KEY POINTS:
Everything I've read on the Mills-McCartney case has portrayed Heather Mills as a money-grabbing, gold-digging ex-wife. One Australian commentator went as far as calculating on a per-minute basis what Mills had acquired from her relationship with former Beatle Paul McCartney.
This is mean-spirited nonsense. People should stop bagging Mills, step back and take another look at what happened.
The judge asked McCartney to pay Mills a lump sum of £16.5 million (only 4 per cent of his total worth of £400 million). This is made up of £14m, based on an assessment by the Judge that Mills' income needs are £600,000 a year, and £2.5m to buy a property in London.
Mills also keeps £7.8m worth of assets from the marriage. These had been acquired as a result of, to quote the judge, "the husband's generosity towards her". This amount includes a figure of £500,000 which was described as Heather's overspending during the period of separation. The amount for daughter Beatrice was calculated separately at £35,000 a year until Beatrice is 17 and a maximum of £25,000 a year for a nanny, adjusted for inflation. McCartney will pay school fees, uniform and reasonable extras and health insurance for Beatrice.
McCartney's case to the court was that all he should have to meet is the reasonable needs of Mills and Beatrice and that Mills' amount should be reduced to reflect her post-separation misconduct - allegedly bugging his telephone, leaking to the media untrue allegations against him and failing to abide by a court order regarding confidentiality.
Mills' case was twofold. First, that before she married McCartney she was independently wealthy and that during the marriage she had given up lucrative business opportunities. The judge rejected that Mills had been independently wealthy and found that apart from a possible regular slot on the Larry King Show, McCartney had been generally supportive of her opportunities during the marriage.
The judge did concede that Mills should be assisted to recover her earning capacity. This acknowledges that, notwithstanding her overzealous statements, Mills had got behind in income earning capacity and should be compensated for this.
Mills was on much stronger ground with her second argument - that she and Beatrice were entitled to continue at the same lifestyle they had during the marriage. People marry each other for richer or for poorer. McCartney happened to be richer. If he didn't want to share his wealth with his wife he had the opportunity to enter into a prenuptial agreement. Mills was a fulltime wife, mother, lover and confidant (the judge said her presence was emotionally supportive and she was a good mother). Most importantly, Mills gave McCartney a beautiful child who will continue to give him great joy.
The judge said Mills was not entitled to continue to live at the same standard as she had during the marriage. Why not? Mills played her part - her reasonable needs should be assessed at the standard of the marriage.
We should not be fooled by the amounts of money, we should focus on the principle that reasonable needs should be assessed in terms of the couple's living standard.
According to English law, partners should share in any increase in value of the assets during the relationship. The court found that there was an increase in value of £21.4 million during the four years, which Mills should have been entitled to share equally. The judge took the view that because Mills had already received fair compensation based on her reasonable needs, to award her any more would be manifestly unfair. She therefore received no share of the increase in value of the assets.
While Heather seemed rather proud of representing herself, I think it has cost her. The judge says at the end of the judgment that the excessive and exorbitant nature of the claims (which amounted to £125 million) had undermined the court's ability to do the job as fairly as possible. The judge said this case was a paradigm example of an applicant failing to put a rational and logical case and thus failing to assist the court in its quasi-inquisitorial role to reach a fair result.
All Mills was asking for was for her and Beatrice to continue in a reasonable standard of living and for a share of the increase in value of the assets during the marriage.
An old duffer like McCartney should be more grateful for what Mills has done for him, particularly the irreplaceable treasure of Beatrice.
* Mark Henaghan is a Professor of Law at Otago University.
