Camilla’s cousin left ‘financially ruined’ after 6-year divorce
Scottish aristocrat and wife berated by judge
AN ARISTOCRAT and his estranged wife who became embroiled in a court battle following the breakdown of their marriage are both ‘financially ruined’, a judge has said.
Charles Villiers, a relative of Prince Charles’s wife Camilla, lived with Emma Villiers in a mansion with a private loch near Glasgow for most of their 18-year marriage.
The two became locked in a cross-Border legal row because Mr Villiers, 57, filed for divorce in Scotland while his wife, 61, made an application for maintenance in England.
Mr Villiers said he and his wife were divorcing in Scotland and should therefore fight over money in a Scottish court – but Supreme Court justices ruled against him.
He previously accused his estranged wife of ‘trying it on’ by pursuing a financial settlement in England.
Mr Justice Mostyn, who is based in the Family Division of the High Court in London, considered arguments over money at a private hearing.
He concluded yesterday that Mr Villiers could not afford to pay the maintenance Mrs Villiers said she could get.
The judge said, in a written ruling on the Villiers’ money fight, that the ‘terrible’ litigation had ‘endured for nearly six years’.
He said Mr and Mrs Villiers had been left ‘financially ruined’ and said he suspected that both were also ‘psychologically damaged’.
Judges have heard how the pair had lived near Dumbarton and separated in 2012.
Mr Villiers – whose late mother, Elizabeth Keppel, was a cousin of Camilla, Duchess of Rothesay – still lives in Scotland, while Mrs Villiers now lives in London.
Another London-based judge, who considered the litigation at an early stage, concluded in 2015 that Mr Villiers should pay Mrs Villiers £2,500a-month maintenance pending the dispute’s conclusion.
He had not paid and Mrs Villiers said she was owed several hundred thousand pounds.
But Mr Justice Mostyn has not ordered Mr Villiers to pay the money to which Mrs Villiers says she is entitled.
He concluded that Mr Villiers was ‘not able to pay’.
The judge said both Mr and Mrs Villiers had made accusations against the other after ‘love’ turned to ‘hatred’.
In his ruling, he said: ‘This has been a case where love has to hatred turned to an extraordinary degree.’
The judge added: ‘The husband has vented his spleen by alleging that the wife is a bigamist. The husband has accused the wife of being a fraudster, a fantasist and generally useless.
‘The wife, with some justification, has accused the husband of being dishonest, manipulative, vindictive and bullying. But she is not beyond criticism herself.
‘She has conducted her pursuit of the husband in this litigation in a completely disproportionate manner and has wilfully blinded herself to the reality that the vast amounts of inherited funds she believes the husband has at his disposal are, in fact, a chimera.’
He concluded: ‘The result of this terrible litigation, which has endured for nearly six years, is that both parties are now financially ruined and, I suspect, psychologically damaged.’