Divorce shouldn’t be a meal ticket for life
Divorce: from the Latin word meaning, “to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet.”
That was how the late, great Robin Williams described the aftermath of two failed marriages when I met him back in 2011. He’d just got hitched for the third time, which he conceded with a grin was “like bringing a burns victim to a firework display”. There’s something about divorce that both fascinates and repels us, and very definitely brings out our prurient side. Forthcoming BBC legal drama The Split focuses on a family firm of divorce lawyers and stars Nicola Walker and Stephen Mangan, a couple of lawyers who find themselves at the centre of a marital crisis; it promises to be utterly gripping.
Divorce is one of those awful life events that cries out for a wisecrack; the more ascetic (borderline bitter) the better. It may easily be as stressful and traumatic as bereavement or redundancy and, when children are involved, heartbreaking, but there’s still a tendency for black humour.
Just this week Australian actor Russell Crowe got up on stage and joked around with bidders at his bizarre auction, the Art of Divorce, which saw him raise $3.7million from flogging off his memorabilia and personal effects ostensibly to bankroll his split from Danielle Spencer, mother of his two sons.
This extraordinary occasion saw him sell everything from a leather jockstrap to a broken Rolex as well as a top-class collection of Australian art, yet somehow it seemed more dignified than John Cleese’s infamous 2011 “Alimony” tour. Cleese needed to pay for his split from his third wife, Alyce Faye Eichelberger, caustically observing that he last time he paid for sex it had cost him $20million.
Whether we admit to it or not, when high-profile, or high-net-worth couples split and end up arguing over cash in court, it’s impossible not to gawp in wonder and disbelief from the sidelines, especially when the sums involved are nothing short of dizzying.
Take Ocado boss Tim Steiner, who left his wife of 14 years and four children in 2016. He then went on to live with a 29-year-old Polish lingerie model (yes, it reads like an utterly lame cliché) and used £68million of shares as collateral to cover his divorce.
That’s the thing about divorce, the emotional side tends to get eclipsed by the show-stopping budget.
Here in Britain, there’s no shortage of big bucks. London is deemed the divorce capital of the world – for wives, at any rate. English judges have a reputation for regarding marriage as a 50/50 partnership and see homemaking on a par with breadwinning, which means wealth acquired during the marriage is fairly split. We might take that for granted, but for those who come from more paternalistic (for which read macho and/or misogynist) cultures, this idea of equality is unthinkable, which is why shrewd wives read the lay of the land and instruct expensive lawyers (ironically paid for by their husbands) to file for divorce in London.
Back in 2012 it was found that a sixth of divorce cases heard by English courts involved foreign nationals. Of the cases where huge sums were involved, half were international couples. As to who is entitled to a divorce in England, it’s a complex issue based on residence and domicile, but it’s no exaggeration to say that wealthy men will do anything they can to avoid their case being heard here.
Last month Russian oligarch Farkhad Akhmedov, embroiled in Britain’s biggest divorce battle, was accused of trying to hide his £350million superyacht (complete with nine decks, a pair of helipads and, in a nod to cosy domesticity, an anti-missile system) from his ex-wife, Tatiana. She was awarded a £453million settlement in 2016 but claims that so far she has received nothing. He says as they are both Russian he does not recognise the authority of the British court.
Frankly it’s hard to disagree with him but these affairs (pun intended) are all so byzantine it’s impossible for anyone other than a £600-an-hour divorce lawyer to understand.
But change is in the air, after a divorcee was awarded £9.76million and £175,000 annual maintenance payments for the rest of her life – yet returned to court to ask for more from her ex-husband William Waggott, the finance director of TUI travel.
What Kim Waggott actually got was a very big shock. The Appeal Court judge told her in no uncertain terms that she was not entitled to a meal ticket for life and then ruled her maintenance payments should stop after three years.
He also suggested that the former finance controller of UCI cinemas go get a job if she wanted more money.
Yet last year there was a pronouncement by a Supreme Court judge that it was unrealistic for older wives to be left to “fend for themselves” if they have devoted years to rearing a family. This came just weeks after surveyor Graham Mills was ordered to increase monthly maintenance payments to his ex-wife Maria, after she mismanaged her £230,000 divorce settlement on poor financial investments.
To widespread astonishment, her maintenance was raised from £1,100 to £1,441 a month. Fair or utter madness? Even the legal community is confused. I’m thinking madness because life isn’t fair (even if the original settlement was).
Lawyer and cross-bench peer Baroness Deech has criticised this “old-fashioned, over-chivalrous” approach of the country’s senior divorce judges and has called for a three-year cap for most maintenance payments, which is already in place in Scottish law.
Something certainly needs to be done about the erratic nature of a judiciary that sends out mixed signals, not just to the super-rich but ordinary families. Is three years too little? A lifetime definitely sounds too long. As the wrangling continues, we’re all agog.
To paraphrase the old truism: nobody really knows what goes on inside any marriage, but we clamour for a ringside seat at the divorce.