for her rightful share of the estate, but this was by no means a quick process. The 59-year-old was forced to compartmentalise her emotions for the sake of her kids.

"I saw my children grieving. They were so incredibly upset and shocked," she said. "I thought, first of all, I need to be their mom. Which meant I had to put aside my grief, and I had to put aside my anger, and I had to sort of process their grief with them."

Listen to the full episode below.