Pay up! Pilot loses 16-year divorce battle over child he always denied
A MILLIONAIRE pilot locked in a ‘ghastly’ 16-year feud with his ex-wife over the paternity of their daughter faces bankruptcy after judges finally told him to pay up.
Former British Airways captain Richard Wilmot, 62, has continually denied fathering his third wife’s 18-year- old child – despite a DNA test proving she is his.
He has pursued a bitter legal battle with Viki Maughan, 50, after branding his ex-wife ‘a liar’ and claiming the girl was the result of an extra-marital affair.
Miss Maughan demanded her former husband ‘ accept reality’ and pay the financial settlement they reached in 2001 plus nearly two decades of maintenance.
Yesterday, Lord Justice Moylan dismissed Mr Wilmot’s appeal against an earlier court ruling, and said the wife deserved some ‘finality’ as he told the pilot to pay up. It ends what is believed to be Britain’s longest battle over child maintenance.
But following his failed appeal, Mr Wilmot is liable to pay out on a string of financial orders made against him since 2010 and will also face an expensive legal bill.
Although he owns a string of plush properties, he has been warned by his legal team that the case could ‘bankrupt’ him.
The judge, sitting with Lady Justice Black and Lord Justice Sales, earlier heard that the former couple lived in an idyllic £800,000 country home in Cranbrook, Kent, before they separated in the late 1990s.
Mr Wilmot, who now flies for Turkish Airlines, has since remarried and lives in an £800,000 country home in Alcombe, Somerset. He also owns a £500,000, 18thcentury, listed house in Dunster, Somerset, and has property in Kirk Michael on the Isle of Man.
Despite his apparent wealth, Mr Wilmot had attempted to block Miss Maughan’s enforcement of the 2001 settlement. His lawyer, Nicholas Bowen QC, told the court Mr Wilmot did not have a UK address suitable for court papers to be sent to as ‘he is based in the air, all over the world’.
The pilot was unwilling to receive documents at his Somerset home, because he did not want his new life to be affected by the rancour between him and his previous family, the barrister said. He added: ‘He didn’t want to be pursued by this ghastly case. He wanted his new wife to be insulated from the wreckage of the past. He therefore told his wife that if anything turns up [from the ex-wife’s lawyers] at Alcombe, just send it back.’
Mr Wilmot said he had paid £390,000 in maintenance since his third marriage ended and did not owe any more.
Lord Justice Moylan criticised the is not pilot for for the his husband attitude, to saying: decide ‘It whether he will permit service to be effected on an address in the UK, if the court has made an order permitting such service.’ Mr Wilmot had dragged out the court dispute with Miss Maughan, arguing that his ex-wife’s ‘need for finality’ was ‘outweighed by the
interests of justice’. Throwing out the pilot’s appeal, the judge concluded: ‘There is nothing out of the ordinary in the present case which outweighs the interests of finality in litigation.’
Jonathan Swift, for the wife, earlier told the judges she just wanted the money her family is owed, and to be able to get on with her life.
He said: ‘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.’
Mr Swift said the appeal was ‘a pointless waste of time’ and ‘utter nonsense’. He refuted Mr Wilmot’s denial that he is the father, saying: ‘The conclusion of the court was that she most certainly was his child.’ Lord Justice Moylan agreed Mr Wilmot’s challenge to paying main
tenance ‘could well be described as having been wholly without merit’.
‘Pointless waste of time’