Wealthy royal father wins Ascot box battle

A “SUPER-rich” senior member of a Middle Eastern royal family has won the latest round of a court battle with the mother of a seven-year-old son he has never seen.

The man is paying the woman around £200,000 a year for the boy’s upkeep. The woman had asked for this to be increased to nearly £800,000, but Mr Justice Bodey dismissed her application, saying that the current settlement was “appropriate”. The mother had told the judge that she wanted a “vast income provision” so that the child could “replicate” his father’s lifestyle. The judge said the woman wanted her son to have boxes at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium and at Ascot racecourse.

She also wanted him to have membership of Ascot and Wentworth golf clubs as well as money for domestic staff and first-class flights. Mr Justice Bodey, who analysed the case at a hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London, has not identified anyone involved in the ruling. But he said the man was in his 50s and the woman, who grew up in an “affluent” Middle Eastern family, was in her 30s.

The boy lives with his mother in London, the judge said, adding: “The father has never seen [the boy], nor expressed any interest in him.”

He added that the man and woman had been embroiled in family court litigation for several years.