‘No meal ticket for life’: Ex-wife loses right to tycoon’s future salary
A SUPER-RICH businessman who paid his wife nearly £10million after they split has successfully overturned a court order forcing him to pay her £175,000 of his earnings in maintenance each year.
Multimillionaire accountant William Waggott, 54, was ordered to give his ex- wife Kim Waggott £9.76million in cash and assets after they split in 2012 – allowing her to buy a £2million property in Cheshire and a holiday home in Mallorca.
On top of this, Mr Waggott, the finance director of TUI Travel, was told to pay her £175,000 a year in personal maintenance for the rest of their lives.
Mr Waggott argued that the ruling – made by a divorce judge in 2014 – was wrong and meant his wife, also an accountant, had ‘no financial incentive’ to stop living off him and return to work.
Now Lord Justice Moylan, at the Court of Appeal in London, has ordered the payments to stop in three years’ time – to grant Mr Waggott a ‘clean break’.
Sitting with Sir James Munby and Mr Justice MacDonald, the judge said Mrs Waggott would not suffer ‘undue hardship’, and that she can get a job if she needs more money.
The couple were married for 21 years and had one daughter, the court heard. Before the split they had been living in a ‘very substantial’ £4.3million property near Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. After the first divorce ruling, Mrs Waggott, 49, former finance controller of UCI Cinemas, used her £9.76million share to buy a £2million house near Chester and a Balearic holiday home.
Mr Waggott moved into a £1.9million farm near St Albans ‘ with another lady’, Mrs Waggott’s lawyers told the court.
Nigel Dyer QC, for the husband, argued the maintenance order should end and that Mrs Waggott should get back to work and start supporting herself. ‘ 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,’ he said.
However, Mrs Waggott claimed the maintenance package was not generous enough and her barrister, James Turner QC, asked for it to be increased by £23,000 a year.
Allowing the husband’s appeal yesterday, Lord Justice Moylan said: ‘The expression “meal ticket for life” can be used as an unfair trope. I, of course, acknowledge that long-term maintenance can be required as part of a fair outcome [in a divorce].
‘But it is plain to me that the wife would be able to adjust without undue hardship to the termination of maintenance.’
The judge said that if Mrs Waggott invested £950,000 – less than 10 per cent – of her first payout, she would make up for the loss of maintenance and could live off the interest. And if this was not enough, ‘the wife would be able to obtain employment’ from next year, he added.
Throwing out Mrs Waggott’s bid for more cash because it would ‘undermine the court’s ability to effect a clean break’, the judge ordered the maintenance payments to stop in March 2021.
As well as losing financial support from her ex, Mrs Waggott will face a huge legal bill, likely to run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.