McCartney could face huge divorce settlement

Paul McCartney and Heather Mills. File picture / Reuters

Sir Paul McCartney is facing one of the biggest divorce settlements in history after he and his wife of four years announced that they were to separate yesterday.

The former Beatle lashed out angrily at critics who suggested that Heather Mills McCartney had married him for his money as legal experts predicted the former model turned charity campaigner could be in for a £200m payout - the equivalent of nearly a quarter of her husband's fortune.

The couple famously declined to sign a pre nuptial agreement limiting any future divorce settlement, claiming they were "too much in love".

They issued a joint statement expressing their "sadness" at the split but laid the blame for their travails firmly at the media's door.

It follows weeks of damaging newspaper stories suggesting their marriage was over and that the couple had gone their separate ways - claims that Lady McCartney threatened to sue over.

"Having tried exceptionally hard to make our relationship work given the daily pressures surrounding us, it is with sadness that we have decided to go our separate ways," the statement said.

The couple, who have a two-year-old daughter Beatrice Milly, said the split would prove "immensely stressful".

The couple added: "Our parting is amicable and both of us still care about each other very much but have found it increasingly difficult to maintain a normal relationship with constant intrusion into our private lives, and we have actively tried to protect the privacy of our child."

In a separate personal message issued on Sir Paul's website the musician paid tribute to his wife, praising her generous charity work and blasting the "vicious rumours" which had dogged their marriage almost from the start.

"It's been suggested that she married me for the money and there is not an ounce of truth in this. She is a very generous person who spends most of her time trying to help others in greater need than herself. All the work she does is unpaid so these stories are ridiculous and completely unfounded."

The union raised eyebrows from the start. Lady McCartney is 26 years younger than Sir Paul who will be 64 next month.

They met a year after the death of his first wife Linda from breast cancer.

Sir Paul and Linda's marriage, which produced three children, was hailed as one of the happiest in the troubled world of pop star nuptials.

A love match with passionate shared convictions, particularly over their vegetarianism and animal rights, it was said the McCartneys spent less than a week apart during their 29 years together.

Sir Paul met his second wife during a charity event organised, ironically, by the Mirror newspaper.

The then Ms Mills had become a public figure after a series of newspaper articles highlighting how she overcame horrific injuries, resulting in an amputated leg, when she was knocked over by a police motorcyclist.

She turned adversity to her- and others' - advantage by campaigning against landmines and for prosthetic limbs for those injured by them.

After a rapid courtship, Sir Paul proposed and the couple were married at Castle Leslie in Ireland in June 2002.

However, it was around this time that a Channel 4 documentary made a series of damaging allegations about his new wife's past and newspapers reported an ongoing rift between Sir Paul's daughter, the fashion designer Stella and her new stepmother.

Fans contrasted the saintly memory of Linda with what some saw as a pushy new wife under whose influence Sir Paul began dressing in younger clothes and dyeing his hair.

It was even claimed she convinced him to give up smoking cannabis - a ritual he had enjoyed daily with his late wife.

Leading divorce lawyer Alan Kaufman, head of family law at London firm Finers Stephens Innocent, said wives of top earners were seeing increasingly generous payments in the divorce courts.

"This will be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, divorce cases to hit the English courts, if it gets that far," he said.

- INDEPENDENT