A barrister who took her ex-husband to court complaining that her £26 million divorce settlement was not enough has ended up £8 million worse off.
Mr and Mrs Evans lived a luxury lifestyle with a private jet and properties in London, the US and the Turks and Caicos islands Photo: Champion News
Jenifer Evans, 47, was awarded the lower sum of £18 million following a bitter legal battle in which both were chastised by a judge for behaving like squabbling infants following a 25-year marriage.
The case even raked up details of her engagement ring – after it emerged that her ex-husband Mark was planning to give it to the new woman in his life.
The wealthy American couple, who have two teenage daughters, had split in 2010, and Mrs Evans agreed to accept a £26 million clean break settlement representing half their assets of £52 million – including shares worth £40 million at the time.
But she went to court last July claiming the pay-out was unfair.
However the total fortune at stake has since dwindled to about £40 million, of which Mrs Evans has now been awarded 45%, representing just over £18 million.
The High Court heard that the couple had run up a £2.7 million legal bill squabbling over the money. Mr Justice Moylan said the dispute had descended into “point scoring” as they became “entangled in a bitter forensic battle”.
Mr and Mrs Evans had started out as a penniless couple living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but their lives changed dramatically after they set up a financial IT company, Confluence Corporation. In 2006, Mr Evans sold a 65% stake in the company for around £26 million.
They lived a luxury lifestyle with a private jet and properties in London, the US and the Turks and Caicos islands.
The couple moved into a £10 million home in Knightsbridge, where Mrs Evans still lives with their 16-year-old daughter.
But after they split in 2010, Mr Evans moved to San Francisco, where he lives with their eldest daughter, 18, together with his new wife and her two children from an earlier marriage. They are expecting their first child together.
At a hearing last year, Lord Justice Thorpe had criticised the behaviour of the divorcing couple.
He said: “It seems to me almost puerile, these very rich people distrusting and disliking each other so intensely, so somebody has to come into the nursery to make some rules to dissipate all this nonsense.”
Further details of the acrimony emerged when the ruling by Mr Justice Moylan was made public yesterday.
The judge said Ms Evans “became aware” that Mr Evans had given or was planning to give “her replacement engagement ring” to the woman who became his wife.
Mr Evans had apologised, agreeing that it was “particularly upsetting”.
Mrs Evans had also complained that he had spent “significant” amounts on “items for women that had not been purchased for me”.
He admitted that between July 2010 and August 2011 lavished gifts worth nearly £135,000 of jewellery, bags and clothing on his current wife.
The court also heard that that Mrs Evans had made an “unannounced trip” with her children to the US in September 2010, at a time when the marriage was “unravelling”, because she knew that he was at a conference with her.
SOURCE: The Telegraph
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