Divorcee seeking more cash is told she can ‘get a job’
AN ATTEMPT by a divorcee to have a “meal ticket for life” backfired after a judge ruled her maintenance payments should cease after just three years.
Kim Waggott, 49, had been awarded £9.76million and £175,000 in annual maintenance payments for the rest of her life when she split from William, her multimillionaire husband, after he twice had affairs.
Unhappy, she went back to court and asked for a £23,000 a year increase in the maintenance payments. But Mr Waggott, 54, has now successfully challenged the original award, leaving her with a fraction of what she wanted.
Lord Justice Moylan, at London’s Appeal Court, yesterday ordered the £175,000 payments to stop in three years’ time, rather than continuing till their deaths, granting Mr Waggott a “clean break” from his former wife.
He said that Mrs Waggott, the former finance controller of UCI cinemas, will not suffer “undue hardship” – and can always get a job if she needs more money. Mr Waggott, the finance director of TUI travel, had protested that the ruling made by a divorce judge in 2014 was wrong and meant his wife had “no financial incentive” to get back to work and stop living off him.
The court heard that the couple, who were married for 21 years and had one daughter, lived in a “very substantial” £4.3million property near Great Missenden, Bucks, before splitting in 2012.
Following their divorce, Mrs Waggott bought a £2 million home near Chester and a holiday home in the Balearics, while Mr Waggott moved into a £1.9million farm near St Albans “with another lady”. Nigel Dyer QC, for Mr Waggott, argued that the maintenance order should end in two years and that Mrs Waggott should get back to work and start supporting herself.
“How long should an order based on sharing last for? When does the meter stop ticking?” he asked the judges. “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.”
Rejecting her claim for the £23,000 rise and allowing the husband’s appeal, Lord Justice Moylan said: “The expression ‘meal ticket for life’ can be used as an unfair trope. But it is plain to me that the wife would be able to adjust without undue hardship to the termination of maintenance.”
He said she could make up the “shortfall” by investing 10 per cent of her huge payout and live off the interest and that if the money produced by the investment was not enough to meet her needs, “the wife would be able to obtain employment”.