Raymond Tooth may be 68 and have a set of gnashers like a crash-test dummy, but he is the man every girl in a fix is looking for.

As London’s top divorce solicitor, Tooth - also known as Jaws - has a fearsome reputation for landing ex-wives enormous settlements.

Past clients include Sadie Frost, who scooped a £4m lump sum, a £2m house and a £15,000-a-month allowance from the actor Jude Law; Cheryl Barrymore, who received £3.5m from her entertainer husband Michael; and Eimaer Montgomerie, who walked away from her marriage to golfer Colin with £15m. Tooth even advised Irina Abramovich on her split from Roman, which was estimated to have cost the oligarch £1.5 billion.

Last week, however, he appeared to have broken even his own record when it emerged that one of his clients, Ingrid Myerson, 48, had in effect become entitled to 105% of her ex-husband’s assets.

“It certainly raised a titter in the court,” said Tooth, grinning wolfishly from behind an enormous desk in his Mayfair office. “We all laughed. There was a laugh from the bench, too.”

Bryan Myerson, 50, a fund manager, went to the Court of Appeal after the share price of his company plunged. He argued that the divorce deal he had struck with his wife last February was no longer fair.

It was a claim that caused amusement in the City, where the South African is a notoriously hard deal-maker, and a burst of schadenfreude far beyond, where people rejoiced in another financier getting his comeuppance.

The couple, who married in 1982 and have three children, originally agreed that Ingrid would receive £11m, 43% of their £25.8m fortune, comprising a lump sum of £9.5m and property in South Africa worth £1.5m. Bryan took the couple’s stocks in his fund, Principle Capital Holdings.

When the share price nose-dived, however, he objected to paying his ex-wife the remaining £2.5m of the lump sum. As matters stood last week, he would in fact have to borrow £500,000 to honour the original agreement. His wife was therefore entitled to more than 100% of his wealth. “That’s a rum do,” commented the judge.

A man who “forged his practice in Tramp nightclub”, Tooth is probably the country’s leading authority on getting maximum settlements out of wealthy men for his female clients. However, he has useful advice for both sexes in this cold economic climate.

Women should think twice before reaching for the rip cord, he advises. “Wives would be better now to wait, as the courts are being very wary about awards because of the problem of the ability to make payments,” he said. “Hang on in there until times get better.

“Can you put up with it for two years? Unless it’s intolerable, I should hold on. It’s the most important financial transaction you’ll make: get it right.” As for the men: “Move on now while your star is low in the sky. You can escape with less.” Tooth, whose uncle by marriage was Rex Harrison (who was married six times: “he didn’t make a big success of it”) has been practising since the late 1960s, but says this is the greatest period of turmoil that he has experienced.

“The courts are definitely being more circumspect,” he says. “You’ve got to be very much more focused in getting an assessment.”

Besides, there is no point divorcing your husband simply because he has lost his job and is now poor, because “everybody’s poor! Where are you going to find a rich man?”

This is another area in which Tooth claims expertise. Even in these straitened times, he still believes that marrying is the most lucrative option for a woman.

“A rich man should never marry a poor woman,” he said.

Tooth’s clients are 60% women and 40% men. He uses pink and blue folders for each (“and grey,” he says, “for people who you’re not sure what they are”).

“But for the woman, it’s the quickest way to get a large sum. Certainly it’ll be a lot more [profitable] than working, if you marry the right person.

“You’ll have to be married for some time” - short marriages, like the Paul McCartney-Heather Mills union, do not pay as much as they used to since a revision in the law - “but then you’ll get half the assets.”

He has some wonderfully frank advice for finding that man. Gold diggers need to play it cool. “If you want to snare a rich man, irrespective of what he’s like, look good and speak well,” he said. “Not a plummy accent, but not a cor blimey one either.

“Don’t be on that scene at bloody Annabel’s. Go to the right places. Dinner parties. Charities. Meet the right people. Art galleries, Sotheby’s. Always look very cool with an air of total confidence - not unapproachable or snooty, smart, have a good job. Slimness is the name of the game. Rubenesque hasn’t been in since the 17th century.”

So now we know. Once you have landed your man, there are ways to avoid a messy situation when the marriage collapses. If one party is richer than the other, get a pre-nup - although post-nuptial agreements, contracts that are signed after the marriage, are more legally important, as there is less pressure to sign.

And whatever you do, do not marry a lawyer, “they think they know better” (Tooth himself has been divorced twice), and avoid a foreigner.

“The further south you go from Dover, the less equal women are. In Muslim countries they have very few rights. The American legal system is much more aggressive; the women there are even more aggressive than in England.”

The best place to divorce is “England or America, if you’re the wife. If you’re the husband, France is not very generous towards women”.

Predictably, he has had some high maintenance clients. “I had one woman who rang me up about 14 times in the evening . . . and on the 15th call said, ‘Can you advise me where I can have dinner tonight?’ I said, if you ring me again I’m changing my number.”

The time for frivolity may soon be over. Experts predict the divorce rate will rise as couples split due to pressured finances. Suggestions people will stick together to avoid pay-outs are, as yet, anecdotal.

If Bryan Myerson wins his appeal, the case would provide a landmark ruling. Other City financiers who have fallen on harder times will flock to renegotiate their agreements; the floodgates would open.

In fact, some say they already have. Louise Spitz, of the law firm Manches, said: “There’s a lot more work around, more from husbands, and particularly people from high-bonus areas of work.”

Sometimes the crash in fortunes is so bad that “families need to revisit their arrangements but can’t even afford the legal fees. They don’t qualify for public funding [legal aid], and with loan facilities tightened, the banks won’t lend”.

As a result, many bankers’ wives are spitting feathers. Women like Kate, 41, who agreed a settlement with her corporate lawyer husband of 16 years last June, but was horrified to learn two months ago that he wanted to drop his maintenance payments in line with a recent fall in his income.

“It’s gutting,” said the mother of two. “You have an uncertain future. I’ve just bought a house and don’t know if I can meet the mortgage payments.”

The good news for us mortals is that we are unlikely to be too affected by Myerson v Myerson. As Tooth noted in his inimitable fashion: “I only deal with the rich, but 98% of divorces are breadline. For example: a house on the Watford bypass worth £120,000, father earning £45,000, wife with a £10,000 a year part-time job, and two screaming kids on state education. Who’s going to pay for dividing that up? It’s only people who have money have anything to divide.”

Besides, marriage as we know it may not exist for many more years. “Marriage is basically a deal,” he said, “a money-based social transaction. In 25 years’ time there’ll be renewable agreements; it’s happening already and it will soon have to be recognised.”

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