The country’s most feared divorce lawyer
Sir Paul McCartney’s solicitor Fiona Shackleton is back in the news as she fights for Britain’s biggest payout for the ex-wife of a billionaire oil tycoon
WHEN teenager Fiona Charkham told her school’s careers adviser that she wanted to go on to study medicine, she was urged to forget the idea. “You don’t have the brains,” was the sniffy opinion of the teachers at the £36,000-a-year Benenden School in Kent.
It might have been wholly unsupportive but ironically it may have been the best piece of advice she ever received. Decades later the glamorous blonde 61-year-old, now known by her married name of Fiona Shackleton, is recognised as the best divorce lawyer in the country.
Yesterday she was at the Court of Appeal to negotiate the biggest settlement in British legal history as Russian oil tycoon Farkhad Akhmedov appealed against an order to hand over £453million to his ex-wife Tatiana Akhmedova.
Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia – she was made a life peer in 2010 – is also known as the Steel Magnolia owing to her combination of elegance and hard-edged legal skills.
Over the years she has acted for a slew of high-profile names including Prince Charles, who engaged Shackleton to handle his divorce from Diana after Palace officials were impressed by her handling of Prince Andrew’s split with Sarah Ferguson.
Then there was John Cleese’s ex-wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger for whom she negotiated a settlement of £12million, including £600,000 a year for seven years. The one-time Arsenal and France footballer Thierry Henry’s former wife Claire Merry was awarded an £8million payout after Shackleton successfully argued for a settlement based on his future earnings as well as money earned while they were together.
Perhaps her finest hour came when she represented Sir Paul McCartney in his 2008 divorce from Heather Mills. While Mills had demanded £125million from the Beatle, Shackleton managed to limit the payout to £24.3million, a judgment which so incensed Mills she poured the contents of a jug of water over her head in the courtroom.
HER roster of past clients also includes pop star Liam Gallagher, chef Rick Stein, comedian David Walliams and dozens more whose final settlements have remained undisclosed.
She once declared that she is proud of her record in settling “at least 99 per cent” of cases outside court, adding: “A courtroom is a barbaric venue in which to pick over the carcass of a failed marriage.”
But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Britain’s top divorce lawyer is that she found her niche relatively late in life. Daughter of economist Jonathan Charkham and Moira Salmon (through whom she is a cousin of Nigella Lawson), Shackleton left Benenden with little fanfare.
She struggled reading law at Exeter University, managing to achieve only a third-class degree, after which she went to the Cordon Bleu Cookery School and then became an upmarket caterer.
Eventually, however, she decided to give law another try, admitting that she chose family law only because it was “easiest for me to understand”.
But she turned out to be a natural: her negotiating skills and charm secured her a position in 1984 at Farrer and Co, solicitors to the Royal Family. Just two years later she was made a partner and by 1996 she had become personal solicitor to Prince Charles.
Since 2001 she has been a partner at legal firm Payne Hicks Beach where she is thought to be the highest-paid divorce lawyer in the country, and along with her celebrity clients still acts as solicitor to Princes William and Harry.
For a woman whose bread and butter is the misery of other people’s failed marriages, her home life is admirably stable. Married since she was 28 to former Army officer Ian Shackleton, 64, who is a descendant of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, she has two daughters, Cordelia, 29, and Lydia, 28.
When the girls were small, she would insist on leaving work by 5.30pm to look after them. And it is perhaps this combination of professional ambition and recognition of the importance of family life that has made the Steel Magnolia the country’s highest-profile family lawyer.
Rivals and colleagues alike have spoken of her likeability, readiness to reach agreement and aptitude for making clients feel at ease. Robert Seabrook, the QC she briefed to represent Charles for his divorce, described her as having “an incredible facility for getting to the nub of a case. She has an extraordinary ability to give people straight answers, often ones they don’t want to hear in such a way that they take it from her”.
For Tatiana Akhmedova, now a cool half-billion or so richer – at least on paper – Fiona Shackleton’s abilities are beyond doubt.