Ex-wife begs judges to end longest ever divorce case
A MOTHER locked in Britain’s longest ever divorce case has begged judges to end the dispute between her and her millionaire ex-husband.
Former British Airways captain Richard Wilmot and third wife Viki Maughan have fought over the settlement for 16 years in a case that a judge said ‘beggars belief’.
Mr Wilmot, 62, who owns a string of properties, has claimed his ex-wife is ‘a liar’ and that their daughter was in fact the result of an extra-marital affair.
He denies he is liable for almost two decades of maintenance for the 18-year-old, despite a DNA test proving she is his daughter, and has refused to comply with a financial settlement reached in 2001.
He remained ‘absolutely convinced’ she is not his, London’s Appeal Court heard this week, and insisted his fight is an attempt to protect his new wife – his fourth – ‘from the wreckage of the past’.
Mr Wilmot was warned the case could bankrupt him. He has dipped into his pension fund to pay for it, a judge revealed.
Miss Maughan, 50, demanded he ‘accept reality’, asking judges to end the ordeal. Lady Justice Black, Lord Justice Sales and Lord Justice Moylan heard the pair lived in an £800,000 home in Cranbrook, Kent, before separating in the late 1990s.
Miss Maughan’s lawyers yesterday slammed Mr Wilmot for ‘playing technical games’ with the court and said his case was ‘utter nonsense’.
Jonathan Swift told judges: ‘Her sincere wish is that this court should dispose of this matter with as many restraining directions as possible, so that it may never be resurrected again. This is a pointless waste of time. A significant air of reality needs to descend in this case.’
Nicholas Bowen QC, for the pilot, said he had been wrongly painted as ‘a recalcitrant, evasive and deliberate non-payer of child maintenance’.
The judges reserved till a later date their decision on the appeal by Mr Wilmot, who now flies for Turkish Airlines and lives with his new family in Alcombe, Somerset.