Biggest divorce settlement in UK history: London court awards Princess Haya £554 million
HRH Princess Haya Bint al Hussein of Jordan meeting Tracy Edwards MBE in Jordan in November 2017, to bandy recollections of HM King Hussein of Jordan. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons4.0) It’s Britain’s biggest divorce agreement, yet it doesn’t include the full range of fiscal claims a partner can seek. Before this week (Tuesday, December 21, 2021) when the judgment of the high court in London came out awarding£ 554 million (around Rs5, crore or$ 734 million) to Princess Haya Bint Al-Hussain, the former woman of Sheikh Muhammad, the sovereign of Dubai, it broke the record of£ 453 million conferred to Tatiana Akhmedova, estranged woman of Russian billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov, in 2017.
Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum who’s thevice-president and high minister of the UAE had married Princess Haya in 2004. She was born in the royal family of Jordan, attended an precious boarding academy in England and graduated from the University of Oxford. Sheikh Muhammad was 55 and Princess Haya was 30 when they married; she came the sovereign’s alternate “ sanctioned woman”. The couple had a keen interest in nags (the Princess had represented Jordan in the equestrian event at the 2000 Sydney Olympics), and were a regular institution at the Ascot races where they rubbed shoulders with the British Kingliness and the glitterati.
Far removed from theultra-chic setting of Ascot, where the loving couple would be a natural before the zooming cameras, the Royal Courts of Justice at Beachfront, casing the family division of the high court, surfaced as the main source for filmland of the solitary Princess who would trudge along minus her faculty, chapeau and hubby.
Close to three times of making the rounds of the court, she has now secured that the 72- time-old sovereign of Dubai must pay a lump sum of£ 250 million towards security for her and their two kiddies; give a bank guarantee of£ 290 million as conservation for the children, which includes£5.1 million towards nine weeks of monthly leaves,£ 11 million pounds for periodic security costs;£ 21 million compensation for the Princess’s lost movables;£9.6 million in arrears.
Messy does n’t indeed begin to describe completely the legal proceedings which began soon after Princess Haya left Dubai with her two kiddies in April 2019. Since also, a series of case operation opinions, fact- chancing judgments, and whether they should be made public ( reaching right up to the UK Supreme Court) marked the unraveling of the luxurious and uncommunicative inner world of Dubai’s royal family. Sheikh Mohammad disassociated Princess Haya in February 2019, after it came out that she had had an affair with one of her close protection officers who was formerly in the British Army
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According to cessions in the court, Princess Haya’s extracurricular relationship and her interest in matters relating to Sheikha Shamsa and Sheikha Latifa had met with Sheikh Muhammad’s disapprobation, to say the least.
Matters reached similar proportions that the Princess plant a gun on her bed and was also hovered to be taken to a captivity in the desert. Citing these cases, Princess Haya claims that it was a climate of fear and intimidation that forced her to come to the UK for her well- being as well as that of her two children.
In the UK, she had access to two parcels – a country home in Egham, Surrey, and a marquee hearthstone near Kensington Palace. The former is valued at£4.5 million and ultimate is valued at around£ 100 million. But after her departure from Dubai, Sheikh Muhammad snapped the finances and soon enough she was forced to fall back on her own bias.
In the absence of her generous£ 10 million periodic allowance, she vended jewellery, handbags, clothes and nags to insure that her substantial living and legal charges were met. She also used finances from the children’s accounts to pay£6.7 million to four security staff after she was blackmailed over an affair she had had with one of them. From August 2019 to July 2021, she vended means to the tune of over£ 15 million. A huge knob of this comprised nags which were vended for£ 9 million, jewellery for£ 2 million, clothes over£ 2 million, and a property which brought£ 2 million. She just stopped suddenly of dealing the oils as it would have been delicate to explain empty space on the walls to the children.
This was a remarkable discrepancy to when the couple, important in love, had spent a whopping£ 2 million on strawberries in just one summer. During a vacation in Italy, hostel bookings bring£, with a farther£ for the breakouts; a vacation in Greece led to a hostel bill of Euro with breakouts going£. Average daily expenditure on similar leaves would come to£, to insure high- position security and sequestration, which could involve hiring a private yacht.
