How my DIVORCE MILLIONS DAD took my family to WAR
Wife has a right to divorce millions even if she sets up home with another man
IT WAS a landmark divorce ruling and one hailed as a victory for women’s independence. Last week, Karen Hart was awarded her full £3.5million divorce settlement at an appeal hearing – despite her millionaire husband declaring it unfair because she had been living with another man for up to a decade. There should be champagne corks popping in celebration at the Hart family home – but Karen’s daughter, Monique, 31, is not in a party mood. Instead the pretty blonde is angry, upset and utterly exhausted not just by her father’s treatment of her mother, but also that doled out to her and her brother, Justin.
The truth is that John Hart, 81, declared war on his family more than five years ago and set up his battlefield in the British courts. In that time, the millionaire property developer has dragged both Monique and her brother through the courts with spurious claims and demands for money, before finally taking aim at their mother.
As she supported her mother in the divorce hearing, he called Monique a ‘Judas’. Before this, during her own case, he told a judge he had taken his daughter to court simply to teach her a lesson.
After last week’s ground-breaking ruling and the news reports that followed, many expressed sympathy for Mr Hart. Indeed, some were quick to dismiss Mrs Hart as a ‘money grabber’ and ‘legal prostitute’ on social media.
Monique feels that in light of this she has no choice but to speak out and tell the truth, as she sees it, about her father. She wishes to say that reports that her mother Karen, 60, left her father for another man are not true. After 20 years of marriage, her parents, Monique says, drifted apart before they split in 2006. They didn’t divorce because Karen wanted to keep everything amicable for the children.
‘Dad always said, “United we stand, divided we fall.” He’s a hypocrite,’ Monique says when we meet at her upmarket spa business in Sutton Coldfield. ‘In court last week, he called me a Judas. But he’s the Judas. He made out that Mum left him for her partner. That’s not the case. Why has he not mentioned his girlfriend in court?’
‘No parent should do what he’s done. He firmly believes what he’s doing is correct. A normal person would say otherwise. Litigation is a game to him. He keeps losing but he loves it. It’s a sport. He likes the angst. It’s about money and control.’
She adds: ‘I can’t see us ever speaking again. I’ve been through every emotion from anger to hurt. It’s a shame it had to end this way. Every day you ask yourself, what father does this? I can never forgive him.
‘We’ve all lived and breathed this for more than five years. I don’t think anyone could understand what we’ve been through.’
It is a sad situation and, although extraordinary, has strands many families will no doubt relate to.
The fact that, up until this point, Monique had always been ‘Daddy’s little girl’ makes their estrangement particularly poignant. The pair once spoke every day and even spent three weeks travelling around the US together. Born in America in 1985 three years after her parents met, Monique spent her first 12 years at the family’s lavish sixbedroom home in Miami, Florida.
Later, she had a pony and swimming pool, and every year the family went to Ascot, spending time in the Royal Enclosure. She was privately educated at Highclare School in Sutton Coldfield.
‘I’m not ashamed to say that I had a really happy, privileged childhood,’ she says. ‘But I wasn’t spoilt. Dad was very strict. I used to work for him at the weekends selling houses when I was in my teens. I finished my degree, then we spent three weeks travelling around the US together as a treat.’
After studying business at Oxford Brookes University, Monique worked hard to get her beauty qualifications at the same time and opened her first shop, Beauty At Hart, in one of her father’s premises in Dudley in 2006.
‘Dad said, “Here’s a premises, what business would you like to put in here? I’ll assist you,”’ she says. ‘He gifted items such as sunbeds and enlisted his workman to help. Obviously I’m grateful for his help but it has come at a price.
‘If you’re on the right side of my dad, he can be very generous but if you’re not, he can be very nasty.’
They had a verbal agreement that Monique wouldn’t pay rent, but would be responsible for the rates and running costs of the business.
Her father was initially very proud and supportive of his daughter. ‘Dad would come and have haircuts and massages,’ Monique says. ‘I would speak to him most days about how the business was doing. He would always encourage me.’
But almost overnight their relationship began to sour. After her parents’ split, Monique says her father started dating Jane Lloyd, 59, who was known to the family, in around 2008. Mr Hart told The Mail on Sunday that he is single, lives alone and that Ms Lloyd is simply a lady friend.
The children rubbed along as best they could with Ms Lloyd but, Monique says, theirs was not a warm relationship. The first sign that something was wrong came during a day out at the Ascot races in 2011.
‘I remember Jane saying “Oh they’re nice shoes” and asking where I’d got them from,’ Monique recalls. ‘Dad probably thought they were really expensive and didn’t think I should be spending money.
‘They were plain, black heels and weren’t expensive, but it got around the family that Dad wasn’t happy. From there he started nit-picking.
