30 years after her divorce, ex wins £200,000 more

Builder Dennis North's wife Jean left him and their three children for another man in 1977.

They divorced the following year and in 1981 they reached a settlement which saw him give her their house and the income from rents on other properties.

But now Mrs North, who has never worked, has fallen on hard times after losing money in a series of bad investments.

Mr North, 70, has been ordered by a court to hand her another £202,000.

The order follows a series of big-money divorce cases which have swung the law against husbands and resulted in huge payments to ex-wives even after short childless marriages.

The North case now threatens to make husbands pay large sums even decades after a split.

Three Appeal Court judges had heard Mr North's lawyers call for the payment to be stopped.

His barrister, Philip Moor QC, said 61-year-old Mrs North was trying to get "a second bite at the cherry".

He added: "The whole purpose of divorce is to disentangle people so they can lead independent lives.

"The changes in financial positions of the parties since 1981 and the differential between them that has arisen over the years cannot be relevant."

The court heard that Mrs North moved to Australia in 1999 and lost much of her money in "unfortunate" investments said to have been based on bad advice.

Mr Moor said it had been her decision to sell up and move to one of the most desirable and expensive areas of Sydney and live beyond her means in a country where she was not entitled to benefits.

If she had stayed in England she would have been comfortably off for the rest of her life.

Her ex-husband, by contrast, has prospered. Mr North, who lives in a six-bedroom stone house on the edge of the Peak District, has now retired with a fortune estimated at between £5million and £11million.

The award against him stems from part of the divorce settlement which involved "nominal" maintenance payments.

Existing law says that whenever one party in a divorce is paying maintenance, either one has the right to ask a court to replace it with a "clean break" lump sum.

Mrs North, who now lives in Leeds, was awarded the £202,000 by a district judge last year. The ruling was later upheld in the High Court.

Mr Moor said the order "penalised those who behave responsibly".

But Deborah Bangay, QC, for Mrs North, said: "This was not a second bite at the cherry but it is what are her reasonable needs. The court was entitled to take into account the obvious wealth of the former husband."

She said it was not Mrs North's fault that her investments had gone wrong. The district judge's award had been at the "bottom end of the spectrum".

The judges, Lord Justice Thorpe, Lord Justice May and Mr Justice Bennett, reserved their judgment.

Mr North, who has remarried and has two children with his second wife, refused to comment afterwards.

But divorce lawyers said Mrs North's settlement stretched existing law to breaking point.

Caroline Wright of Boodle Hatfield said: "Legal principles say that if maintenance is being paid either party can ask for a lump sum. But these are extreme circumstances."

Julian Lipson of Withers said: "The law is supposed to stop people having a second bite at the cherry. I think the husband has a strong case."

Wives who have benefited from huge recent divorce settlements include Beverley Charman, awarded £48million of her husband's fortune in May, and Melissa Miller, who won £5million of her husband's £30million wealth even though her marriage lasted only three years and there were no children.