Finance: What price freedom? Is it ever worth it to divorce?

Exploits and bitter divorces of the stars – those with piles of money and big reputations on the line – regularly fill gossip rags and the celeb magazines you only admit to reading at the dentist’s.

The thing is; the money and the bitterness is enough to strike fear in the heart that grown cold to the spouse. If even the most powerful and coddled in the world can’t escape the huge payouts and grief, who can?

The latest divorce to make headlines, following Sir Paul McCartney’s wild divorce from Heather Mills (price tag: $44-million plus support) or Madonna’s split from Guy Ritchie (between $82-$100-million plus custody issues) is the painful split between funnyman John Cleese, of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fame, and his third wife, third wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger, a psychotherapist whom he married in 1992.

The 70-year old comedian claims his ex now has more wealth than he does and he has to go back to work – work he doesn’t want to do — to cover the shortfall. Adding further to the sense of injustice, Eichelberger went from living in public housing when they met to landing a $3.3M apartment in New York, a home in London’s toney Holland Park and a third in Santa Barbara, California.

“What I find so unfair is that if we both died today, her children would get much more than mine,” the Oscar-nominated comedian told the Daily Telegraph. “At least I will know in future if I go out with a lady they will not be after me for my money.”

For every divorced couple there is a terrifying story of unfairness, greed and deception. But what is the real story? Can something like the Cleese case happen here in Canada, where an aging former spouse has to hit the bricks to keep the ex in style? Is it EVER worth it to divorce?

But the spanner in the works right now is the volatile and crashing economy, and Klukach speaks of a recent Supreme Court of Canada case which looked like it was going to be a case of Cleese-lite: Serra and Serra is a divorce whereby the value of the assets, a textile company, plummeted from the time of separation and the eventual court date five years later. Technically the husband in this case would have been obliged to pay his wife millions of dollars, many millions more than the company was worth when they finally went to court, and millions he no longer had.
“The court viewed this as patently unfair,” said Klukach. “And so the law has been interpreted now to mean that the assets will be split at the time the couple comes to divide it.

“The world wide recession last year has caused a lot of pain in family law.”

Where things are likely to get murkier is in the area of spousal support – while Klukach says no 70-year old would be forced to keep working in order to put an ex-wife into a glam apartment, there is an obligation to look after each other even when the love is gone.

“That said, you do have an obligation to contribute to your own support,” says Klukach.

Cleese, 70, is currently writing a one-man show titled My Alyce Faye Divorce Tour – and managed to crack a wry joke about the pricy split at his former wife’s expense.

“I got off lightly,” Cleese said. “Think what I’d have had to pay Alyce if she had contributed anything to the relationship.”