Novel Addictions

By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard about the acrimonious divorce taking place over the last couple of years between Paul McCartney and Heather Mills. Yesterday, the court revealed exactly how much wealth McCartney possesses and how much of that Mills was entitled to. Thankfully, the judgment she was after was greatly reduced.

When McCartney began seeing Mills, many people were skeptical of their relationship from the beginning. She was young, pretty, and seemingly sweet. McCartney was so smitten that he refused to sign a prenuptial agreement. After all, he was in love. Fast forward to 2008 and the love is gone.  In its place is a publicity campaign to rival all others. Normally, I think prenuptial agreements are overkill and not necessary. After all, in most normal divorces, they aren’t needed because assets will be divided equally or as the judge sees fit. But when hundreds of millions of dollars are involved, I’d say a prenup is in order.

According to British court documents, Paul McCartney–a man who’s worked for more than 40 years to accumulate his wealth–is worth approximately  $774,000,000. That’s a lot of zeroes! Heather Mills knew when she married McCartney that he was worth a huge fortune, but apparently not quite as much as she suspected.  She claimed he was worth about $1.6 billion American. And some of the demands she made for expenses were outright outlandish. For instance, she wanted monies to fly Beatrice–McCartney’s daughter with Mills–first class. For a four-year old, that’s rather ridiculous, wouldn’t you say?  A classic case of “poor little rich girl.”

I actually feel a bit sorry for McCartney. He lost his beloved wife Linda to breast cancer in 1998 and was married to her for nearly 30 years. So when Mills came along, I’m sure he was anxious to feel that sort of emotion again when he’d been bereft at Linda’s death. But Mills has proven herself to be no Linda replacement. In fact, the more that we see and hear from her, the more she begins to look like a gold digger attempting to make a quick profit off of an unsuspecting (and possibly still grieving) ex-husband. If I were Mills, it’s certainly not an image I would wish to uphold.