PLATELL'S PEOPLE:  How divorce backfired on women - thanks to feminists

• e-mail

Julie Sharp is challenging her ex-husband's divorce settlement

Julie Sharp was aptly named. The glamorous and clever career woman had amassed a £7million fortune by 44, earning £135,000 a year as a City trader and pocketing an annual bonus of £1 million.

She was also happily married to Robin, a former IT consultant who quit his £90,000-a-year job three years after their 2009 wedding to renovate the second of their Gloucestershire homes, which she paid for. He drove the Aston Martin she bought him.

But when she discovered that he was seeing another woman, Julie filed for divorce.

They had no children together, their marriage lasted just four years and almost all their wealth came from her. Yet a judge ruled that Mr Sharp should get a payout of £2.7 million.

Every bone in your body screams out that this is unfair, a travesty of justice. Why should Julie’s stay-at-home, philandering husband — who’s clearly capable of a highly paid job — have any right to her money?

Women everywhere are rightly appalled and Mrs Sharp is challenging the 2015 ruling, seeking to reduce the payout to £1.2 million.

The trouble is this is the modern world of equality which feminists fought so hard for. It is unfair, but disproportionate payouts like this are what men suffer all the time. 

The divorce laws were drawn up in 1973 to stop stay-at-home wives being shortchanged. Back then the number of women working was 53 per cent compared with 67 per cent today; and 92 per cent of men went out to work, compared to 76 per cent now.

Feminists have been inordinately successful in getting a better deal for women in divorces, and it is easy to understand why. But now there are cases like this, where the wife gets hit.

In the original case, High Court Judge Sir Peter Singer said Julie’s gender was immaterial. 

‘The fact that this is, in effect, a husband’s claim against a wife rather than the more conventional claim of a wife against husband emphatically does not call for a discount,’ he insisted.

As I said, that’s equality for you.

Feminists’ demands have created divorce laws that are unfair and punitive — usually to men, but increasingly to women like Mrs Sharp, too. The tragedy is the only guaranteed winners are avaricious lawyers. 

Katy Perry one-year romance has ended

Katy's waste of space 

After the break-up of Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom’s one-year romance, their agents bizarrely confirmed: ‘Orlando and Katy are taking respectful, loving space at this time.’

For which read: she’s got a stellar career and he’s a freeloading, out-of-work actor who hasn’t had a mega role since the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Few things are less attractive to a successful woman than an under-employed has-been. 

 .........................................................

Bruce Forsyth has spent nearly a week in intensive care with a severe chest infection, his wife Wilnelia by his side. 

I speak for millions when I say, it will be nice to see you well again, Brucie, to see you nice.  

STEALING THE LIMELIGHT 

Pippa Middleton stole sis’s big day

The Duchess of Cambridge is said to have offered herself up as a babysitter to the children of their famous friends on the day her sister Pippa Middleton gets married — so as not to steal the limelight. 

Is this the same Pippa who stole sis’s big day with her derriere wrapped in a dress like clingfilm?

 

Advertisement

They met in 2011 and had their darling daughter Marlowe before separating in 2015. 

Now Sienna Miller says that, for the sake of the girl, she and ex-fiance Tom Sturridge often stay in the same home and holiday together. 

She adds she still loves him deeply and they are a devoted family. 

So, can’t this dippy actress see that, where marriage and parenthood are concerned, such love and family devotion is as good as it gets?

OSCAR FOR UNDIES-STUDY 

Naomie Harris in a Range Rover advert

Forget best film, surely it’s time there was an Oscar for sanctimony.

Moonlight’s Naomie Harris and three of her co-stars were all dressed by Calvin Klein, whose creative director Raf Simons claimed he wanted to celebrate ‘the amazing body of work the film represents’. He was feted as having ‘positioned a fashion brand as a progressive force’.

Moonlight is a nicely shot, right-on tale of a gay boy growing up in the black, drug-fuelled ghettos of Miami.

It is as predictable as Brokeback Mountain — only without the lovely scenery.

Advertisement

Hollywood director Ava DuVernay tweeted that in her protest against Donald Trump, she had ‘chosen to wear a gown by a designer from a major Muslim country’. 

The frock was by Mohammed Ashi of Saudi Arabia, where unfaithful wives and gays are stoned to death.

Don’t you just loathe the hypocrisy and sanctimony of these luvvies?

Broadcasting arts supremo Melvyn Bragg, 77, has given Cate Haste, his wife of 43 years, a multi-million pound settlement — despite not divorcing her. 

He is now with his mistress, Gabby Clare-Hunt, 61, with whom he’s had an on-off affair for 21 years. 

Explaining the arrangement with Haste, a friend of Lord Bragg said: ‘He’s a very complex person. Melvyn does not like the idea of divorce.’

Nor, given his shabby behaviour towards his wife, does he much respect the idea of marriage.

SPEAKING OUT OF TURN 

Hanoi Jane opposing the war in Vietnam

I’ve never shared her political worldview, but there was something admirable about Jane Fonda’s tireless campaigns.

Whether as Hanoi Jane opposing the war in Vietnam, or rallying to the causes of black Americans or Palestinians, she was always fearless.

Which is why it is so odd she has waited until now, at 79, to tell the world — in an interview with Brie Larson, the star of a film about an abuser — that she was raped and blamed herself.

It would have been much more powerful had she spoken out at the height of her fame. Doing so after so long seems like an opportunistic bid to raise her profile in the fading years of her career.

Advertisement