LONDON—A British court ordered former Beatle Paul McCartney on Monday to pay his estranged wife Heather Mills 24.3 million pounds ($48.7 million) after an acrimonious divorce battle.
Speaking after the judge's ruling, Mills said: "I am so glad it is over. It is an incredible result in the end.
"We are very, very pleased," she added. McCartney declined to comment.
McCartney, 65, married the former model and charity campaigner Mills, 40, in 2002 but they split four years later, blaming media intrusion into their private lives. They have a daughter, Beatrice, aged four.
Former Beatle Paul McCartney was ordered on Monday to pay his estranged wife Heather Mills 24.3 million pounds ($48.7 million) after an acrimonious divorce battle.
Here are some other reported big divorce settlements:
* Multi-millionaire businessman John Charman lost an appeal against his ex-wife's record-breaking 48 million pound ($97 million) settlement in May 2007. He had offered her 20 million. It was the highest sum ever awarded by a British divorce court.
* Basketball great Michael Jordan paid an estimated $168 million to his wife of nearly 18 years, Chicago bank officer Juanita Vanoy, when they divorced in November 2007.
* Singer-songwriter Neil Diamond settled an estimated $150 million to onetime TV production assistant Marcia Murphey, whom he married in 1969 before his breakthrough album, "Touching You, Touching Me," went gold. They divorced in 1996. Diamond later said Murphey, his second wife, was "worth every penny."
* Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg's first marriage, to actress Amy Irving, ended in 1989 with his ex-spouse awarded roughly half of the filmmaker's fortune, about $100 million.
* Actor Harrison Ford paid an estimated $85 million to his second wife, Melissa Mathison.
* Screen star Kevin Costner had an estimated $80 million settlement obtained by his first spouse, Cindy Silva, whose 16-year marriage to the actor spanned his peak earning years.
* When Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman parted in 2001 it was reported that, in dividing up their reputed fortune of $350 million, Kidman got $4.3 million, a five-bedroom mansion in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles and a house in Sydney, Australia. Cruise kept the couple's $10.5 million estate in Telluride, Colorado, as well as his three planes.
Mills criticised McCartney's lawyer Fiona Shackleton, accusing her of handling the case badly and of calling her names.
Mills, who sacked her lawyer and represented herself in court, urged would-be divorcees to do the same thing. "You can be a litigating person," she said. "You'd save yourself a fortune."
Justice Hugh Bennett, giving details of the settlement, said: "She sought an award of almost 125 million pounds. Sir Paul proposed the wife should exit the marriage with assets of 15.8 million pounds inclusive of any lump sum award.
"The judgment decided that the husband should pay the wife a lump sum of 16.5 million pounds, which together with her assets of 7.8 million pounds means that she exits her marriage with total assets of 24.3 million pounds."
The court ruled that the judgment be made public, but stayed publication pending Mills' appeal against it being made public.
Mills, speaking to a phalanx of reporters on the steps of London's High Court, said she was appealing "because the judgment involves private secure matters of my daughter ... everything about her is in there."
The split was fought out under a remorseless media spotlight with McCartney, a founder of the world's most famous pop group, pitted against the outspoken Mills, target of lurid tales in the press about her colourful past.
She hit back, saying she had been driven to the brink of suicide because the media had branded her a "whore" and a "gold-digger."
Feeds