Can't buy me love
Lock up your billionaires. The marriage of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills is almost over after a judge carved out a divorce settlement in London this week.
When May rolls around the four-year marriage of James Paul McCartney and Heather Anne Mills McCartney will be all over rover. Macca will be single again and Heather Mills will be a very rich woman, having been awarded GBP 24.3 million (around $60m NZ) in their divorce settlement.

But not as rich as she would have liked.

Macca and Millsy went to divorce court to thrash out a settlement last month, and when they couldn't agree on sums the Honourable Justice Hugh Bennett was forced to make a judgment for the pair. This was released earlier this week, after the declaration of settlement Heather would receive.

She wanted 100 million pounds in cash, plus property in Beverly Hills, Long Island, Sussex, Hove, and cash to buy residences in London and New York City. The judge called it ‘exorbitant.' She said she'd settle with Paul for GBP50m. She got 25m, a fifth of what she was asking for, yet proclaimed victory on the steps of a London courthouse.

"We are very, very pleased," she declared in front of the world's media, her ever-present sister Fiona by her side. "I am so, so happy it's over."

I'm happy that suit's over. The biggest day of your life and you turn up in that patchwork monstrosity! Hey, Heather, Raggedy Andy called, he wants his look back.

For one of the most bitter divorce battles in showbiz history, it's certainly been Sir Paul that emerged the victor. He is extremely wealthy by anyone's standards and could have afforded any settlement the court handed down to Heather. But the judge's 58-page settlement breakdown makes for juicy reading.

In the judgment Justice Bennett calls Heather Mills out on each and every fib she's told in their two-year divorce war. While he conceded that Heather was a generous supporter of charity and ‘strong willed and determined' in overcoming her disability, her evidence given in court was "not just inconsistent and inaccurate, but also less than candid."

In contrast, he called McCartney balanced, consistent, accurate and honest.

In basic legalese, she's a liar liar, pants on fire.

"To some extent she is her own worst enemy," the judge went on. "She has an explosive and volatile character."

He's referring to Heather's interviews she did in October and November of last year, where she ranted and raved on British TV about receiving "worse press than a paedophile or a murderer" and comparing herself to Princess Diana and Kate McCann, the mother of missing British girl Madeleine McCann. After that outburst, Heather's PR advisor quit.

Throughout the judgment, Justice Bennett proved time and time again that Heather made outlandish claims to her independent wealth (‘wholly exaggerated'), life with Paul, and the financial compensation she required to live in the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed.

Claims that Paul had bought a house in Beverly Hills and put it under someone else's name led Heather to assume that it was hers, which was, the judge says ‘wishful thinking on her part.'

She claimed that she was unable to work and that McCartney should support her in lieu of income. Mills said McCartney ‘forced' her to turn down modelling, fashion, and TV work, leaving her income substantially reduced. "Paul," she said "made it impossible for me to pursue a career in the US."

Bullpucky, said the judge. (Not literally! This author's interpretation).

Contrary to Heather's evidence, he found McCartney always referred to Heather as a good mother and that he was indeed supportive of her career. In addition, Paul provided the court with compelling evidence ‘that no-one told the wife what to do,' - giving her claims that she was the victim of a drunk and violent bully a bit of a battering.

But the most outlandish part of Heather's case was her claim on Paul's income. This is a man who's been a mainstay of popular music since the 1960s. These two were married four years. It doesn't take Einstein to figure out that he would have made the bulk of his fortune before Heather was in the picture.

Nevertheless, Millsy wasn't going to give up that easily. ‘I was his full time wife, mother, lover confidante, business partner and psychologist,' she declared in evidence. You need a psychologist, love! This assertion confused old Macca a bit. While she said he forced her on tour with him, he thought she was there because she wanted to be with him. Her claim to have been instrumental in set design and lighting on his tours was quickly poo-poohed. She says she helped him grieve over late wife Linda and gave him ‘confidence to restart touring.'

The judge ruled thus: "I am prepared to accept that her presence was emotionally supportive to him but to suggest that in some way she was his ‘business partner' (in quotes, do you love it?) is, I am sorry to have to say, make-belief."

I love this judge, He is my new personal hero. Forget Obama and Clinton, Justice Hugh Bennett for President!

He went on to comment: "I am afraid I have to say her case on this issue is devoid of reality."

While he acknowledged Heather's work for charity, including landmines, veganism and amputees, he queried her assertion that '80 or 90% of her income' went to charity. Show me the evidence, he said. She didn't. Or couldn't. He noted such in his report, as well as the fact that ‘her tax returns disclose no charitable givings at all.'

None. Zip. Nada. So why exactly was she claiming six hundred odd thousand pounds a year off Macca to give to charity? "I accept that the wife is very committed to charities and their causes but the degree of proposed expenditure is, I am sorry to have to say, ridiculous."

She tried to say 30 of his own valuable paintings he lent to her were a gift. She tried to get 480,000 from his finance director to pay off a mortgage on a property which, it was revealed, had no mortgage on it.

