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Why only a £24.3m settlement?

Darat

Lackey
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Darat
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I see the news is full of a "celebrity" divorce (some pop star from the sixties and a model) and I know its a bit of a stretch to say this very atypical case represents current divorce settlements in the UK but the wife seems to have got a bad deal out of this.

I know the sum of £24.3 million is an incredible amount of money and means she can live a fantastic lifestyle for the rest of her life (materially any way) but apparently their fortune when they were married was £400 million. It seems very wrong that she walks away with so little, it should have been pretty much half of their £400 million.

Anyone know what the level of settlement for a more typical divorce would be - you know with a house, a car and a dog to split up between them? Is the split of assets not then pretty much equal in most circumstances?

News report of story can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7300931.stm
 
Depends on what kind of agreement they may have had before being married. For instance, I don't really think it's fair for one person to have 400 million before the marriage, and then lose half in the divorce. I think the wealth accrued mutually is what should be split up, everyone can keep what they came in with.

In principle I don't think it's fair to split everything in half on a divorce. I don't think it would be a stretch to assume that way more than half of that 400 million was Paul's before the marriage, and in principle this Mills woman shouldn't really be getting any of that. There are ways of protecting yourself from that.
 
dirtywick said:
I don't really think it's fair for one person to have 400 million before the marriage, and then lose half in the divorce.
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Exactly. Without commenting on the break-up of their relationship (which is none of our business), given the relatively brief marriage and the fact that their joint wealth was almost entirely Sir Paul's, why should she get any more? If they'd been together since their teens and all the way through his spectacular career in music, then maybe. As things stand, I think she's done pretty well.
 
It's a travesty, like so many divorce settlements. McCartney spends his life building up his fortune due to hard work and talent. Some washed-up ex-model comes along; they get married for a short time, she contributes next to nothing (and likely spends a heck of a lot of McCartney's money doing so) and he's supposed to what? Give up half the money he's earned? Why?

Half a million would have been more than adequate. Sadly, however, sense doesn't enter into it.
 
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Darat said:
I see the news is full of a "celebrity" divorce (some pop star from the sixties and a model) and I know its a bit of a stretch to say this very atypical case represents current divorce settlements in the UK but the wife seems to have got a bad deal out of this.

I know the sum of £24.3 million is an incredible amount of money and means she can live a fantastic lifestyle for the rest of her life (materially any way) but apparently their fortune when they were married was £400 million. It seems very wrong that she walks away with so little, it should have been pretty much half of their £400 million.

Anyone know what the level of settlement for a more typical divorce would be - you know with a house, a car and a dog to split up between them? Is the split of assets not then pretty much equal in most circumstances?

News report of story can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7300931.stm
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..."some pop star from the sixties"?

Note to self: Give Darat a much needed lesson in the history of rock.

Tsk. Tsk, I say.
 
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Ian Osborne said:
Exactly. Without commenting on the break-up of their relationship (which is none of our business), given the relatively brief marriage and the fact that their joint wealth was almost entirely Sir Paul's, why should she get any more? If they'd been together since their teens and all the way through his spectacular career in music, then maybe. As things stand, I think she's done pretty well.
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baron said:
It's a travesty, like so many divorce settlements. McCartney spends his life building up his fortune due to hard work and talent. Some washed-up ex-model comes along; they get married for a short time, she contributes next to nothing (and likely spends a heck of a lot of McCartney's money doing so) and he's supposed to what? Give up half the money he's earned? Why?

Half a million would have been more than adequate. Sadly, however, sense doesn't enter into it.
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Because he decided to marry her. If he didn't want to create a joint fortune he shouldn't have married her in the first place.
 
Darat said:
Because he decided to marry her. If he didn't want to create a joint fortune he shouldn't have married her in the first place.
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I don't think anyone here is disagreeing with the idea of a joint fortune, but rather the size of it.
 
I have compiled a long, detailed explanation of the case. In summary, it ends in "...evil gold-digging mole."
 
dirtywick said:
I don't think anyone here is disagreeing with the idea of a joint fortune, but rather the size of it.
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Seriously but why? He obviously wanted to make that commitment to her, and there is no reason to think he was not of sound mind when he married her (apart from I suppose his record of being a drug user).
 
nzric said:
I have compiled a long, detailed explanation of the case. In summary, it ends in "...evil gold-digging mole."
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Why do you think he is an "evil gold-digging mole"? ;)

I suspect you were in fact refering to the ex-model? If so why do you think that is what she was?

An additional point of interest in this story seems to have been the media's very calculated bias in this divorce i.e. they knew which one it was more important (in terms of possible future sales) to keep on side and have accordingly spun on the stories with an eye to that.
 
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Darat said:
Because he decided to marry her. If he didn't want to create a joint fortune he shouldn't have married her in the first place.
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Why should it always be assumed a divorce settlement should split the wealth down the middle? Why shouldn't it take into account what the two parties put into the joint fortune in the first place? After all, she's walking away with over £6m for each year they were married. Isn't that enough?
 
Also, a reporter asked Sir Paul if he would ever consider going down on one knee again. He answered, "I'd rather you call her Heather"...
 
My answer is a simple "because that is what marriage is". As I said if he didn't want his part of the money to form part of their joint fortune he didn't have to marry her. By marrying each other they both made a decision to unite their possessions. (Or is my knowledge of the legal side of this out of date?)
 
I like Rod Stewart's quote:

"Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman
I don't like and just give her a house"
 
Darat said:
My answer is a simple "because that is what marriage is". As I said if he didn't want his part of the money to form part of their joint fortune he didn't have to marry her. By marrying each other they both made a decision to unite their possessions. (Or is my knowledge of the legal side of this out of date?)
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A divorce lawyer being interviewd on R4 this evening said that in a "short" marriage such as theirs (I think they said 4 years or so) it is normal legal practice to evaluate the wife's "needs" rather than split a proportion of the overall wealth.

Bearing in mind the fact that the vast bulk of the wealth was accumulated before she was in the marriage, this seems quite just to me.
 
bridgy said:
Bearing in mind the fact that the vast bulk of the wealth was accumulated before she was in the marriage, this seems quite just to me.
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Precisely. If she'd have supported him through thick and thin, struggling to make ends meet when he was poor, then she might have a case for an equal split. As things stand, she's done spectacularly well by getting £24.3m. Problem is, the divorce laws are way out of date, and simply don't reflect society as it is today.
 
Darat said:
My answer is a simple "because that is what marriage is". As I said if he didn't want his part of the money to form part of their joint fortune he didn't have to marry her. By marrying each other they both made a decision to unite their possessions. (Or is my knowledge of the legal side of this out of date?)
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In some countries, such as France and Germany, there can be a "marriage contract" drawn up before the marriage. The most important part of this contract is usually to decide how property is to be divided between the two people. In Britain people may make a prenuptial agreement but it isn't legally binding.

For a summary of British law on the division of property in a divorce case, see http://www.helplinelaw.com/law/uk/divorce/divorce.php
 
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