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23The Daily Telegraph Thursday 21 July 2016

FEATURES

T here were gasps of disbelief this month when it was announced that former model Christina Estrada had been awarded £75 million

following her divorce from Saudi Arabian businessman Walid Juffali. But I suspect few were more appalled than her fellow high-net-worth wives. After all, how could Estrada, who originally demanded more than twice that sum (she modestly proposed £200 million to cover her “reasonable needs”), be expected to subsist on such a paltry sum?

Whether or not you subscribe to this view depends on whether you are, as the country’s top divorce lawyers put it, a “Harrods wife” or a “Tesco wife”. If, like Estrada and her ilk, you fall into the former camp – that is, you’re more likely to be purchasing organic goat’s milk in Harrods Food Hall than browsing the bargain bins in Tesco – you could potentially be in line for a multi-million pound pay-out should your marriage hit the skids. That’s because English courts believe in an equal division of assets where there has been a lengthy marriage, regardless of which party has been bringing home the Duchy Originals’ bacon.

I encountered many a Harrods wife while training as a solicitor at a boutique law firm in London that specialised in divorcing the rich and faithless. However, given the rarefied social strata they occupied, they rarely considered themselves extravagant. And if this sounds worryingly familiar, here are a few clues to help determine whether you too are a Harrods wife or, worse still, you’ve married one.

It’s what lawyers call high-net clients filing for divorce, says Karen Yossman.But are you more ‘Tesco wife’?

Who are you calling a ‘Harrods wife’?

WO R KHarrods wife: Views work in much the same way she views ageing: she suspects it’s unpleasant but hasn’t experienced it first hand. However, it’s no longer becoming to say one does nothing all day, so inventing a career is imperative – options range from knicker designer to lifestyle guru. During divorce proceedings some ex-husbands will try to argue she should get a proper job to generate income, at which point every effort will be made to show how this is impossible.Tesco wife: Curses her mother every day for promising her she could “have it all”. Spends most of her time at work wishing she was with the kids and most of her time at home wishing she was with Idris Elba.

G R O C E R I E S

Harrods wife: Fresh food prescribed by her personal trainer is delivered twice weekly from Harrods or Harvey Nicks, unpacked by her housekeeper and prepared by her personal chef. When Heather Mills divorced former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney a judge awarded her £30,000 a year for food, wine, and flowers, while I’ve heard of another “Harrods wife” who insisted she needed £3,000 annually just for pre-washed bagged salad.Tesco wife: Lurks online at night with a glass of chardonnay, buying her weekly staples from Tesco (except meat and fish, from M&S).

R E L AT I O N S H I P S

Harrods wife: Is genuinely distraught her marriage has come to an end (usually – but not always – because the husband has traded her in for a new model) but finds some small comfort in the thought of taking him for half

Tesco wife: Also views children as a long-term investment but more in terms of ensuring there’s someone to look after her when she’s old. Although given the average cost of raising a child in the UK is £230,000, she does sometimes find herself wondering whether she would have been better off just investing in a couple of properties and hiring a companion for her twilight years.

G R O O M I N G

Harrods wife: Approaches grooming like a full-time job, with daily blow dries, weekly waxes and monthly Botox. Estrada’s estimated annual budget for beauty treatments was just shy of £100,000, which didn’t

even account for the products she used at home (she reportedly

made a separate request for £9,400 a year for four

bottles of face cream).Tesco wife: She’s given up on manicures, which seem to chip before she’s even finished inputting her pin number at the salon till, and, despite repeated intentions to get her hair coloured

every six weeks, tries to ignore it until she’s got

more shades of grey on her head than her bookshelf.

G O I N G O U T

Harrods wife: Key calendar events include the men’s Wimbledon finals or Elton John’s White Tie and Tiara annual summer ball. In between there are plenty of parties, dinners and red carpet affairs to attend, usually in aid of charity (although she’s never quite sure which one). Tesco wife: Enjoys going to musicals (Mamma Mia’s a favourite) and takes the kids to the cinema. The manager greets her by name at the local Pizza Express.

H O L I D AYS

Harrods wife: Multiple, exotic getaways (St Barts, Mauritius, Los Angeles) are essential. After all, what’s the point of a month-long detox at the Mayr clinic in Austria if it isn’t followed by an excess-all-areas fortnight on a yacht in Miami to show off the new bikini body? All this is a lifestyle expected to be supported in any settlement with an ex, of course.Tesco wife: Following months of arguments (kids want Tenerife, husband’s set on Cornwall), ends up booking the same resort on the Costa del Sol that they’ve been to the last three summers. She would splash out on EasyJet’s “Speedy Boarding” but is secretly hoping she’ll end up seated on her own – which, for a Tesco wife, would be a holiday in itself.

Christina Estrada, left, smiles outside the High Court. St Barts, below, is a typical destination of choice for the wives of the wealthy

Estrada modestly proposed an award of £200 million to cover her ‘needs’

his net worth, which, if the latest divorce settlements are anything to go by, she will. Tesco wife: Couldn’t afford to divorce even if she wanted to. Neither she nor her husband could afford a place big enough for them and the kids once the assets were split. Besides, the thought of having to start all over again is simply exhausting.