He thought I was beholden to him as the shop was in his premises.’
Mr Hart says it was he who had the issue with Monique’s shoes and dress because of the expense.
Their relationship deteriorated further, thanks in part to the lifestyle his new female friend seemed to be enjoying. Monique says: ‘Put it this way: Jane’s standard of living improved dramatically after she started dating Dad.’
In late 2011, Monique was summoned to her father’s office and handed a letter stating that, from then on, she would be charged rent for the business premises.
‘I’d just spent a considerable amount of my own money extending the shop on Dad’s advice,’ she says. ‘I would not have done that had I known what he was capable of.
‘I’d phoned him the day before we got the letters and he hadn’t said a word. Most people would sit their kids down and have a chat. He wasn’t having money worries and rent from my shop certainly wouldn’t have contributed much.
‘It got heated. I called him a coward and asked how he could do this.’
She returned to work but the letters continued. ‘I woke up one day and thought I’m too tired of being controlled,’ Monique says. That day she gave her father notice and asked if he or Jane would like to buy the business from her.
‘He laughed as if to say “After everything I’ve done for you” and put the phone down. He wants me to be eternally grateful, to conform and never have an opinion.’
In January 2012, she moved out, taking the sunbeds, mirrors and lights with her. ‘I took what belonged to me and made sure I left the place as tidy as possible,’ she says.
Finding herself without a job, a car or phone – it had been cut off because it went through her father’s firm – she was forced to sell her childhood pony, Purdy, to save money and started working at her local garden centre to keep afloat.
She didn’t hear from her father but two months later phoned to smooth things over.
‘I wanted to sit and chat and be the mediator in the situation,’ she says. ‘It was sad. He said some really vile, personal things to me and hung up.’
Shocked and hurt, Monique could only guess what her father was about to do next. Weeks later, she received legal documents from his company stating that she had taken fixtures and fittings from the shop and had caused around £20,000 worth of damage. ‘I never received a letter before action – it was just a date to appear in court,’ she says. Mr Hart denies this.
It was the final straw for her mother who started divorce proceedings after 24 years of marriage against Mr Hart in 2011.
‘The day he started to be nasty to us was the day she decided they couldn’t be friends,’ Monique says.
The case took nearly five years to come to the County Court in Bir- mingham, leaving Monique up to her eyes in legal debt.
When it was finally heard in June last year, Monique says her father told the judge that he’d brought the case simply to teach her a lesson.
‘He said I had been buying expensive dresses, that I’d flooded the premises, smashed tiles and cut wires,’ she says. ‘Every day he would walk past me, pump his fist and say, “Yeahhh.”
‘He’d stick his tongue out at me once the judge had gone out. He was aggressive towards one of my witnesses – his best friend’s widow – saying, “You’re next.” He later sued her.’ Mr Hart, however, denies this and says he threatened to sue the witness’s late husband’s estate.
In a bizarre twist, Monique says that, halfway through the four-day case, his legal team offered to settle. ‘They explained he’d had his moment in court, felt he’d said what he’d had to say and was prepared to settle for a paltry sum nowhere near what my legal costs were,’ she adds. ‘They said it was for future relations. I told them that ship had sailed. My legal fee at that point was considerably more.’
Mr Hart says both sides had agreed to walk away from the case before Monique changed her mind.
She won and Mr Hart was ordered to pay her costs, which are yet to be decided but thought to be in excess of £40,000. ‘Dad said it was a drop in the ocean, but he paid the interim payment in dribs and drabs.’
Using some of her father’s entrepreneurial spirit, Monique threw herself into rebuilding her business. She opened The Hart Spa in the garden centre where she had worked in May 2012, and has produced a range of products using the essence of Bleeding Heart plants.
The collection is recommended for those looking to experience peace and calm after loss, divorce and separation.
For Monique, the fact she has rebuilt her business without any help from her father is a resounding victory. And it is clear her relationship with her father may never be resolved. Indeed, when The Mail on Sunday spoke to Mr Hart last night he seemed taken aback by some of his daughter’s comments.
‘I gave my daughter every start and everything that she’s got,’ he said. ‘She never paid any rent. My son had two showrooms for cars and he never paid any rent.
‘They had £750,000 worth of property, which they’ve got today. To me, that sounds like I was a good father. All I can say is she’s an out and out liar. My wife has turned the kids against me, but that’s life. I accept it.’
Understandably, Monique wishes to draw a line under the last five years. Despite everything she’s been through, she says she feels lucky.
‘I pity Dad,’ she adds. ‘He’s 81. At his time of life, he should be retired and enjoying life not thriving off litigation.
‘He’s pushed away the people who actually cared about him. It’s pathetic he gets such satisfaction from causing so much hurt.’
‘Litigation is a game to him – it’s about control’