Botox fees and koi carp fights: Seven secrets of the super-rich divorce

Bill and Melinda Gates in Monaco on June 23, 2017. Photo / Getty Images

Who better to show the ruthless business of divorce than the characters of Succession? Shiv Roy and her oleaginous husband Tom Wambsgans have called time on their marriage in this latest and last series of the drama, and their divorce promises it all – expensive lawyers, a prenup described by his own mother as “unconscionable”, a husband who’s more loyal to his father-in-law than to his wife and a shared dog (called Mondale).

The fictional world of the Roys is one of helicopters used like Ubers, billion-dollar deals, swathes of beige cashmere and transactional relationships. But when it comes to divorce, the show strikes a chord. Divorce applications are at a 10-year high and in the high-profile cases big money is involved – just ask Jeff Bezos, who recently made a US$38 billion payout to ex-wife MacKenzie, or Bill Gates, who has a personal fortune of US$150 billion to divide with Melinda.

While those cases are in the States, top family lawyers in the UK are dealing with eye-watering sums daily. I should know, as my husband Alex Carruthers of family law firm Hughes Fowler Carruthers in London is one of them. While he’s maddeningly discreet, he occasionally brings home a gifted bottle of Chateau Lafite worth more than I earn in a week or refers to millions spent in fees alone.

If, to paraphrase F Scott Fitzgerald, the very rich are different to you and me, what happens when they separate?

1. Their ‘reasonable needs’ can seem quite unreasonable

When lawyers prepare budgets of what a spouse might need to live on and therefore expect in maintenance, sums soon become eye-watering.

“They don’t blink at spending £1000 [about NZ$1980] a week on flowers for their houses,” says Vanessa Lloyd Platt, proprietor of London law firm Lloyd Platt & Co, who has 44 years of experience. “Expenses can include plastic surgery, enhancements, Botox… these young wealthy girls end up looking like the Bride of Wildenstein.”

Ayesha Vardag, whose firm Vardags specialises in high-net-worth cases, sees millions spent on parties alone. “The guests are brought to them on private jets with entertainment costing hundreds of thousands.”

Even in cases where the couple aren’t married, the poorer party can demand luxuries. These are nominally only for costs relating to any shared children, but according to Alex Carruthers, a judge recently decreed that it was appropriate for the cost of a mother’s designer gear to form part of this child support. “The philosophy being, I suspect,” he says, “that the kids are going to be in a world where all the parents are in designer clothes, so it’s not for the mother’s benefit but for that of the kid so they’re not left feeling different.”

2. Never underestimate the sexual ego of a very rich man

Succession patriarch Logan Roy is shown in a relationship with the much younger “friend, assistant and adviser” Kerry. His real-life counterpart Rupert Murdoch, aged 92, has been divorced four times already (although he could be finally going off the idea of marriage as it is reported he has called off his latest engagement to American Ann Lesley Smith).

The ageing billionaire and younger girlfriend trope isn’t without its dangers. A few years ago, a super-wealthy tycoon was in the process of burning through London’s top lawyers in a highly acrimonious divorce that was even thought to be one that would set new legal precedents. The proceedings were suddenly and brutally curtailed when he died of a heart attack during a penis enlargement operation in an exclusive clinic on the Champs Élysées. Lawyers speculated at the time that his incentive for this operation was a new, youthful girlfriend.

3. Their pets are worth more than you are

An unlikely source of tension in high-net-worth splits: koi carp. Photo / Alejandro Aro, Unsplash

The rich are like us in that they love their pets. They’re different, however, in the money they lavish on them, both before and during their divorces. Lloyd Platt has seen costs included in budgets that involve “Perrier water for the dog and smoked salmon for the cat”. While they may be loved, in law these animals are chattels with the same status as a fridge-freezer, but it doesn’t stop couples spending thousands in pet disputes.

Dogs are the most hotly contested, followed by koi carp, according to Lloyd Platt, but expensive polo ponies can be key assets.

There was one case, according to Vardag, “where they fought so long over the very precious family rabbit that it had actually died before they’d resolved it”.

4. Their lawyers’ fees will be more than we could ever hope to earn or own

Top lawyers charge as much as £1200 per hour, so it’s not hard for these to ratchet up. This is sometimes coupled with a desire to win at all costs, even if it means that they might spend far more than is logical. “What never ceases to amaze me about the very very wealthy,” says Lloyd Platt, “is that it’s all about winning.”

A current case going through the High Court, Rakshina v Xanthoupoulos, has racked up fees of £5.5 million in just 17 months, a figure described by the judge as “apocalyptic”.

5. Home is where the helipad is

Most of us live in one house and pay our taxes to that country’s government. Ultra-high-net-worth individuals, however, have multiple homes and do their very best to avoid paying taxes anywhere. How then do lawyers decide where they should get divorced?

“We had one about three weeks ago,” says Lloyd Platt, “where an extremely wealthy lady couldn’t qualify for a divorce in London because she had so many homes all over the place that she just wasn’t here long enough.”

Lawyers instead have a list of queries to help them try to answer the seemingly obvious question: where do you live? “‘Where is your favourite hairdresser, your dog walker, your dog in fact, which doctor would you fly in to see, who’s your dentist’ … anything that determines where they spend most of their time,” says Carruthers.

These “citizens of nowhere” float in a weird stateless world where national boundaries and cultures are blurred into a high-end amorphous nothingness. The more their houses look the same, the better. One top tech entrepreneur had his PA photograph his desk each time he travelled so that his desk on the other side of the world could be arranged in exactly the same way in preparation for his arrival.

6. Their divorces involve as many accountants as lawyers

If you’re very rich, marriages are as much business partnerships as romantic partnerships. Photo / 123RF

If you’re very rich, marriages are as much business partnerships as boring old falling in love. The most secretive thing us normies might do is have a sneaky ISA, but their wealth is tied up in mysterious and labyrinthine arrangements that can only be unearthed with the help of teams of forensic accountants. Vardag observes that it’s “more like doing a global corporate demerger than it is doing a domestic divorce. Not only are you identifying assets all over the world, you are also working out how to achieve liquidity within those assets in the most efficient way.”

Lloyd Platt agrees: “When you’re dealing with the stonkingly wealthy, it’s all about accountants valuing the companies, the shares and the different kinds of bitcoins.”

7. You won’t have heard of most of them

While we associate big money with celebrities, the vast majority of these cases involve entrepreneurs, tycoons and fund managers who discreetly live life under the radar. “In my experience, celebrities have significantly less money than one would think,” observes Vardag.

Similarly, divorce for British old money, the aristocrats and the landed gentry seldom leads to big cases since everything is entailed in estates and trusts. The divorced spouse of a lord might be lucky to end up in the dowagers’ cottage with a malfunctioning Aga.