• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Why only a £24.3m settlement?

CFLarsen said:
..."some pop star from the sixties"?

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

Tsk. Tsk, I say.
Click to expand...

Some Oasis tribute band wasn't it?



Darat said:
It seems very wrong that she walks away with so little, it should have been pretty much half of their £400 million.
Click to expand...

At least it's a leg-up?

(I've been trying to think of a way to make this joke tastefully, but I've decided there's no such way so I'm going to say s*d it, sometimes you have to make a genuinely unfunny joke just because it's squatting in your forebrain trying to jump out. I'll get me coat.)
 
bridgy said:
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.
Click to expand...

Heard a similar (if not the same interview) and I understand the rationale I just don't think it stacks up given what marriage is meant to be. One question I wanted to know is it only the time of the marriage that is considered - what in the case of a couple perhaps married for 4 years but been dating or even living with one another for say 10 years before that?
 
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 (Or is my knowledge of the legal side of this out of date?)
Click to expand...
I don't know what the law is in England, but here in Ontario your legal understanding is incorrect. Here there is a concept known as net family property (NFP). Each spouse calculates their net worth on the date of marriage and their net worth on the date of separation. The difference between those two numbers is their NFP. The spouse with the higher NFP makes a one time equalization payment to the spouse with the lower NFP.

For a simple example, let's say that Sir Paul was worth 350 million when they got married, and she was worth nothing. At the date of separation, he is worth $400 million and she is worth $2 million. His NFP is 50 million and hers is 2 million. He would owe a one time payment of 24 million, so that each then had an NFP of 26 million.
 
Ian Osborne said:
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.
Click to expand...

Yet if a person X is one half of couple and lived as couple for say 25 years during which time they'd gone through thick and thin with Person Y who had become a very wealthy person and even though for the time of their relationship they'd shared everything BUT they did not marry Person X would not be entitled (legally) to a brass farthing.

I I do think it is time the divorce laws were tidied up a bit and simplified - I'd make it a simple 50/50 split on a divorce!
 
If Sir Macca wanted to make some more money, he could try reforming that boy band he fronted in the Sixties. I realise two of them are dead, but why not propose a merger with The Who? They've still got a lead singer and a guitarist, and The Beatles still has a drummer and a bass player. They could make a band between them...
 
Once again I find myself wondering why anyone would ever want to get married. Or, I suppose, why anyone would ever marry someone with a significantly lower net worth, as clearly marrying a person far more wealthy than you is a good investment and well worth the effort. Somebody on another board calculated her take at better than $5k per hour she was married to him. It's like Spitzer with hookers for 4 years straight.

I think I started a thread on the "why's" of marraige a few years back and got many answers, and yet I still find myself wondering at how foolish it is to risk half your stuff on a worse than 50/50 bet. Over half of first marraiges in the US end in divorce. You get emotionally pummelled, and the lawyers and spouse get big chunks of your net worth. This simply doesn't seem like a good move to me.

The only conclusion I can draw is that love and stupidity go hand in hand. I suspect it's due to redirecting the bloodflow, but further study is needed, as correlation does not equal causation.

;)
 
CFLarsen said:
How is that relevant, if we are talking about UK law?
Click to expand...

Perhaps but the judge seems to have a taken a line not dis-similar to that suggested.

Her demand for £125m was bizarre and I am glad the judge decided she didn't have a leg to stand on. The whole circus could have been settled ages ago if she had made a sensible claim. Her comments about the kid travelling second class because in addition to the £24m Paul is "only" giving the child £35k per annum were ill considered. Most of the world's families live on considerably less than the child's pocket money. How to alienate 99% of the planet in one easy go.
 
Darat said:
Heard a similar (if not the same interview) and I understand the rationale I just don't think it stacks up given what marriage is meant to be. One question I wanted to know is it only the time of the marriage that is considered - what in the case of a couple perhaps married for 4 years but been dating or even living with one another for say 10 years before that?
Click to expand...

The impression I got from the interview is that how long they've been living together prior to the marriage is taken into account. Apparently the length of time they'd been together & been living together was a key area of contention for this reason.

