A billionaire’s wife has been awarded £230million in Britain’s third largest ever divorce payout.
The unnamed woman was threatened by her husband she would have to work ‘at the tills in Tesco’ if she kept to a postnuptial agreement the couple signed in 2021.
A court found that her free will had been taken away by the man’s coercive behaviour towards her.
The husband had sought to use scare tactics to ‘frighten’ the wife and even tried to ‘drive a wedge’ between her and her lawyer, the Telegraph reported.
The pair had started married life with ‘zero’ but made a fortune after the husband successfully floated his tech firm, netting him an estimated £1.5billion.
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They moved to the UK six years later to give their three children an English education, according to the judgment.
Under the laws of their country of origin, known only as ‘Country A’, the couple equally owned all of the assets acquired during their marriage.
While the pair are thought to have once been worth £1.82 billion, their wealth had declined to £545million by the time of divorce in 2022.
Her awarded bumper payout amounted to approximately 44% of the couple’s assets.
Mr Justice Cobb, determining the case, said: ‘I am satisfied, from all that I have read and heard, that the wife was ultimately placed in a position of obvious disadvantage.’
Claire Gordon, a partner at Farrer and Co, the firm who represented the wife, said the family court judgement was a recognition of the impact a ‘build-up of persistent and attritional conduct places on relationships’.
She added: ‘There does not need to be a ‘blow up’ event or an interaction for there to be improper pressure or control – the effects of such conduct are insidious.’
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