Judge Portrays McCartney's Ex As 'Out of Control'

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 19, 2008

LONDON, March 18 -- When Heather Mills won a $48.6 million divorce settlement from Paul McCartney on Monday, she asked the judge not to publicly release his full 58-page ruling.

Man, did she have good reason to worry.

In court papers released Tuesday over Mills's strenuous objections, Judge Hugh Bennett took a legal chainsaw to the former model's demands and arguments, including her assertion that she helped the former Beatle write his songs.

The document, based on courtroom testimony and extensive financial records, offers a rare glimpse into the life of one of the world's most famous celebrities and his four-year marriage to a woman 25 years his junior.

Mills had sought a $250 million divorce settlement. But in the papers, Bennett rejected Mills's justifications for her demand as "ridiculous" and "wholly exaggerated." He said Mills "flagrantly overeggs the pudding" with demands for just under $1 million a year for travel expenses, including $370,000 for private planes and helicopters, plus annual payments of $250,000 for clothes and $78,000 for wine (even though she doesn't drink).

"The wife for her part must have felt rather swept off her feet by a man as famous as the husband," Bennett said. "I think this may well have warped her perception leading her to indulge in make-belief."

Bennett used more syllables, and his wording is every bit as tough on Mills as on the British tabloid press, which has rallied around one of England's most beloved national icons in a bitter divorce dispute that has taken almost two years to resolve.

Bennett alluded to Mills's "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 had walked up to lawyer Fiona Shackleton inside the courthouse and proclaimed, "I'm not a loser," Mills told the BBC.

With that, she emptied a water jug on the lawyer, who also represented Prince Charles in his divorce from Princess Diana.

"I was very calm," Mills said to the BBC.

In marked contrast to his methodical trashing of Mills, 40, Bennett wrote that McCartney, 65, "expressed himself moderately though at times with justifiable irritation, if not anger. He was consistent, accurate and honest."

The judge did everything but ask for McCartney's autograph and two tickets to his next show.

Mills had argued in court that her marriage to McCartney forced her to shelve a career that was earning her millions of dollars. She told the judge she had been a top model, television personality and one of the "top 10 female speakers in Europe," appearing with the likes of astronaut Neil Armstrong.

She said she had a $1.5 million modeling contract, was earning up to $50,000 per speech and had as much as $6 million in the bank before she met McCartney. Much of her work was related to charities she worked with after losing a leg in a 1993 traffic accident.

She claimed that McCartney discouraged her from actively pursuing her career because of "his fear of losing my undivided attention" and because "he also needed to be the center of attention at all times."

Mills said CNN's Larry King had in April 2004 offered her a contract to be a regular guest host on his show. Bennett ruled that he found no evidence that any such offer had been made. King spokesman Bridget Leininger said in a brief telephone interview King's policy was not to discuss potential guest hosts or other personnel matters.

Bennett said tax returns suggested that Mills's claims of her earnings before her marriage were "wholly exaggerated." He said that her income increased after her wedding to McCartney, who gave her $720,000 a year in "allowance" and in 2002 and 2003 gave her an additional $1 million in cash. In 2005, the judge said, McCartney bought Mills jewelry worth more than $520,000.

In court, Mills also claimed that she "counseled" McCartney over the death of first wife, Linda, who died in 1998. She said she gave him the confidence he needed to start touring again -- and helped him write songs.

"I was his full-time wife, mother, lover, confidante, business partner and psychologist," she said.

Linda McCartney's death had been hard on McCartney, Bennett said. He noted -- in a detail he said was "not without significance" -- that McCartney wore Linda's wedding ring right up until his wedding to Mills.

"Her case that in some way she single-handedly saved him was exaggerated," Bennett ruled. "I am prepared to accept that her presence was emotionally supportive to him but to suggest that in some way she was his 'business partner' is, I am sorry to have to say, make-belief."

Mills spent "unreasonable" amounts of money after her April 2006 separation from McCartney, Bennett wrote. He noted that she had spent more than $4 million from October 2006 to December 2007.

The judge said the only income she generated in that period was about $220,000 she received for being on the U.S. television show "Dancing With the Stars."

Mills spent at least $1 million on "completely unreasonable" items -- including charter planes and helicopters -- largely to justify her demand that McCartney pay her more than $6 million a year in living expenses, the judge ruled.

Bennett said he thinks Mills believes "she is entitled for the indefinite future, if not for the whole of her life, to live at the same 'rate' as the husband and to be kept in the style to which she perceives she was accustomed during the marriage."

"Although she strongly denied it," Bennett wrote, "her case boils down to the syndrome of 'me, too' or 'if he has it, I want it too.' "