"In light of the husband's generosity towards her," Justice Bennett remarked on this point, "I find the wife's behaviour distinctly distasteful."

Without accountants or legal fees or property refurbishment, last year Heather spent over two million pounds on herself and what must be, under anyone's terms, a lavish lifestyle. Despite no longer being married to her cash cow, Heather fought tooth and nail to keep that lifestyle, and assertion the judge found slightly strange.

"It must have been absolutely plain to the wife after separation that it was wholly unrealistic to go on living at the rate at which she perceived she was living."

And, my favourite! "Although she strongly denied it her case boils down to the syndrome of "me, too" or "if he has it, I want it too."

So, to the numbers!

For a charitable woman, Heather is extremely gimme, gimme, gimme.

The judge called her out on her demands for over three million pounds a year, calling her expense claims ‘exorbitant.' Half a million pounds a year on holidays. Thirty thousand quid for ‘equestrian activities,' although she no longer rides; and thirty nine thousand pounds for wine, although she doesn't drink.

She purchased a home in Sussex for herself and her daughter, near Macca's Peasmarsh estate. She later claimed she ‘felt a prisoner' there, strange since she was now demanding 400,000 pounds to put in a swimming pool.

I don't know about you, but I would like to see what kind of magical fairytale swimming pool over a million New Zealand dollars buys.

Understandably Heather wants to provide for and take care of her daughter with Macca, Beatrice, who is now four. The little girl was lucky to be born into a very wealthy family and, with a mother and father who both clearly adore her, will obviously want for nothing.

But Heather's assertion that she needs to spend over one million New Zealand dollars a year on round the clock security is a bit outlandish. Paul, himself a musician of legendary standing and the member of a band in which one member was assassinated and one stabbed in his own home, has no security for the majority of the time.

Heather's never taken too kindly to things when they're not going her way. For a woman who claimed that this divorce squabble wasn't about the money, she must have been pretty miffed when she threw a glass of water over the head of Paul's solicitor Fiona Shackleton. In a court of law. Where you're attempting to prove that you're the mature, reasonable woman you've made out (or made up!) in your evidence. Real classy, Heather.

Mills wonders why the British public, or indeed the wider public, don't like her. If her actions over the past two years didn't demonstrate exactly why, this 58-page report has it down in legal black and white. She's a bitter, fanciful, arrogant liar, and it gives me a great deal of pseudo-satisfaction that a man can keep the fortune he rightly earned himself without a large chunk of it falling into the hands of that gold digging harpy.

And here's the clincher, from the judge himself. "If the wife feels aggrieved about what I propose she has only herself to blame."

Did Heather get a raw deal, or was justice done in the divorce court? Let me know below.

137 Comments
1. mariola@xtra.co.nz - Mar 20 02:54pm
Heather Mills has been know to lie most of her life, and there was only one reason she married Paul, and that was to take him "For a Ride" and get as much money as she could in the settlement. Thank goodness for a sensible Judge!! We want more like him around in this day and age.Good luck Paul.
2. grant-smith@xtra.co.nz - Mar 20 02:55pm
To be honest, she does not deserve one quarter of what she received!!
3. mariola@xtra.co.nz - Mar 20 02:55pm
Heather Mills has been known to lie most of her life, and there was only one reason she married Paul, and that was to take him "For a Ride" and get as much money as she could in the settlement. Thank goodness for a sensible Judge!! We want more like him around in this day and age.Good luck Paul.
4. traceysixdays - Mar 20 03:02pm
I belive justice was done still think she got more money than she should of. Look out the worlds rich and famous she will be looking for her next victom
5. traceysixdays - Mar 20 03:04pm
I belive justice was done still think she got to much money look out all the rich and famous men out there she will be looking for her next target
6. ballbuggery - Mar 20 03:19pm
If I'd been the judge she have been "paying him" for putting up with her bloody whining for the 4 years they were together and the lies told since.
7. r.s.wineera@xtra.co.nz - Mar 20 03:35pm
Well after reading the Judges report, I am surprise that she received that amount. She has a problem and this will eventually catch up with her, Heather's biggest enemy is herself, who will believe that she likes to help charity after not contributing one cent to charity last year.
8. nz_gosshag - Mar 20 03:41pm
I feel sorry for the poor kid in all this, growing up with a clearly deranged mother who has set SUCH a bad example to her child... lets hope heather mills now crawls back under the stone from whence she came. enough of your foolishness woman
9. koreankiwi60 - Mar 20 03:55pm
He is extermely lucky that these prodeedings did not occur in NZ. The biased and sexist Family Court judges in NZ would have ruled in Mills favour. McCartney would have been crucified, financially raped and hang out to dry, with his reputation in tatters. Thank goodness for British justice.
10. oscars120 - Mar 20 04:17pm
This woman is a lying, delusional, self important, gold-digging dispicable creature, who will be despised by the public for the rest of her life, irrespective of her charity work.
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