Pilot facing ruin as he lands a £600k bill after losing paternity battle
A FORMER British Airways captain has been ordered to pay £600,000 after a senior judge ruled that he is the father of his ex-wife’s teenage daughter.
Richard Wilmot faces financial ruin after losing a paternity battle with his third wife Viki Maughan.
Mr Justice Mostyn said it was “99.999999 per cent” certain that Captain Wilmot fathered the girl, now 18, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
In his ruling at the Family Division of the High Court in London, the judge attacked Captain Wilmot’s “utter folly” for pursuing Mother Viki Maughan and her ex-husband Richard Wilmot attending hearings. Right, the £800,000 house in Somerset the pilot bought for new family the costly case. He also banned the 62-year-old, who now works for Turkish Airlines, from sending e-mails to Ms Maughan’s lawyer after she accused him of a stalking campaign.
The four-times married pilot had accused his third wife of being “a liar” and claimed her secret lover fathered the girl.
But the judge ruled that a new kind of DNA test carried out in Germany proved for certain that Captain Wilmot was her father.
The judge ordered him to pay £115,000 in back maintenance, almost £25,000 to put through university and in legal costs.
The judge also ruled that he should pay other legal bills and the cost of a receiver who has been working to recover funds from his assets, making a total of £593,598.
He has had his pension, bank account and properties seized.
The judge said: “The amount of costs is nearly three times as much as the amount of child maintenance which shows the utter folly of the course of action adopted by Captain Wilmot.”
Even Captain Wilmot’s legal team had warned: “This case could bankrupt you.”
He and Ms Maughan lived in an idyllic £800,000 oasthouse in Cranbrook, Kent, but separated in the late 1990s.
Captain Wilmot later remarried and set up his new family in another £800,000 home in Alcombe, Somerset.
Earlier hearings revealed that he also owned a £500,000 18thcentury listed house in Dunster, Somerset, and had property on the Isle of Man.
The ruling was made in January but only published this week. the girl £290,000