Mills bags £24.3m of Macca's fortune
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Heather Mills has bagged £24.3 million of Sir Paul McCartney's fortune after what has been dubbed 'the divorce of the century'.
Standing beside her sister Fiona on the steps of London's High Court, Ms Mills said her ex-husband had offered her £15.8 million to end their four-year marriage. She had wanted £125 million.
Mr Justice Hugh Bennett delivered his judgment in the case after the pair previously failed to reach a deal during five days of closed door hearings at the court.
Ms Mills said she is 'very very happy' with the result - she will receive £16.5 million in cash and £7.8 million in assets - but will be appealing over confidentiality terms after the judgment was made public.
Sir Paul and Ms Mills married in 2002 and separated just under four years later, in April 2006. They have a four-year-old daughter, Beatrice.
Ms Mills said: 'I'm so glad it's over. It was an incredible result in the end to secure mine and Beatrice's future and all the charities I plan on helping.'
However, she was angry that Beatrice would get only £35,000 a year, saying: 'So, she's obviously meant to travel B class while her father travels A class - but obviously I will pay for that.'
She said 'a lot of strange things' had been going on behind the scenes, but did not want to go into 'all the horrific details' of what had happened.
Ms Mills said: 'I just want me and my daughter to have a life and not be followed every single day. I just want to give it closure.'
Asked if she thought Sir Paul had been 'cruel', she said: 'I can't say that for the sake of my daughter but my sister does.' She added: 'I'm going to go and be with my daughter because I took so much time away from her.'
She said that she loved England as all her friends and family were here, but could not leave the country with her daughter, or Sir Paul would have an injunction on her 'in a second'.
Referring to the judge and lawyers, she went on: 'These people are in a club, it's like they want to stay together and they don't want a litigant in person to do well but he could not award me and my daughter such a low sum because it was actually impossible.'
Mr Justice Bennett found that the total value of all of Sir Paul's assets, including business ones, is about £400 million. There was no evidence at all before him that the star is worth £800 million.
Ms Mills attacked the finding, saying everyone knew he had been worth £800 million for the last 15 years.
The £16.5 million is made up of a sum of £14 million 'as the capitalised figure for Ms Mills' income needs', which the judge assessed as £600,000 per annum, and a sum of £2.5 million for her to buy a property in London.
The judge found that although the parties met in 1999 and formed a relationship, the parties did not cohabit from March 2000, but did so from the date of their marriage on June 11, 2002.
The judge refused to permit either party to raise as an issue the alleged conduct of the other on the broad ground that it was irrelevant.
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