Insurance magnate fails to halt €71m divorce award

INSURANCE king John Charman yesterday failed to stop his former wife receiving £48 million (€71m), the biggest divorce payment in British legal history.

Mr Charman, 54, had challenged the sum awarded by a High Court judge, saying his wife Beverley’s share in his fortune was “grotesque and unfair”.

The Court of Appeal threw out his claim, but called for a Law Commission inquiry into the system that had made London the “divorce capital of the world for aspiring wives”.

Mr Charman, head of Axis Capital Holdings, claimed his contribution to the family fortune meant he should receive a larger slice of the total assets, which were assessed at £131m (€194M).

But Sir Mark Potter, president of the High Court Family Division, giving the appeal ruling, said Mr Charman’s special contribution had been taken into consideration when the award was made. He said: “Neither in its method nor in its result do we regard the judge’s treatment of the husband’s special contribution as vulnerable to appeal.”

Mr Charman had argued that his £20m (€30m) offer was more than adequate and a £70m (€103m) family trust should not have been taken into account when the total assets of the marriage were assessed. However, the appeal court agreed with an earlier ruling that the trust fund was controlled by him.

Mr Charman had described his 54-year-old former partner, who was divorced in 2005, as “a housewife”. Her lawyers argued the House of Lords had laid down guidelines in previous divorce rulings in big money cases that family assets should generally be divided equally between breadwinner and homemaker.

Mrs Charman, in a statement read out by her lawyer on the steps of the Royal Court of Justice in London’s Strand, said: “I acknowledge that the sum awarded to me is huge by any standards, but the Court of Appeal has decided that it fairly reflects the contributions made by John and me during our 28-year marriage.”

Mr Charman, who was not in court, said in a statement: “I intend to appeal against this decision which I genuinely believe is wrong.”

He was refused permission to take his case to the House of Lords for a final appeal at the highest court in the land, but can apply to the Law Lords directly. It was said in court Mr Charman had already paid his wife his original £20m (€30m) offer.

In a postscript to the appeal judgement, Mr Potter acknowledges that the result of recent emphasis by the courts on the principle or equality in divorce settlements was “to raise the aspirations of the claimant hugely”.

The first of these settlements was White v White, where the wife achieved total parity with her former husband because she had made an equal contribution to their farming business.