Pilot’s £600,000 bill after losing 16-year fight to prove ex-wife’s daughter wasn’t his
SO dogged was his determination to prove in court that he was not the father of his daughter even his own lawyers warned him he could bankrupt himself.
Now former BA captain Richard Wilmot, 62, is facing precisely that prospect after finally losing his 16year legal battle and being landed with a bill for nearly £600,000.
He had claimed his 18-year- old daughter by his third wife Viki Maughan, 52, was fathered by a secret lover before their divorce.
He refused to pay child maintenance agreed in the divorce settlement, telling the High Court he was ‘absolutely convinced’ the child was not his.
This was despite the fact that a DNA test taken in 2000 proved that he was the father – the pilot claimed it was faked by his ex-wife.
But in the latest judgment, Mr Justice Mostyn criticised his ‘utter folly’, saying ‘recorded scientific evidence’ from a new DNA test in Germany ‘concluded that the probability that Captain Wilmot was the true father of the child was 99.999999 per cent’.
He ordered the four-times married pilot to pay £593,598. The bill includes nearly £25,000 for his daughter’s university education, £115,000 in back maintenance, £290,000 in legal costs, and other expenses related to the case.
The judge ruled that assets including his pension, bank account and properties must be seized until he settles the bill.
Mr Justice Mostyn 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.
‘I make an order authorising the receiver to liquidate from the frozen funds sufficient to discharge that total award.’
The pilot, who now flies for Turkish to stop Airlines, sending was messages also told to his ex-wife’s solicitor’s private email address after being accused of harassment.
During earlier proceedings, his legal team said in court that ‘this case could bankrupt you’.
Throughout the legal battle, Mr Wilmot has claimed that his daughter’s birth certificate was forged and that the earlier DNA test proving his paternity was fraudulent. While it connance. cluded that he was the father, he claimed the sample that was tested had been taken from his elder daughter.
Mr Wilmot and Miss Maughan were married for less than a decade and lived together in an £800,000 country house in Cranbrook, Kent, before separating in the late 1990s.
Ever since their decree absolute was granted in 2001, the couple have been fighting over the settlement and mainte-
Mr Wilmot remarried and moved his new family to another £800,000 country home in Alcombe, Somerset.
It was revealed at earlier hearings that he also owns an 18thcentury listed house in Dunster, Somerset, worth £500,000, and has a further property on the Isle of Man.
Mr Justice Mostyn’s ruling in the Family Division of the High Court in London was delivered in January but only made public this week. The judge concluded by again criticising the ‘enormous costs’ run up during the marathon court battle.
In what he described as an ‘unusual order’, he said Mr Wilmot should pay nearly £25,000 in future educational fees for his daughter ‘up front’.
He added: ‘There is no good reason why the youngest child should not receive the equivalent benefit… to that which her older siblings received.’
With regard to the harassment allegations, the judge said: ‘I am asked to make an order restraining Captain Wilmot from communicating with
the applicant’s solicitor on her private email address.
‘It is completely unacceptable that this form of harassment should take place.
‘The application is made on behalf of the applicant to protect her servant or agent, namely her solicitor, and I am satisfied that it is appropriate to grant that order.’
Earlier in the case, Mr Wilmot’s ex- wife’s lawyers accused him of ‘playing technical games’ after he claimed not to have been properly served a string of court orders because he was flying at the time.
Denying the claim last July, Nicholas Bowen QC, for the pilot, told the court: ‘ He only comes back to the UK for a few weekends a year. He is based in the air, all over the world.
‘He was unwilling to receive documents at his Somerset family home because… 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 his ex-wife’s lawyers], just send it back.’
‘It shows his utter folly’