By DANA KENNEDY
In a pretty principality, it can get ugly.
MONTE CARLO — The little courthouse resembling an ice
cream cake perches high atop the Mediterranean just a few hundred yards from
the royal palace. It looks like another Instagram-ready shot from the world’s
most photogenic principality, a beautiful blur of pastel villas, chic beach
clubs and gleaming, million-dollar yachts on a shimmering port.
But don’t be mistaken. It can get ugly at this pretty
court which often handles big personalities with lots of money. Divorce laws in
the principality are intended to protect the super-wealthy, ensuring that they
don’t lose their assets in case of a split. And matrimonial laws do not favor
women in Monte Carlo.
Let’s put it this way,” said Judd Burstein, a
high-powered New York lawyer who is trying to move a current Monaco divorce
case to New York. “If a rich man married a poor woman in Monaco and all she
owned at the time of the marriage was a horse, she’d be left like Lady Godiva
when the marriage ended. Naked with a horse. The guy would get everything.”
Monaco has no laws governing separation of assets, and
the only wealth that is divided in a divorce is that which was commonly
created. The advisory website Monaco Wealth Management says the laws are
designed to keep out “gold diggers.”
Lainie Crane, an American woman in her 60s who’s lived
in Monaco for more than 35 years, says wives still end up with the short end of
the stick when they go to court.
““The women who marry these rich guys are not the
brightest — they think their youth and beauty will last forever,” she said.
“They don’t know to say, ‘hey honey-bunny can I have my own checking account or
can you put my name on the deed?’ By the time the s*** hits the fan, it’s too
late. They’re supposed to get half — but half of what? These guys keep a little
something in HSBC. But the rest is in Turks and Caicos or Guernsey.”
As rough as divorce can be on women with ties to
Monaco, it can be a challenge in other European countries where a wide variety
of rules govern matrimonial break-ups.
Monaco lies just a few kilometers from Italy, where
the process until recently could take up to ten years. For one thing, courts
mandated a three-year separation period for “reflection and possible
reconsideration” on mutual petitions. But that recently changed, possibly with
“considerable socio-economic implications.” A leading Catholic daily reportedly
bemoaned the changes under the headline: “Shortened divorce, an uncivilized
goal.” Further south in Malta, it wasn’t even possible to get a divorce until
five years ago and the country still has some of the most restrictive laws in
Europe.
The EU’s Brussels II convention was meant to harmonize
divorce laws so that a divorce filed in one country would be accepted in
another. But the 2001 convention, which holds that the first court to process
the divorce is the one to hold jurisdiction, may have had the unintended effect
of highlighting differences between countries, leading to ‘divorce tourism’
with couples filing in countries with quicker, cheaper or more generous terms
for divorce.
For example, if you head to Romania, divorce is cheap
and quick, and lawyers have found a way around the provision that one needs to
be a resident. Romanian courts also recognize de facto separation, so divorce
proceedings are fairly straightforward if the couple can convince the court
that the spouses have already been living separately for six months.
Bucharest, however, can’t top London, which is known
as the divorce capital of the world. An investigation by the Times a few years
ago found that, when huge sums of money were at stake, around half of divorce
cases involved international couples. While getting divorced in the U.K. is
both expensive and arduous, it is generally preferred by financially weaker
spouses who may gain more there than elsewhere. British courts often award
former spouses, particularly wives, with maintenance for life. Family law firm
Pannone describe British laws as too “wife-friendly.”
Which is why some British women who find themselves
living in Monaco with their husbands try to find a way to get back to the U.K.
if a divorce is in the offing.
Camilla, a 41-year-old British national, lived in
Monaco with her British banker husband and their three children. When Camilla
discovered that her husband was having an affair, she knew she wanted to file
for divorce — but not in Monaco.
“I told him the kids were unhappy at their school in
Monaco and that we should move back to the U.K.,” said Camilla, who spoke on
condition that her last name not be used. “He believed me, so we packed up and
moved back.”
Within six months, Camilla had filed for divorce in
London, getting a better deal than would have been possible in Monaco where
divorce law dictates that all the deeds and bank accounts remain with the
person whose name they were under before marriage. Courts are known to be
stingy with alimony, believing in the individual’s capacity to “bounce back.”
“Justice belongs to the spouse with the most money
here,” said Elisabetta Agusta, a 66-year-old Austrian national who was married
to a wealthy Italian count. Her divorce, she said, took 17 years to wend
through the courts in Monaco and Milan, and when it was over, she was left with
almost nothing. “The men just think, ‘how do I get rid of my wife without
giving her any money.’ If you’re naïve as I was, God help you.”
Last fall, Maurice Amon, 65, heir to a multi-million
dollar Swiss banknote ink fortune, filed for divorce from Tracey Hejailan-Amon
in Monaco where the couple owns a $40 million home. In response, his wife hired
Burstein, who represented Donald Trump in his divorce from Ivana in 1992, in a
bid to move divorce proceedings to New York.
Hejailan-Amon, then 39, had met Amon at a New Year’s
Eve party in Gstaad, not long after her marriage had ended. The couple were
eventually married in Hong Kong and reportedly maintained homes in London,
Paris, Gstaad, Monaco, and New York during their eight-year marriage.
“I wasn’t seeking out a bank account when I married
Maurice,” said Hejailan-Amon, adding that she was devastated when her husband
sent her an email in October worded like a business transaction, informing her
that he had just filed for divorce in Monaco. The email came after Amon had
quietly taken $25 million in artwork from the couple’s Fifth Avenue apartment,
which he had placed in her name, Burstein said.
It’s not the first contentious divorce for either.
Hejailan-Amon, who is originally from California, was previously married to a
Saudi businessman and fought a five-year battle to get her two children out of
the Kingdom.
Amon, for his part, graced the pages of the New York
tabloids in 2005 under headlines such as “DIVORCE OF HEADSPLITTING NASTINESS”
when he separated from his former wife Roberta. The couple had split their time
between Switzerland and the U.S. and Roberta, like Hejailan-Amon, fought to have
the divorce heard in Manhattan.
Amon’s lawyer, Peter Bronstein, who also represented
his client during his divorce from his previous wife, has called Hejailan-Amon
a “gold-digger” who can’t show she’s lived in New York for the required two
years needed to start a divorce action there. Photos of her overflowing shoe
closet in Monaco were splashed all over the media after Bronstein filed the
pictures in court to show she maintained her residence there.
Burstein, though, says he can prove the Amons spent a lot
of time in New York and that Amon’s claim of being a resident of Monaco was
just a way to evade taxes.
Though a Monaco law introduced in 2007 was meant to
even the playing field among couples, there are still laws on the books that
allow a spouse to take back any gifts or “donations” made during the marriage —
like the estimated $70 million in jewelry Maurice gave his wife.
A New York judge has said he will rule on whether or
not Hejailan-Amon can move her divorce case to Manhattan this month.
“We built a life together,” says Hejailan-Amon. “My
two kids loved him and I thought he loved them. Maurice didn’t want me to work
but I contributed to the marriage. I decorated our homes,” she said. “I’m not a
gold digger and I married Maurice for love.”
No comments:
Post a Comment