Record $102 M in McCartney Divorce?
A rumored $102 million settlement to be paid by Paul McCartney to end his five-year marriage to Heather Mills would be the largest ever in a contested divorce case in the British courts, which have been trending toward bigger American-style awards in recent years.
The British press estimates the former Beatle, 65, is likely to pay 50 million pounds (about $102 million in American dollars) to Mills, 39. That would top the previous record of 48 million pounds paid by insurance magnate John Chapman, reports Reuters. He divorced in 2003 after 27 years of marriage.
McCartney is worth about 825 million pounds (approximately $1.7 billion in American dollars). He and Mills have a daughter who will be 4 years old later this month.
The two did not sign a prenuptial agreement before they married to restrict Mills’ right to McCartney’s property should they divorce, and even if they had, “it would have had little force under British law anyway,” the London Times reported last year.
The newspaper predicted then that McCartney might have to pay considerably more than 50 million pounds. An unnamed family lawyer told the Times that “Heather is going to get a very large amount of money. She could make [200 million pounds], based on what he has earned during the marriage, the cost of rearing their child and the standard of living she is now entitled to expect.”
