Ex-wife given £3.5m in divorce is told she can’t have £2m more
A FORMER air hostess who claimed a £3.5million divorce payout was a ‘worst possible result’ has had her appeal for more money rejected.
Karen Hart, 61, said she deserved more than £5million following her divorce from business mogul, John Hart, 82, after more than 23 years of marriage.
She claimed she was entitled to at least half of the family fortune, valued at £9.4million and it was ‘unfair and discriminatory’ that her ex-husband walked away with 63 per cent.
However, Appeal Court judges yesterday disagreed with her – pointing to the fact Mr Hart was already a multimillionaire when they married.
Mr Hart had been working in financial services when he met his future wife in 1979. He later went into property development at around the time the couple started living together. They married in 1987.
Lord Justice Moylan said that Mrs Hart was working as an air hostess when the pair met and ‘had no assets save for a Porsche’. They had two, now
Appeal: Karen Hart, 61 adult, children together and lived in a £1.1million five-bedroom gated home in Wishaw, Warwickshire.
The house boasted a gym, home cinema, a separate guest annexe and garaging for five cars. They also had holiday homes in Miami and Spain, but they separated in 2006 and started divorce proceedings in 2011. Since then, the court heard, Mr and Mrs Hart have spent more than half a million pounds on lawyers’ bills whilst fighting over money.
In 2015, Family Judge Stephen Wildblood split up their assets, handing Mrs Hart £3.5million (37 per cent of the fortune) to cover her ‘reasonable needs’.
But she argued the money should have been split equally and mounted a challenge in the Court of Appeal.
Yesterday three appeal judges ruled against her following a hearing in London.
Peter Mitchell, for Mrs Hart, said her £3.5million payout was ‘the worst possible result for her’. But Grant Armstrong, for Mr Hart, described the fortune the business mogul brought to the marriage 30 years ago as an ‘elephant in the room’.
Comparing the couple’s resources when they first married, Mr Armstrong described Mrs Hart as a financial ‘mouse’. ‘He was coming into this marriage as a man in his 50s, after a lifetime of working in business and having considerable property assets,’ the barrister said.
Mr Armstrong also argued that the result had not been unfair and had left Mrs Hart with ‘a home, a holiday home, a lifetime income at a very considerable figure and clear of liabilities.’
Lord Justice Moylan, who heard the appeal with Lord Justice Lloyd Jones and Lord Justice Beatson, said: ‘The judge was plainly entitled to find that the husband had substantial wealth at the commencement of the relationship, because this was agreed.
‘Further, he was also entitled, when determining how to exercise his discretion, to conclude that an equal division would be unfair.’
The three judges all agreed and ruled to dismiss Mrs Hart’s appeal.
‘She was a financial mouse’