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Divorce drama: McCartney asked to pay up $48.7 mn
Published on Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 20:53, Updated at Tue, Mar 18, 2008 in Entertainment section
Tags: Paul McCartney, Heather Mills , London
SPLIT WIDE OPEN: Paul McCartney, 65, married former model and charity campaigner Heather Mills, 40, in 2002.
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London: Former Beatle Paul McCartney was ordered on Monday to pay his estranged wife Heather Mills £24.3 million after an acrimonious divorce battle.
McCartney, 65, married the former model and charity campaigner Mills, 40, in 2002 but they split four years later, blaming media intrusion into their private lives. They have a daughter, Beatrice, aged four.
Speaking outside the court, Mills criticised McCartney's lawyer, accusing her of handling the case badly and of calling her names. "I am so glad it is over," she said.
"We are very, very pleased,” she added.
The split was fought out under a remorseless media spotlight with McCartney, a founder of the world's most famous pop group, pitted against the outspoken Mills, target of lurid tales in the press about her colourful past.
She hit back, saying she had been driven to the brink of suicide because the media had branded her a "whore" and a "gold-digger."
Here are some other reported big divorce settlements:
- Multi-millionaire businessman John Charman lost an appeal against his ex-wife's record-breaking £48 million settlement in May 2007. He had offered her 20 million. It was the highest sum ever awarded by a British divorce court.
- Basketball great Michael Jordan paid an estimated $168 million to his wife of nearly 18 years, Chicago bank officer Juanita Vanoy, when they divorced in November 2007.
- Singer-songwriter Neil Diamond settled an estimated $150 million to onetime TV production assistant Marcia Murphey, whom he married in 1969 before his breakthrough album, Touching You, Touching Me, went gold. They divorced in 1996. Diamond later said Murphey, his second wife, was "worth every penny."
- Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg's first marriage, to actress Amy Irving, ended in 1989 with his ex-spouse awarded roughly half of the filmmaker's fortune, about $100 million.
- Actor Harrison Ford paid an estimated $85 million to his second wife, Melissa Mathison.
- Kevin Costner had an estimated $80 million settlement obtained by his first spouse, Cindy Silva, whose 16-year marriage to the actor spanned his peak earning years.
- When Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman parted in 2001 it was reported that, in dividing up their reputed fortune of $350 million, Kidman got $4.3 million, a five-bedroom mansion in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles and a house in Sydney, Australia. Cruise kept the couple's $10.5 million estate in Telluride, Colorado, as well as his three planes.
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The root cause of all divorce is marriage. The marriage is a very old concept not fit for modern age.$48.7
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