An oligarch's son bought himself a helicopter to celebrate splitting from his wife. Photo / 123RF
An oligarch's son worth £40m (NZ$70 million), who bought himself a helicopter to celebrate splitting from his wife, is fighting to get her "over-generous" £7m (NZ$12 million) divorce payout slashed.
Ella Zimina says she had to "live relatively frugally" after separating from Russian multi-millionaire Boris Zimin in 2009, whilst her ex-husband partied on the family yacht and "took up learning how to fly his new helicopter."
Mr Zimin, 47, the son of Russian telecommunications don, Dmitri Zimin, agreed to hand Mrs Zimin £6m after the couple were divorced in 2009 in Russia.
But last year Mrs Zimina, 45 - who lives in a £5m five-storey, six-bedroom, house in Holland Street, Kensington, with the couple's three teenage children - applied to London's High Court to have her "reasonable needs" reassessed and was handed a £1.15 million top-up.
Mr Zimin now says his ex-wife has "taken advantage" of the "generous" UK divorce courts and is fighting to strip her of the extra seven-figure payout.
His lawyers are also accusing her of causing an eye-watering £2.3m of the family fortune to be squandered on legal bills.
But Mrs Zimin insists her original £6m payout was an "injustice", given the vast extent of her ex-husband's wealth.
Applying "English standards of fairness", she says that, if anything, even more should have been added to her award.
The Appeal Court heard that the couple married in 1997 and split after 12 years of marriage.
They moved to London in 2004 and spent a year renovating their Kensington house, but split before the work was completed.
Mr Zimin departed overseas whilst his wife and children remained in the family home in London.
Neither of them had made their own money, but owed their lifestyle to the "enormous largesse" of Mr Zimin's father, who made hundred of millions of pounds from telecommunications following the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Post-split, Mr Zimin continued to enjoy the high life, "including sumptuous properties in the sun, use of a £3.5m yacht and ownership of a £850,000 helicopter," his ex-wife's lawyers told the court.
She led a more "modest" lifestyle and applied to have her divorce settlement upped by £3.65m.
Mrs Justice Roberts handed her £1.15m extra, but Lewis Marks QC, for Mr Zimin, is now arguing that she should have been sent packing.
"If a wife has millions of pounds, the wife is clearly not suffering hardship,' he told three senior judges at London's Appeal Court.
"It is impossible to characterise the provision made in Russia as inadequate.
"The provision was offered, and accepted, as a comprehensive worldwide clean-break package.
"We submit that, where the foreign order has been made by consent, unless the agreement would be liable to be set aside on the conventional grounds of fraud, misrepresentation or duress had it been made in England, it should be afforded the fullest respect."
The Russian settlement 'objectively met the wife's needs", insisted the QC, who added that Mr Zimin's super-rich dad was 'the creator of the entire fortune".
Mrs Zimina, he claimed, had unfairly 'taken advantage' of her residence in England to get her payout upped.
"Mere disparity between a foreign award and what would be awarded in England is not a reason to grant permission to apply (for more)," Mr Marks said.
"To do so is giving unwitting encouragement to applicants, like the wife in this case, to think that, even if they haven't suffered injustice, they can roll the dice and ask the court to give them permission to apply,' the barrister added.
And he told the judges that the divorce courts were 'not to be used to take advantage of a more generous approach in English cases."
Criticising the toll of the court battle on the family wealth, he concluded: "These proceedings, from 2014 to the present day, have cost the family approximately £2.3m in legal costs.
"The husband made every possible effort to have the case resolved quickly, and ideally cheaply, from the start."
Richard Todd QC, for Mrs Zimina, however defended her right to seek a bigger award in England - and claimed she should have got more.
"In truth Mrs Justice Roberts was too restrained in her award, not too generous," he said.
"The husband has had in the order of £40m and a lifestyle including sumptuous properties in the sun, use of a £3.5 million yacht and ownership of a helicopter.
"The wife had £3m in property and £3m in cash.
"The parties did not live off capital, they lived off the largesse of the husband's father. The husband continued to enjoy that enormous largesse after 2009.
"The husband's extended family wealth had run to the hundreds of millions.
"After the Russian deal, the wife lived relatively frugally, whilst her husband enjoyed the yacht and took up learning how to fly his new helicopter.
"For determining what was reasonable, all matters had to be considered, and that included the context of this man's tens of millions of pounds. The judge achieved a balanced decision.
"The wife was right to do the best she could in Russia, but such steps did not operate to prevent her from applying (to have her payment increased in England) as the husband would suggest.
"In a case where the husband had assets in excess of £40.5 million...the wife's needs should have been assessed on a generously interpreted basis.
"It is accepted that...the court should not be indulgent to cynical attempts to take advantage of England's more generous regime, something which was not the case here.
"The correct approach should have been to reject the Russian agreement in accordance with English standards of fairness.
"Once all matters which should have been taken into account, and which were not taken into account, by the Russian court are considered, then the agreement would not pass an English fairness test.
"The husband says England should make an award in Russian terms. It did not, it should not. We invite this court to dismiss the appeal," Mr Todd concluded.
Lord Justice Patten, sitting with Lord Justice Floyd and Lady Justice King, said there must be a good reason for divorcing spouses to ask English courts to revise foreign orders and not "simply because we are more generous to the parties here."
But he added that it was arguable that the wife "could say that the Russian divorce has been adverse to her and, had she been able to divorce in England, she might have got more."
The judges have now reserved their ruling on the case to be given at a later date, yet to be set.