Meanwhile ex-wife wins £300,000 share of fortune eco-tycoon made years after split
AN eco-tycoon was ordered yesterday to pay £300,000 to his ex-wife – three decades after they split and years after he made his fortune.
Kathleen Wyatt, 56, a former New Age traveller, originally demanded £1.9million from Dale Vince in 2011. The couple separated in 1984 and divorced in 1992 – and he has since built up £100million as a green energy entrepreneur.
She has now been given a slice of his fortune – despite making no contribution to its accumulation – after the Supreme Court ruled last year that she had a right to demand a payout.
The ruling paved the way for divorcees to take a ‘second shot’ at getting money from ex-partners long after the end of a marriage. Miss Wyatt’s payout was intended to make up for hardship she experienced living in poverty while bringing up the couple’s son, Dane, and to allow her to buy a comfortable mortgage-free house.
Miss Wyatt brought up four children, three by other men, and lived on traveller sites in the West Country – one described by her ex-husband as a ‘rubbish tip’. At one stage she stayed in a homeless shelter and has lived largely on benefits since the 1990s.
In recent years she has lived in a former council house in Monmouth bought on a mortgage for £60,000 under right to buy laws.
Meanwhile Mr Vince, 55, began making his fortune after building a machine providing a wind-powered telephone service for Glastonbury festival-goers, and now runs a green electricity company called Ecotricity, said to be worth around £60million. He lives near Stroud, Gloucestershire, with his second wife and Dane, who went to live with his father in 2001.
Yesterday in the High Court, Mr Justice Cobb ruled Miss Wyatt should get £300,000, and should keep £325,000 that Mr Vince has paid towards her legal costs since 2012. However, some of the £300,000 will be eaten up by further legal bills. The judge said: ‘I am perfectly satisfied that it is reaspending sonable, and that ... the lump sum payment agreed between the parties fairly represents, in my view, a realistic and balanced appraisal of the unusual circumstances of the case.’
He added: ‘I appreciate that the husband does not see it this way, having explicitly offered this sum merely to weigh off this litigation as costeffectively as he can.’ Mr Justice Cobb banned publication of the size of Miss Wyatt’s final legal bill so the net amount she will receive is not known.
Neither Miss Wyatt nor Mr Vince were in court for the announcement. But later Mr Vince said the case had been ‘a terrible waste of time and money’ and the settlement barely covered his ex-wife’s legal fees. He added that there ‘clearly’ needs to be a time limit in divorce cases beyond which a claim cannot be made.
‘Terrible waste of time and money’