Morning:
13°c
Divorce dinner is on me, says Guy as he and lawyer go to Scott's
Robert Mendick, Chief Reporter31.03.09
GUY RITCHIE treated his lawyer to dinner to celebrate the final chapter in his divorce from Madonna.
While the pop star stayed in Malawi awaiting the adoption of a second African orphan, Ritchie was out with family solicitor Helen Ward at Scott's restaurant in Mayfair.
Documents released online in New York show the couple's divorce which was agreed in London has now been rubber-stamped in the United States.
The deal is understood to make arrangements for the couple's two boys - Rocco, eight, and three-year-old David- to live with Madonna while Ritchie walks away with somewhere between £30 million and £45 million, which includes about £14 million in cash as well as properties including their country estate in Wiltshire.
Madonna has now moved to new York while Ritchie has secured regular access to his sons.
A hearing before Judge Deborah Kaplan confirmed the London award on Friday. Judge Kaplan then ordered the case be disposed, bringing to an end a divorce which has been settled surprisingly amicably.
The couple avoided the unseemly court battle that dogged Sir Paul McCartney's divorce from Heather Mills, settling their differences in negotiations that took place behind closed doors. A source said Ritchie, 40, a successful film director in his own right, had become good friends with Lady Ward, 56, who is married to Court of Appeal judge Lord Justice Ward.
The pair entered Scott's at 8pm last night and did not emerge until after midnight. "This was Ritchie's thank you to Helen," said the source. "They get on like a house on fire." Madonna, 50, will learn on Friday if she has been successful in adopting a second child from Malawi. She has applied to the Lilongwe High Court to take four-year-old Mercy James back to the US.
At a hearing yesterday held in private, Madonna was quizzed by the judge Esme Chombo over her intentions. The pop star, when she was married to Ritchie, adopted David Banda amid huge criticism, not least because David's father was still alive.
There are claims that the adoption was one factor in the couple's split. Ritchie is thought to have been less keen on the adoption and the media attention that went with it.
Madonna has come under fire again and has been branded a "child kidnapper" by Malawi's leading human rights organisation.
At the weekend, Mercy's grandmother claimed the child was being "stolen" from the family although her uncle Peter Baneti, who was also in court, declared: "Now we have been persuaded that Mercy can have a better, healthier life somewhere else in the world with this rich white woman."
The timing of Madonna's trip and the tying up of her divorce from Ritchie appears a happy coincidence. Rubber stamping the divorce allows her to tell the Malawi court that her split from Ritchie is now complete and without complications.