Therefore, the£ 554 million award was in line with the “ truly opulent and unknown standard of living”. The figure was arrived at by Justice Moor after concluding “ what is reasonable while remembering that the exceptional wealth and remarkable standard of living” had made the case “ entirely out of the ordinary”. But as stated in the morning, this figure was arrived at without the court deciding on the fiscal liability of Princess Haya as theex-wife of the Dubai sovereign. That was because she told the court that she doesn’t want to exercise that option, but didn’t fail to punctuate that after mothering two children in a marriage that lasted 18 times, she “ had a licit claim in her own right”.
But the Sheikh’s counsel had submitted that they would have opposed any operation for her particular substantial provision other than her claimed security requirements. In any event, in Princess Haya’s operation, the only individual element pertaining to her revolved around her continuance particular safety and security costs as the mama and primary guardian of their two kiddies. Had that not been the case, a full trial to assess her share in her hubby’s means would have potentially meant a far more violent battle which would have involved further name-calling.
She did, still, seek£97.8 million compensation for the movables lost due to the connubial breakdown. This included£ 20 million for jewellery,£ 32 million for garments,£ 2 million for buses, a whopping£ 20 million related to nags, and another£ 20 million to cover the contents in the palaces and other particulars left before in Dubai.
The court ruled that the race nags claimed by Princess Haya were possessed by Sheikh Muhammad’s Godolphin stable and didn’t belong to her. Taking into consideration the mammoth operation of Godolphin (in October 2019, Sheikh Muhammad had bought race nags worth£ 18 million) and Princess Haya’s “ licit interest” in nags the court arrived at a figure of£ 5 million to insure that she’s “ suitable to set up a small operation, buy reasonable nags and run them for several times.”
The compensation relating to jewellery and haute couture apparel also fell suddenly of what the Princess had sought. A videotape of the walk-in safe that contained the Princess’s jewellery in Dubai was played for the court, which she valued a piddly£, saying that the large, precious and expensive diamonds, plums, sapphires and emeralds were missing. In particular she told the court she had left behind a£ 1 million diamond set conforming of a choker, ring and earrings.
Sheikh Muhammad’s position was that he didn’t have the jewellery, but his counsels didn’t fail to punctuate that 66 shipments importing kg were moved from Dubai to the UK by the Princess in the run-up to the relocation. Why did she not take her most precious particulars? The Princess stuck to her claim that she had only brought 25 percent of her jewellery leaving behind the rest as she didn’t want to be indicted of stealing them. Either, it would have been insolvable to take down all the jewellery as they were so enormous that it could have filled an entire courtroom. She was awarded£13.6 million for the jewellery and£ 1 million for her clothes Attorneys representing Sheikh Muhammad had told the court that he would n’t attend the proceedings, would n’t give written or oral substantiation due to his unique position. He’d before unsuccessfully tried to seek impunity, but the high court had ruled against him holding that that wasn’t possible in relation to family proceedings. He filed through his big legal platoon‘ Position Statements’and had also tried to keep the proceedings closed. He also took the stage that he shouldn’t be asked to make a fiscal exposure as he was well- placed to meet all reasonable costs.
But it was the series of findings of unreasonable nature that inflated the figure awarded by the court. As mentioned before, it was the expenditure for the security that constituted the single largest element of the agreement. “ The main trouble the queen and her children face is from His Tallness (Sheikh Muhammad) himself, not from outside sources,” Justice Moor observed In coming to this conclusion, he appertained to a series of earlier judgments by the high court that concluded it was most likely that Israeli spyware was used to hack the phones of the Princess, her main attorneys and other staff members. Important significance was also attached to the high court finding that Sheikh Mohammad was responsible for the forced return of Sheikha Shamsa and Sheikha Latifa.
At one point, Sheikh Muhammad had tried to buy a property next to Princess Haya’s country home which had the effect of bogarting her to a “ veritably pronounced degree”. Sheikh Muhammad maintained that these findings were grounded on deficient substantiation and that they tell only one side of the story. He has denied any intention of causing any detriment to Princess Haya But all these findings went a long way in prevailing Justice Moor that armoured vehicles, round-the- timepiece security, private aeroplanes were demanded to insure “ water-tight security” for the Princess and the two children. The general pitfalls of terrorism and hijacking were also taken into consideration.
Courts in England are known to attract the high and potent to pursue divorce cases. London has also come to be known as the divorce capital due to several cases ofmulti-million pounds awarded as divorce agreement. Having started to cipher a veritably generous division of means between consorts by viewing marriage as a cooperation between two coordinates, a string of high profile cases have reached the courts in London. But this wasn’t like any other case of divorce.
