When the financier Alan Miller, 41, who is appealing against the award, married Melissa she was living in a cramped rented flat in Cambridge, Lewis Marks, QC, told the appeal judges.

Although Mrs Miller, now 35, was a career woman earning about £85,000 a year when she met her husband-to-be, Mr Marks said it that would have taken her decades to earn the £5 million that her marriage had secured her. But the wife, who stopped work a year after the wedding, made little contribution to the couple’s short, childless marriage, he told the Court of Appeal in London.

“In three years she achieved a modest fortune,” he said. “If my client had knocked her down with his motor car, and she had suffered severe injuries — brain damage and losing the ability to have children — at most the damages would be £2 million.”

The couple had known each other for ten years, having a “long courtship” before engagement in 1999 and marriage the next year. They did not live together before their wedding day. Their relationship soured to the point where Mr Miller moved into a separate bedroom then back to his bachelor flat, finally taking up with another woman, Mr Marks said.

At the original hearing the High Court had found that Mr Miller, who admitted adultery and has since remarried, triggered the breakdown. But the judge also found that the marriage “may well have been doomed” because of the incompatibility of the parties.

Mrs Miller was awarded a divorce settlement worth £5 million — a property valued at £2.3 million and a lump sum of £2.7 million, enough to provide her a lifetime income of £98,000 a year.

Mr Miller’s wealth stood at an estimated £30 million, so his former wife had, in effect, walked away with a sixth of his fortune by dint of a marriage that lasted less than three years, the QC said.

Mr Miller is challenging what he claims to be a “manifestly unjust” award. He had offered to pay a £300,000 lump sum and transfer ownership of a £1 million property. Mr Miller runs New Star Asset Management’s hedge fund and earned £3.3 million last year.

Mr Marks said that the original trial judge had found that a key element was that, in marrying, the husband had given his wife a legitimate expectation that she would be living on a higher economic plane and it was, therefore, the duty of the court to maintain that standard for the rest of her life. But Mr Marks said that there could never be a legitimate lifetime expectation of living on a higher economic plane.

“Each party takes the other in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, and thereafter the parties suffer the slings and arrows of misfortune as one body until such time as they are separated by death or decree,” he said.

Mrs Miller’s previous status as a capable, professional woman — who had met her husband in the work environment — meant that she was able to earn her own living, once she had reasonable time to adjust, Mr Marks argued.

At the original hearing Mrs Miller’s lawyers said that she had made an equal contribution to the relationship, but Mr Marks said it had been minimal.

As well as “some financial contribution”, she asserted that she made a “significant contribution to the family home”, including helping to renovate a French property. She had not given up work until one year into the marriage.

Mr Miller said that these claims were exaggerations.

The hearing before Lord Justice Thorpe, Lord Justice Wall and Mrs Justice Black is continuing.

SPLITTING THE CASH

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