T R A N S P O R T

Harrods wife: Loves nothing more than relaxing with a glass of Bolly in her PJs (short for “private jets”) and

suspects Oyster cards are some sort of seafood platter. At home she’ll zip around in a Chelsea tractor. As part of her divorce settlement in 2005, Lady Sorrell – ex-wife of advertising tycoon Sir Martin Sorrell – scored two highly coveted underground parking spaces at Harrods, which at the time were worth nearly £200,000, in addition to £23 million in cash and a Georgian townhouse.Tesco wife: Spends so much time chauffeuring the kids around in her battered Ford Focus she’s given serious thought to signing up as an Uber driver.

C H I L D R E N

Harrods wife: Children require a huge amount of sacrifice, principally in the midriff area but also further south. Fortunately, generous provision is made in court if she has primary custody. Famed divorce lawyer Raymond Tooth (nickname: Jaws) recently boasted he won a Saudi Arabian client £1 million a year “for each child”. The only downside is it can mean a steep decline in income once the youngest turns 18, but hopefully by then she’ll have married someone even richer.

Among the more intriguing details surrounding Pippa Middleton’s

engagement to James Matthews is the fact that her new brother-in-law will be Spencer Matthews, star of Made in Chelsea. While James, a millionnaire hedge-fund manager, is fiercely private, his brother has won national notoriety as the show’s resident lothario, whose exploits – and friendships with co-star Hugo Taylor and his girlfriend Millie Mackintosh – have made him tabloid fodder.

It’s hard to know who benefits most from this: the Royals will receive an upsurge in hip young kudos from fans of the popular E4 faux-reality show, while Spencer will get to go head-to-head with Harry to impress a leggy millionairess at a charity polo event.

Whatever way, the cast of the next generation Royal Family is shaping up nicely – because, make no mistake, every family, regardless of status, relies on being a finely tuned ensemble, in which each relative has a specific role to play. So, in among the sensible older brothers – Prince William, Charles (to an extent) or James Matthews – you need the wild cards, the rogue brothers-in-law, the stern grannies, the eccentric uncles. These are the people who make families tick, the ingredients that bring everyone together. Spencer, with his outlandishly white teeth and oiled muscles, should add very nicely to the mix.

Already Kate Middleton has brought her Uncle Gary into the fold. A man with an Ibiza mansion (charmingly dubbed La Maison de Bang Bang), who famously caused cappuccino foam to spurt all over celebrity news desks when it turned out he’d dated a former lap dancer, had been married four times and was exposed by a Sunday paper apparently chopping up lines of cocaine. And in many ways, we all have an Uncle Gary – the only difference being that in most cases, he’s not an excitable multi-millionaire, he’s the sweaty drunk shouting obscenities at

From Harry to Uncle Gary, every family needs a loose cannonAs the Middletons meet their mischievous new in-law, Joshua Burt writes in praise of the black sheep

without them? Without the “characters” in the family?

Imagine the boring Christmases that would trundle past in a sea of beige, bread-sauce blandness if you

didn’t have the unpredictable uncle having one port too many and stumbling into the tree, or the nan who bides her time before doling out a few “home truths”, or the Spencer Matthews (or, worse, Marco Pierre White Jr) brother-in-law who rocks up to every family event with a new Doris he swears he’s going to marry

in the very near future. In my case, I have nothing but

wild, unconditional love and appreciation for these people. My brother, whose political monologues make post-Brexit feel like a lazy float down the Nile, my brother-in-law who likes to soundtrack the last hour or so of our get-togethers with improvised songs about death strummed on his guitar, my mother-in-law whose interest in your exact route to her house is forensic in its detail, all of my wonderful sisters and sisters-in-law who appear to

take it in turns to get sozzled and start crying about something.

I dare say that at one point in my mid-20s (before I became terribly vanilla and got married and had children) I may have been seen as the loose cannon in the family. The

one most likely to barf on the campfire, or roll in five hours late to a muted, frosty welcome.

Judging from the photographs of my sister’s wedding, where I look like I got dressed in a hedge and walked drunk through a jungle to get there, I must say I played that part pretty well.

But I know my role was necessary in the scheme of things. I now get to be the boy-done-good, and it’s for someone from the next generation to walk in my old shoes and take on my discarded mantle.

So where does this leave the Royals, now that they have another roguish bad boy – in the mould of young Freddie Windsor or Prince Andrew pre- and post- (and probably during) Fergie – in their number? It leaves them like every other family – made up of square pegs clumsily jammed into round holes and forced to get along with each other. It makes them just as dysfunctional and magnificent as the rest of us.

It also means that Prince Harry is no longer “the one most likely to get everyone doing Jägerbombs”.

inopportune moments during your cousin’s wedding.

But it’s men like Uncle Gary who bring families together. These strange, unfathomable man-babies who appear to operate on a wildly different plane of existence to anyone else – much as they might occasionally meet your disapproval, or leave you flummoxed with their unusual life choices, they are the lifeblood of family bonding. They give you something to be vaguely disapproving of, something to talk about. Can you imagine life

L O T H A R I O :S P E N C E R

R O G U I S H :H A R RY

E C C E N T R I C :G A RY

Kate Middleton’s Uncle Gary, left, future brother-in-law Spencer, right, and Prince Harry

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