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GETTING ALL WET: Paul McCartney's lawyer, Fiona Shackleton, before entering the courtroom. -- PHOTOS: AP, AFP
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LONDON - The day she won a reduced £24.3-million (S$67.5-million) divorce settlement from Paul McCartney on Monday, former model Heather Mills allegedly poured a jug of water in court over the attorney of her estranged husband.
So it's not surprising that a judge, in the ruling published on Tuesday, would label her 'explosive and volatile'.
Just as damning is Justice Hugh Bennett's comment that her financial claims in the case were 'exorbitant' and that she was 'less than candid' in her testimony during the hearing.
The 58-page ruling, describing the legal wrangling between the couple who married in 2002 and split up in 2006, also laid out the stupendous claims she made for her living costs, such as annual holiday costs of about £500,000 and £39,000 for wine, although she doesn't drink.
No wonder that Mills, 40, had asked the judge not to release his full ruling.
In rejecting her request for a £125-million settlement, Judge Bennett called her justifications for her demand 'ridiculous'.
He said tax returns suggested that her claims that she earned millions in modelling and speaking fees before her marriage were 'wholly exaggerated''.
He questioned her assertions that she was 'wealthy and independent' before she met McCartney in 1999, saying she claimed to own a property in Brighton in 1999 but she actually bought it only in 2000. Also, her flat in Piccadilly was not worth, as she had claimed, £500,000 in 1999.
He noted that her income increased after her wedding. McCartney gave her £360,000 a year in 'allowance' and in 2002 and 2003 gave her £500,000 in cash. In 2005, he also bought her jewellery worth more than £264,000.
Mills said CNN's Larry King had in 2004 offered her a contract to be a regular guest host on his show. Judge Bennett said he found no evidence of such an offer.
He also described as 'exaggerated' Mills' claims that she 'counselled' McCartney, 65, over the death of first wife, Linda, who died in 1998, and that she gave him the confidence he needed to start touring again - and helped him write songs.
'The wife for her part must have felt rather swept off her feet by a man as famous as the husband,' the judge said. 'I think this may well have warped her perception, leading her to indulge in make-belief.'
He alluded to Mills' 'bad press' in his ruling, saying: 'She is entitled to feel that she has been ridiculed, even vilified.'
But, he said, 'to some extent, she is her own worst enemy. She has an explosive and volatile character'. At other times, he concluded, she had 'behaved in an erratic, out of control, and vengeful manner'.
And right on cue, Mills dumped a jug of water over the head of McCartney's lawyer.
After Monday's court hearing where the divorce settlement was announced, she walked up to lawyer Fiona Shackleton inside the courthouse and proclaimed: 'I'm not a loser.'
She then emptied a water jug on the lawyer. 'I was very calm,' Mills told the BBC.
By contrast, Judge Bennett said McCartney 'expressed himself moderately though at times with justifiable irritation, if not anger. He was consistent, accurate and honest'.
The judge recounted how McCartney, still grieving the loss of Linda, wore the wedding ring she gave him throughout the early years of his romance with Mills and removed it only when he married the latter.
Comments by McCartney also reveal the modest lifestyle led by the former Beatle who sometimes preferred taking the Tube to living life in a gilded cage.
As for Mills, her attitude, said Judge Bennett, was 'that she is entitled for the indefinite future, if not for the whole of her life, to live at the same 'rate' as her husband and to be kept in the style to which she perceives she was accustomed'.
'Although she strongly denied it, her case boils down to the syndrome of 'me, too' or 'if he has it, I want it too'.'
LAT-WP
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