A wealthy couple locked in a bitter legal row over the wife’s £26million divorce settlement are no better than spoilt, squabbling children, an exasperated judge claimed yesterday
A wealthy couple locked in a bitter legal row over the wife’s £26million divorce settlement are no better than spoilt, squabbling children, an exasperated judge claimed yesterday.
Lord Justice Thorpe said Jennifer Evans’s dispute with her estranged husband Mark was ‘puerile’, warning them: ‘Somebody has to come into the nursery to make some rules.’
He also expressed amazement at the ‘completely disproportionate’ legal bills already run up in the case, adding: ‘I simply cannot understand how the parties can litigate with such profligate extravagance.’
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Mr Evans, 47, and his wife were ‘penniless’ when they met and married in 1985. But they became multi-millionaires after setting up a financial IT firm.
The couple, who have two teenage daughters, separated in July 2010, with Mrs Evans starting divorce proceedings last April.
Mr Evans’s shares in their computer firm, Confluence Corporation, are believed to be worth at least £40million.
Their non-business assets are valued at about £12million.
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This year, Mrs Evans, 46, who lives in a £10.6million apartment near Harrods in Knightsbridge, West London, was awarded assets worth £26million by a family judge. However, fearing that after their divorce her husband might legally transfer his company shares to another person thereby denying her the full payout, she successfully applied for a second family court hearing to agree a settlement.
Meanwhile, she went to the Court of Appeal to block a decree absolute finalising her divorce, arguing that she needed a ‘cast-iron guarantee’ that her husband’s shares could not be sold or transferred.
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