Case No. ZZ20D65691

5.The husband was born on 25 January 1960 and is 62. He is a highly successful real-estate developer and investor. Originally from Germany, he moved to the US in the 1990s, completed an MBA in California and concentrated on purchasing property in New York as well as Germany, ultimately acquiring a significant portfolio of prime Midtown Manhattan real estate. He holds both US and German citizenship. 6.The wife was born on 19 March 1975 and is 47. She is a French national with UK pre-settled status and a US Green Card which will be relinquished. She was raised in France until age 14 when she and her family moved to London. She attended university in Florida and embarked on further studies in New York. She is a former journalist but left her career in the early days of their relationship as the husband’s lifestyle was and remains one of constant travel, and she wished always to be by his side. 7.According to the wife, they met in 2006 and began cohabiting in 2008; according to the husband, it was in 2008 that they met. The dispute is of no relevance. They began living together, according to the husband, in the USA in 2010. Their first family homes were in New York (they have always had more than one home). They oscillated between London and the US until they settled into London in 2018, where the wife and children remain. 8.They married on 14 April 2012 and separated in March 2020. The wife’s divorce petition was issued on 22 December 2020. Decree Nisi was pronounced on 24 August 2021 and is yet to be made Absolute.9.The husband has two adult daughters from a previous marriage and a son from another relationship. 10.The parties have two children together, A, now aged 6, and B, now aged 4. They attend pre-preparatory school together and live with their mother in the family home. In Children Act 1989 proceedings the circuit judge on 1 September 2022 ordered a structured development of staying contact with their father. Contact will develop so that the husband will soon have the children on alternate weekends during term-time, together with around 8 weeks a year in school holidays. 11.On two occasions, the husband has disclosed his billionaire status. The schedule appended to the PNA dated 2 March 2012 stated his wealth to be $1,018,215,671. The schedule produced by him on 25 June 2021 (in response to an order made by me on 19 April 2021) stated his wealth to be $1,731,289,558. Between those dates, which approximately correspond to the span of the marriage, there was therefore an increase in the husband’s wealth of $713,073,887, although in his oral evidence he claimed that the value of his fortune had plummeted recently due to the turbulent economic climate. In cross-examination Mr Cusworth KC put to him that during the marriage there had been an acquest of $713 million. This was the ensuing exchange:“A. Yes, I need to correct him, because it was in – when I made the statement like nine months ago that was the assets. Today, if I would make a similar statement, it would be between 600 and 800 million.MR JUSTICE MOSTYN: Really. Your total net worth. A. Yes, and I can give the –MR JUSTICE MOSTYN: Between 600 and 800 million.MR CUSWORTH: As of now, you have lost in the last nine months about $1 billion worth of assets?A. Yes.MR JUSTICE MOSTYN: Okay.A. Yes, I can explain if it's necessary.MR JUSTICE MOSTYN: No, I am just processing that, okay.MR CUSWORTH: You have never asserted or relied on that fact before today, have you? There has been no updated evidence from you about the state of your assets.A. It is not important.”12.The husband’s evidence is not that surprising. The schedule summarising his investment property portfolio, disclosed on 25 June 2021, identifies numerous commercial properties, mainly in New York. These properties are all co-owned, in varying shares, with other investors. The properties are said to be worth $10.17 billion with mortgages of $6.65 billion. The properties are thus all highly leveraged. The overall debt-to-assets ratio is 65%. The equity is $3.52 billion of which the husband’s share is $1.47 billion (41.8%).13.It would not take much movement downwards from the top figure for the husband’s share of the equity to fall to $700 million. Mathematically, a reduction of the $10.17 billion figure by 18.1% to $8.33 billion results in a halving of the value of the husband’s share of the equity. It seems to me plausible that the blows to the global economy since June 2021 could have resulted in such a reduction in the value of the property portfolio. But as the husband rightly says, it is not important. The result of this case does not differ depending on whether the husband is worth $700 million or $1 billion or $1.7 billion.14.The parties certainly lived a billionaire lifestyle during their marriage. The nature of the parties’ relationship was such that money (and particularly the detail of family expenditure) was never a concern. I described their lifestyle in my maintenance pending suit judgment. At [12] I stated:“It is common ground that during the marriage the parties enjoyed an extremely high standard of living. They had the use of properties around the world (including a property located in the heart of the Cap d’Antibes, to which I will return later in this judgment). The parties employed a significant number of staff at the West London property, as I have described above, and in their other properties. It is agreed that the parties would spend a great deal of time travelling, typically by private plane or first-class commercial flights, and staying in high-end hotels or villas at significant cost.”15.They ran at least five fully staffed homes in fashionable places such as The Hamptons, New York City, Paris, Miami, Cap d’Antibes, Capri and London. 16.The wife and the children have their primary residence at the family home in West London, and when in London the husband lives in an apartment near the family home. The family home is over 8,500 square feet in area. Its agreed value is £35,000,000 and the mortgage is £21,500,000. It is a property of exceptional amenity, but with extraordinarily high running costs. It has six stories, five bedrooms, and an indoor heated pool in its basement. It has a private garden and access to a communal garden. The parties had a retinue of staff at the family home. They formally employed two rota chefs, a house manager, two or three housekeepers, a laundress and two full-time nannies, in addition to a multitude of contractors (gardeners, pool maintainers, builders, plumbers, electricians and handymen). 17.In the maintenance pending suit judgment, I described and analysed the annual expenditure. According to a schedule produced by the husband on 25 June 2021, in 2019, the last calendar year of the marriage, the expenditure was £4.78 million. Mr Cusworth KC submits that an analysis subsequently made of the American Express statements shows that this figure is understated. Be that as it may, the rate at which the family lived was phenomenally high. This is not a common-or-garden big-money case; this is a case of the super-rich who, as I stated in my previous judgment (quoting F Scott Fitzgerald), are truly different to you and me.18.This family’s custom of unrestrained expenditure has been practised in the litigation. Prodigious amounts of legal costs have been incurred. The parties’ Forms H filed at the start of the trial show a combined expenditure on these financial remedy proceedings of £4,314,769, broken down as follows: Since the date of her Form H (29 September 2022) the wife has incurred a further £317,382 in financial remedy costs, giving a final total for her of £2,503,179.19.I gather that the parties have spent much the same in the Children Act proceedings. To spend over £8 million in family litigation in such a short period must be almost a record. The scale and intensity of the financial dispute between the parties, and the amounts spent on it, demonstrate the enduring vigour of the law of unintended consequences. The intended consequence of the modified PNA was to spell out with clarity the financial outcome in the event of divorce, and in so doing to prevent, or at least seriously circumscribe, any future litigation. In fact, the exact opposite has happened. The parties have furiously and expensively litigated, probably more intensely and extensively than would have occurred in a routine financial remedy case without a PNA.