HIGH-FLYING career women are discovering a costly downside to their success — divorce settlements that force them to pay out huge sums to their less wealthy ex-husbands.

Law firms are reporting an increasing number of cases in which men earn windfalls through divorce as women outperform their husbands in the workplace.

One London law firm, Mishcon de Reya — which handled the divorce of Diana, Princess of Wales — is currently dealing with 10 cases where the wife earns more than the husband.

Sandra Davis, head of family law, said the wives were “serious players, businesswomen who are going to have to pay money to their spouses”.

Dawsons, another London law firm, is dealing with six divorces in which the woman is earning well into six figures. Suzanne Kingston, head of family law, said: “There’s the possibility of a spousal maintenance order to the husband . . . most women don’t imagine they would be liable for this, so it surprises them.”

The rate of change has been rapid. “Twenty years ago there were no reported cases of men obtaining money from their wives on divorce — now it is routine,” said Simon Bruce, head of family law at Farrer & Co, the Queen’s solicitors.

Among the high earners who have paid out to ex-husbands is Kate Winslet, the actress. A payment of about £500,000 was agreed to finalise her divorce in 2001 from Jim Threapleton, her husband of three years.

For Susan Singleton, a mother of five from Pinner, Middlesex, her divorce three years ago meant handing over nearly £900,000 to her ex-husband Martin after 20 years of marriage. As a lawyer, her earnings are over £200,000 and dwarf those of her former husband, a teacher and organist.

Singleton’s divorce settlement forced her to remortgage the £1.9m family home for £1.1m, and she also pays school and university fees of £50,000 a year. “I’m in the same position as a lot of men who work very hard, earn a lot of money, and then the person they happen to have been married to gets a share of that, even though they haven’t really built it up,” she said. “Why should the spouse who earns less get a share of the higher-earning one’s income?” Martin Singleton said: “I was urged to get more by my solicitor but settled for less so she didn’t have to sell the family home. I wouldn’t want to seem greedy, I only got what I was entitled to.

Financial experts predict that in coming decades more women will have to pay out former husbands, as greater numbers are promoted to top jobs. Last year the number of female millionaires in the 18-44 age bracket overtook the number of men — 47,355 compared with 37,935, according to a study by the Centre for Economics and Business research. Women will own 60% of the UK’s personal wealth by 2025, up from 48% now, the researchers found.

In a divorce, women can also be required to hand over money inherited from their parents, as Barbara Dowell, a 48 year-old marketing executive from Rutland, discovered last year. Dowell, who has one child, said she inherited £500,000 in 2000, only to hand over about half of it to her husband on divorce, after 14 years together.

To fund this the family home was sold for about £300,000, and she lives in a rented house and pays school fees for their son, whose residence is shared.

Dowell said: “I am now funding him (the husband) through my inheritance. It makes me extremely angry.”

Her former husband was not available for comment.

Liz Haskell, 56, from Woodbridge, Suffolk, said she paid her ex-husband £50,000 last autumn after seven years of marriage ended. Haskell, who said she inherited her assets, said: “It was a slap in the face — I feel cheated by the system.

“So often it’s just rich men you read about having to pay off women with their millions.”

Her former husband was also not available for comment.

One divorcee from Berkshire in her late fifties, who asked not to be named, described her former husband as a “creature” whom she hoped encountered anthrax. “He only married me for what he could get out of me,” she said. “He squandered his own earnings on Porsches and Jaguars (and) didn’t contribute to the family.”

The mother of two, who said she had inherited her wealth and owned the family home outright before she met her husband, said she had been forced to sell up for £700,000 and split the proceeds. The woman, who married 22 years ago and divorced in the late 1990s, added: “He abandoned the children . . . we’re living in a house the size of a postage stamp now.”

Nicola Horlick, the City fund manager and mother of five, now divorced from her husband Tim, argues that divorce law needs reviewing. “There are an awful lot of people getting upset,” she said. “Fathers who don’t believe they have enough access to children; men who believe they have paid out too much — and wives who believe they have paid out too much.”

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