Guy Ritchie will receive almost £50 million in cash and property in what may be the largest divorce settlement paid to a man, a spokeswoman for his former wife, Madonna, said last night. The film director and the pop singer were granted a divorce settlement in the High Court last month.

Ritchie, who has an estimated fortune of £30 million, was originally reported not to be asking for any money from his wealthier wife, whose fortune is estimated at £300 million.

The split, via a “quickie” procedure, was held up by lawyers as a model separation, devoid of acrimony, and Ritchie’s apparent refusal to demand a share of his former wife’s fortune was praised as a rare act of integrity.

Last night, however, Madonna’s spokeswoman, Liz Rosenberg, said that Ritchie would receive a figure of between $76 million and $92 million (£49 million and £60 million) in cash and property. This includes the couple’s country home, Ashcombe House, in Wiltshire. worth an estimated £10 million to £12 million, and their West London pub, the Punchbowl, which they bought for £2.5 million. Their settlement is about twice the amount that Sir Paul McCartney paid to Heather Mills.

“I’d assume it’s one of the largest payouts ever in a divorce settlement,” Ms Rosenberg said. She said that arrangements for the couple’s children had yet to be finalised.

Madonna and Ritchie have two children, Rocco, 8, and David Banda, 3, who was adopted from Malawi in 2006. The singer has a 12-year-old daughter, Lourdes, from a previous relationship with Carlos Leon, a personal trainer.

Lourdes and Rocco were both sent to the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, a non-selective nursery-to- university school in South Kensington opposite the Natural History Museum in West London. In reports of the divorce negotiations, Ritchie was understood to be trying to have Rocco remain at his British school in term time. Madonna was apparently adamant that all three children grow up in New York.

The couple’s marriage began with an elaborate wedding at Skibo Castle in the Highlands of Scotland in 2000. Reports this summer linked Madonna, unfairly, she said, to the break-up of the New York Yankees’ baseball star Alex Rodriguez and his wife, Cynthia.Madonna and Ritchie announced their split in October after months of tabloid speculation. They were granted a preliminary divorce decree on November 21 and the split is expected to become final in January.

The confirmation of the payout made to Ritchie came after a source, said to be close to Madonna, broke cover and told a newspaper that the director, whose films include Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, had not left the marriage empty-handed.

“He is not like some monk running around saying he doesn’t want money,” the source was quoted as saying. “You don’t get money unless you ask for it. And he asked for it. It is said that she is being horrible to him but he is hardly a poor guy.”

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