Millionaire: Cut ex-wife’s £175k a year to force her back to work
A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE travel firm boss is fighting to force his ex-wife back to work by cutting her post-divorce payments.
William Waggott, 54, the finance director of tourism company TUI, was ordered to hand his former wife Kim, 49, £9.14million in cash and assets after they split in 2012.
He was also told to pay her £175,000-ayear maintenance for the rest of their lives. But Mr Waggott insists the maintenance order was wrong and means his accountant wife has ‘no financial incentive’ to get back to work.
However his ex-wife says she is entitled to the ‘post-separation’ fruits of Mr Waggott’s career, and even wants her annual payments boosted by £23,000.
The couple were married for 21 years and have a teenage daughter, the Court of Appeal in London heard. They met in 1990 while working for accountancy firm Coopers and Lybrand and went on to live together in Manchester before setting up a home in a ‘very substantial’ £4.3 million property near Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire.
They married in 2000 but began having marital problems in early 2011, a few months after Mr Waggott became chief financial officer of TUI Travel. Mrs Waggot discovered her husband was having an affair with a colleague, judges heard.
While this first affair ended in autumn 2012, Mr Waggot began another with a different woman, before moving out upon being ‘confronted’. Mr Waggott, who has also worked for Courtaulds Textiles, Airtours and the UK Leisure Group, now lives with ‘another lady’ on a £1.9million farm in Markyate, Hertfordshire, the court heard. His ex-wife lives with the couple’s daughter in Great Missenden.
Since the divorce, Mrs Waggott, former finance controller of UCI cinemas, has used some of her payout to buy a £2million home near Chester and a holiday home in Mallorca.
Representing Mr Waggott, Nigel Dyer QC, argued the maintenance order should be ended in two years’ time and that Mrs Waggott should get back to work.
‘It is unfair to expect the husband to continue working long hours in demanding employment and not expect the wife to realise her earning potential as soon as is reasonably practicable,’
‘An unduly soft landing’
he told the court. ‘The joint lives maintenance order gave the wife an unduly soft landing.’
But James Turner QC, for Mrs Waggott, argued that the ex-wife was entitled to an ongoing share of her husband’s earnings, claiming she helped him build his career. He told the court the question of whether she is in financial ‘need’ was irrelevant.
‘There has been a lengthy relationship of mutual support between the parties, during which one of the parties builds up a capacity to acquire massive wealth in the years after the separation of the parties,’ the barrister said.
The hearing continues.