1 THIERRY AND CLAIRE HENRY
If Thierry Henry has never heard of Fiona Shackleton, the lawyer representing
his ex-wife Claire as she goes to court to try and win a large settlement,
he need only ask Heather Mills to put him right. Mills threw a glass of
water over Shackleton after having her testimony torn apart during her own
divorce from Sir Paul McCartney, and the Frenchman will now need to show all
the elusiveness he has displayed against defenders if he is to avoid paying
out a significant proportion of his estimated £25m fortune. Claire, who was
married to the Barcelona striker for four years, got a quickie divorce last
year, citing his unreasonable behaviour in her suit after finding suggestive
messages on his mobile phone from another woman
2 MARTINA NAVRATILOVA AND JUDY NELSON
Married mother-of-two and former Texan beauty queen Nelson walked out on her
husband of 17 years in 1984 for a life travelling the world as Navratilova's
lover, picking up a $90,000-a-year salary as her assistant. In 1991,
however, the couple split, leading to an unpleasant, drawn-out court case as
Nelson sued for ‘palimony’ of $15m, claiming that as they had undergone a
‘wedding’ ceremony in Australia she was entitled to the same as other wives
- half of all income earned during marriage. One problem - homosexuality was
illegal in Texas, the state in which her suit was filed. An agreement was
eventually reached but Nelson soured relations further by producing a
revealing memoir
3 ALEX AND CYNTHIA RODRIGUEZ
Baseball star “A-Rod” hit the headlines last month when his wife blamed
Madonna for her estrangement from her husband Rodriguez. “I feel like
Madonna’s using mind control over him. I don’t recognise the man he’s
become,” said Cynthia. “He was a sweet, beautiful, loving husband and
father. Today he’s very cold and calculating. I believe he was having an
affair with Madonna.” The singer denied the claims, but then stripper
Candice Houlihan confessed to sleeping with Rodriguez in 2004 and backed
Cynthia’s bid to overturn the terms of their 2002 prenuptial agreement:
“Good for her, I think she's doing the smart thing. And she’ll probably get
tons of cash”
4 MIKE TYSON AND ROBIN GIVENS
The heavyweight boxing champion and the star of “sitcom” Head of the Class had
been married just eight months when Givens filed for divorce in 1988. Tyson
immediately found that any battles he had in the ring were child’s play
compared with the fight that Givens, who accused him of domestic violence,
put up. Tyson countered by claiming that his wife and her mother, who in
every son-in-law's nightmare was living in the same house, were gold-diggers
and that Robin pressured him into marriage by falsely claiming to be
pregnant. Several heartrending TV interviews with Barbara Walters and
lawyers later, Givens was granted a divorce and, it is claimed, a settlement
of $10m. “The love that I felt for Michael I still feel now. It’s a love
that doesn’t go away. You know? It’s a part of my heart that belongs to
him,” she told Oprah not altogether convincingly a few years ago
5 CHRIS EVERT AND ANDY MILL
The American skier and the tennis legend looked to have it all - three
children, homes in Aspen, Colorado and Florida and a great friendship with
Greg Norman. Then, in 2006, Evert filed for divorce after 18 years of
marriage, and it emerged that her new beau was none other than Norman. Mill
was outraged. “Greg Norman at one time was my best friend, and a year and a
half ago I would have taken a bullet for this guy,” he said. “I didn’t
realise he was the one who was going to pull the trigger.” Of his lucrative
financial settlement after the divorce, Mill said: “I would have paid twice
that to keep my family in place.” Evert and Norman, her third husband, were
married in June
6 JOHN AND SHERRIE DALY
In 2006, Sherrie, wife number four for the golfer with the much-publicised
gambling and drinking problems, was sent to jail after being convicted of
drugs charges and illegal gambling. Divorce seemed to be on the cards, but
Daly had a change of heart when Sherrie was released from prison. “We love
each other just a little more than we hate each other,” he said. “We’re
trying to work things out. I think we will.” Things worked out so well that
within a few months, Daly had claimed that “while I slept, I was the victim
of an assault by my wife”. Scratches on his face the following day showed
where Sherrie had left her mark
7 COLIN AND EIMEAR MONTGOMERIE
After a brief separation in 2002, the Montgomeries finally reached the 18th
hole in 2004 after 14 years of marriage. After an earlier argument with his
wife and having shot 80 to miss the cut at the Masters, Monty left Augusta
without Eimear, who was later heard asking his caddie if he knew where her
husband was, and news of their separation soon followed. A few months later,
Montgomerie lost his rag when he spotted a friend of Eimear’s in the crowd
at Sunningdale. “I can’t believe he’s here watching! That's unbelievable!”
he exclaimed - before bogeying the hole he was playing. “From what I heard,
she hasn’t been a very nice person,” said American Tom Lehman. “You can play
bad, but going home to the wife and kids puts things in perspective. And
when that goes south, it’s like shaking a tree at the roots.” Monty married
his second wife Gaynor, the widow of a furniture tycoon, earlier this year
8 NICK FALDO AND BRENNA CEPELAK
The English golfer separated from his second wife Gill in 1995 after beginning
an affair with 20-year-old Cepelak, whom he had met at a golf tournament.
While Gill hit him in the wallet, accepting a huge payoff, Brenna marked
their split three years later, when he moved on to Valerie Bercher, in more
direct fashion - taking a nine-iron to his Porsche. “It’s always sad when
these things end,” reflected Faldo. “It was a very special car. It was so
high-tech, it was made of plastic. The club kept bouncing off. It wouldn’t
leave a dent. I auctioned it off.”
9 RAY AND KAREN PARLOUR
In 2004 Karen Parlour became the most important Wag of all when a landmark
ruling awarded her annual maintenance of more than a third of the Arsenal
player’s £1.2m salary. Karen had got two mortgage-free houses worth more
than £1m and a £250,000 lump sum in the original divorce settlement but
managed to convince a judge that as she had set Ray back on the straight and
narrow after the wayward, hard-drinking days of his youth, she was entitled
to more. Ray Parlour’s lawyers argued unsuccessfully that it was not Karen
who “performs the labour” or who “submits to Arsène Wenger’s regime of
behaviour and abstinence” and he was back in the courts last week trying to
overturn the judgment
10 ROMAN AND IRINA ABRAMOVICH
Nothing is ever as it seems at Chelsea, so when a spokesman for Roman
Abramovich responded to speculation in October 2006 about his boss’s
marriage by saying, “No member of the Abramovich family has filed suit for
divorce. Suggestions that the Abramoviches are facing serious difficulties
are similarly untrue”, it could only mean one thing. Sure enough, the
Abramoviches divorced in February 2007, after Irina delivered an ultimatum
to her husband to stop seeing 25-year-old Daria Zhukova. Abramovich refused
and handed over between £1 billion and £2 billion in cash and property for a
quickie divorce.