In response to your more general point, of course there will be many circumstances when it is right and just to split assets 50/50 when a marriage breaks up. However, I think it makes much more sense that the courts have some discretion (within guidelines) in deciding how assets are split, based on individual circumstances, rather than saying simply everything must automatically be split 50/50 in every case.
 
Darat said:
Heard a similar (if not the same interview) and I understand the rationale I just don't think it stacks up given what marriage is meant to be. One question I wanted to know is it only the time of the marriage that is considered - what in the case of a couple perhaps married for 4 years but been dating or even living with one another for say 10 years before that?
Click to expand...

Look up commonlaw marriage, they'd likely be considered legally married in a divorce case before they were legally married. Or maybe not, it differs or doesn't exist from place to place.

But really this is what the court is there for, to consider facts like that when dividing up the settlement.

I really don't agree with you in spirit even because marriage and divorce are two different things. You (should in spirit) share everything 50/50 while you're married, but when a divorce comes around that no longer applies in my opinion.

Also the spirit of marriage isn't about a financial gamble.

Agree or not, there's simply too many people out there who would take advantage of a straight 50/50 split. What if it was you who had a full life of financial success, got married, and within a week were divorced and had to give up half of everything you own because you were conned? What if your spouse was cheating on you constantly and you knew about it, decided you didn't want to be married anymore, and had to give up half of what you own?

See what I'm saying? It makes sense.
 
Aoidoi said:
Once again I find myself wondering why anyone would ever want to get married. Or, I suppose, why anyone would ever marry someone with a significantly lower net worth, as clearly marrying a person far more wealthy than you is a good investment and well worth the effort. Somebody on another board calculated her take at better than $5k per hour she was married to him. It's like Spitzer with hookers for 4 years straight.

I think I started a thread on the "why's" of marraige a few years back and got many answers, and yet I still find myself wondering at how foolish it is to risk half your stuff on a worse than 50/50 bet. Over half of first marraiges in the US end in divorce. You get emotionally pummelled, and the lawyers and spouse get big chunks of your net worth. This simply doesn't seem like a good move to me.

The only conclusion I can draw is that love and stupidity go hand in hand. I suspect it's due to redirecting the bloodflow, but further study is needed, as correlation does not equal causation.

;)
Click to expand...

From a purely finacial viewpoint the pooling of rescources and the ability to share fixed costs means that it probably makes sense for mid income couples on downwards. For high earning idividuals it isn't too much of a worry (so you lose a fair bit in a one off payoff but you can earn more). The problems really kick in for a low earning individual with a large value of assets.
 
I wonder, when we're talking such a huge fortune and such a short marriage, if the best way to handle the settlement would be to simply calculate the money/assets acquired during the marriage and divide that in half. This was quite a short marriage, after all...and when one party comes in with such a vast fortune it really isn't fair for him or her to be forced to pay off the other spouse with money that spouse contributed nothing to. At any rate, once the figures get so high, I have a hard time understanding what there is to fight about anymore. Both of them have more than enough to live on for the rest of their lives--and they really don't even have to be frugal. I have a difficult time feeling too sorry for either party. Besides, with that much money, they could both significantly grow their fortunes in a fairly short amount of time. She ended up better off, though, right? Whereas he ended up with less...than when they were married, I mean. It really shouldn't be that way, in my opinion. Marriage IS about partnerships, but it ISN'T supposed to be about taking one up and bringing one down (which is what a lot of divorces seem to do)...but again, with the amounts of money we're talking, I somehow don't think it is that much of an issue.
 
sugarb said:
At any rate, once the figures get so high, I have a hard time understanding what there is to fight about anymore.
Click to expand...

Yeah... what can she do with $33 million American (plus $15 million in assets) that she couldn't do with 20 or even 10? Why drag it out?
 
Last edited:
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
Click to expand...

I heard her on the radio, she needs the money for her ongoing work with here charities.
 
Perhaps its deductible from taxes. As much as it sounds to us, it may mean a collateral benefit to Sr. Paul.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom