A MAN who was awarded just £325,000 of his wife’s £60 million fortune has now won a bitter divorce battle.
The divorcee blamed “gender prejudice” for his original 0.5% payout during a hearing at the Court of Appeal.
Champion News ServiceJenny Helliwell, 42, was said to have behaved “fraudulently”[/caption]
Champion News ServiceSimon Entwistle, 42, was awarded just £325,000 after a ‘painful’ divorce battle[/caption]
Simon Entwistle, 42, a financial trader, was awarded just £325,000 at the High Court after a “painful” divorce battle with multimillionaire heiress Jenny Helliwell, also 42.
His claim of needing £36,000 a year for flights, and £26,000 for “a meal plan just for himself”, was called “aspirational” by the judge.
The judge added: “He said to me, ‘I can’t even cook an omelette,’ well my answer to that is ‘learn’, it is not difficult.”
“You do not have to be a master chef to learn how to eat reasonably well.”
Now, a judge has found Jenny guilty of “fraudulent” behaviour by failing to declare £48m of her £66m personal fortune.
The pair, who were together from 2016 until 2022, enjoyed an “opulent standard of living throughout their relationship.”
Simon reportedly “enjoyed the trappings of being married into a family of exceptional wealth”.
This included living in a £4.5m villa in Dubai, and a Parisian wedding ceremony that cost £500,000 in August 2019.
The villa had been a gift from Jenny’s father – Dubai-based British businessman Neil Helliwell.
Simon’s own assets were worth around £800,000, including a flat in Salford.
When the couple split in August 2022, Jenny hired lawyers to order Simon to leave their home with just 48 hours’ notice.
It sparked a legal battle that would see Simon asking for £2.5m of his wife’s fortune, estimated to be worth £60m.
Jenny had offered him £500,000, and then £800,000 to avoid a court battle, but he refused in the hopes of an £2.5m award.
However, the original judge awarded just a £400,000 payout following a pre-nuptial agreement that stated the pair would keep their own assets.
This came to £325,000 after he was made to pay his wife’s legal fees.
During an appeal, Simon claimed he was a victim of “gender prejudice”, and that the agreement had been invalidated by Jenny failing to disclose around £48m in assets when he signed the document.
His lawyer said: “Had the positions been reversed, it is very unlikely that he would have… so ungenerously assessed the needs of a wife after a six-year relationship.”
A judge has ruled that this amounted to “fraudulent” behaviour, invalidating the agreement.
While Jenny did disclose around £18m in assets, she failed to disclose an additional £47m.
It included around £8m of beachfront land in Dubai, and a £1.6m property in Wimbledon.
This meant that Simon did not sign the agreement with full knowledge of his partner’s wealth.
She did not make any findings on the gender prejudice argument.
The case will now be returned to the High Court, to be judged as if the agreement didn’t exist.
Lady Justice King said: “Since the husband in the instant case was deliberately deprived of information which it had been agreed that he should have, in my judgment, the agreement cannot stand.”
Not known, clear with picture deskJenny, the daughter of a multimillionaire businessman, is thought to be worth £60m[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
