FT Blog: did Heather Mills win?

Is Heather Mills‘ trying to convince us - or herself - that she was victorious in the divorce settlement?

She grinned, gave the thumbs up sign and told reporters she was delighted with the verdict on leaving court yesterday - but did she really win?

There were reports at the weekend that she wanted the details of the settlement to become public so Paul McCartney’s team couldn’t make out that they’d beaten her so I wonder if this is just her spin on things.

The summary of the judgement has revealed that she initially asked for a package worth £125million but was eventually awarded £24.3million, plus £35,000 a year in child support payments. £24.3million is, of course, a huge amount of money by most people’s standards and would be more than enough to live on for the rest of our lives but there is no denying it’s a helluva lot less than her desired £125million. Is she just celebrating the victory that the judge didn’t go as low as Paul’s legal team wanted - £15.8million?

At the end of their five day hearing last month, Paul’s team are said to have turned down a £50-60million deal at the latest minute, believing that leaving the decision up to the judge would be better for them. If that is the case, then their gamble saved him up to £35million - so again, the victory seems to be mostly Paul’s.

Having said that, I think Heather did well given she ended up representing herself against some of the top divorce lawyers in the country and I don’t honestly think if she’d retained her own expensive lawyers, it would have made the process much easier - she might have ended up with a few more quid but every penny of it would have been extremely bitterly fought over.

Is £24.3million fair for a six year relationship/four year marriage? It’s a lot of money but Paul has a lot of money. The judge reckons there is “no evidence” to say he has the rumoured £825million - more like £400million - but the figure is still only about 6% of his wealth. He could have easily gone to double that, triple that and still not be forced into eBaying off locks his bizarre dyed hair to pay for his tea.