Once they first clapped eyes on each other at a swanky London boat social gathering in 1994, nautical entrepreneur Captain Paul Crowther and his future spouse, Caroline, had been immediately smitten.
Within the months and years that adopted got here a romantic proposal at The Ivy in London, a lavish church wedding ceremony within the shadow of Hever Fort in Kent, the start of three youngsters and, to cap all of it, a burgeoning £10 million ship and personal jet-chartering enterprise.
The gilded couple loved the type of way of life — suppose luxurious ski holidays, yacht cruises, non-public faculties, vehicles, horses and workers, to not point out a £7.5 million property within the South of France — that almost all of us can solely dream of.
Once they first clapped eyes on each other at a swanky London boat social gathering in 1994, nautical entrepreneur Captain Paul Crowther (pictured) and his future spouse, Caroline, had been immediately smitten
Quick-forward 25 years and having blown their fortune preventing one another in courtroom, the couple’s surname has develop into a byword for the very worst type of divorce among the many be-wigged occupants of the Household Division of the Excessive Courtroom in London.
‘Nihilistic’ was how one decide put it, as he blasted the pair from Horsham, West Sussex, for failing to compromise and squandering the fortune that ought to someday have been their youngsters’s inheritance.
So how on earth did a pair blessed with well being, happiness and wealth find yourself ripping each other to shreds within the divorce courts? And who’s in charge for the ugly two-year courtroom battle involving unproven claims of fraud and the grounding of a £10 million fleet of ships, which just about worn out their riches, with £2.3 million spent on authorized prices alone?
‘I can’t see how there’s something I may have carried out to vary the course of occasions over the previous two years,’ says 55-year-old Paul in an unique interview with the Mail.
The daddy of 5, who has two youngsters from a earlier relationship, says he has been left penniless by the case, which ended with a remaining order made by a decide simply days earlier than Christmas. ‘I’ve been dragged by the nostril all through this course of. I used to be merely reacting to claims made towards me. The one individuals who profited had been one agency of attorneys; and never mine.’
Caroline, in the meantime, insists she ‘did what I needed to do to protect belongings and obtain a good listening to, and the courts protected me and helped me to attain that goal’.
The 51-year-old mom of three factors out that after ‘a gruelling two years with 34 courtroom hearings’, and 6,000 pages of proof, she received the lion’s share of what was left of their cash; 90 per cent plus prices, a call made in her favour partly as a result of the decide discovered that Paul was ‘responsible of litigation misconduct’.
Captain Paul Anthony Crowther, 54, is locked in a bitter divorce battle with ex-wife Caroline Crowther, 49 over a £10m fleet of ships owned by an offshore enterprise that she is claiming must be included of their divorce settlement
The ultimate order noticed her stroll away with £660,961 plus prices, whereas Paul was given £77,414 — a sum lower than his money owed.
However many will really feel the one actual winners on this case had been the couple’s vastly costly attorneys. With Caroline spending £1.4 million on her authorized workforce and Paul’s prices reaching £920,300, the decide concluded that ‘the primary losers are in all probability the youngsters who, fairly aside from the emotional ache of seeing their mother and father concerned in such bitter proceedings, will likely be disadvantaged of monies which I’m certain their mother and father would have needed them to learn sooner or later’.
So how did issues get so dangerous between them? Paul undoubtedly blames his spouse’s affair with a builder engaged on their house for the break-up — a reality considered ‘immaterial’ by the decide when it got here to settling their funds.
Paul tells me: ‘I liked her all through our marriage. I used to be devastated by the betrayal of her affair, however I needed to attempt to discover a approach ahead for the sake of our kids. Sadly, the belief between us has been destroyed.’
And but the couple as soon as appeared ideally matched. Each had been privately educated and each had enterprise of their blood; Paul is descended from textile mill house owners, whereas Caroline’s household as soon as owned the now defunct firm Metcalf Motor Cruisers.
‘Caroline was fairly, adventurous and sociable,’ remembers Paul of the halcyon days of their marriage. ‘We had been each extraordinarily lively individuals. I’m a pilot and a captain, an avid skier and snowboarder. She is a passionate horsewoman.
‘We had quite a lot of completely happy years. There have been no points so far as I used to be involved, not till the final two or three years of the wedding.’
By his personal admission, marriage to him was by no means going to be plain crusing. It is a man who left faculty at 17 and began his personal enterprise, shopping for a decrepit canal boat, doing it up and promoting it on at a revenue.
He made £30,000 on the third boat he renovated, a decommissioned fishing vessel he purchased in Denmark and sailed house alone throughout the North Sea with only a highway map to information him. By 21, he’d misplaced all the pieces and labored as a scallop diver whereas beginning over once more.
The couple married in 1996. ‘Life with an entrepreneur is like residing on a merry-go-round,’ admits Paul. ‘There’s quite a lot of monetary insecurity and it may be a residing hell.’
However when the great occasions had been good, they had been superb, with luxurious houses, vehicles and horses.
The previous couple’s belongings embrace the multi-million pound manor home which was their former matrimonial house, close to Hartfield, in East Sussex
Whereas Paul ran the maritime aspect of the enterprise, chartering out vessels for offshore wind farm building and underwater oil and fuel operations, Caroline handled finance and admin. Till their marriage fell aside in 2019, they’d weathered many a monetary storm collectively.
They recovered their fortune after the jet chartering enterprise collapsed in the course of the 2007-08 monetary disaster. Unable to promote their property within the hills exterior Cannes as a result of it was in destructive fairness, they rented it out and moved again to the UK.
‘We owed more cash than we had in belongings and needed to borrow cash from our mother and father,’ says Paul.
Inside a few years, they had been again on their toes, selecting up traders for his or her delivery chartering enterprise. In 2014, they purchased a £1.8 million property in Sussex which had as soon as belonged to the movie mogul, J Arthur Rank. They spent round one other £1 million on a renovation challenge, that includes an indoor swimming pool and cinema room.
By the point the challenge had completed, nevertheless, Caroline was having an affair with one of many builders, named in courtroom solely as ‘Mr X’.
A suspicious Paul had positioned GPS monitoring programs on his spouse’s automotive and employed a non-public detective to comply with her. In courtroom, it was famous that he ‘has harboured an actual sense of anger’ in direction of his spouse and her lover who, it was stated in courtroom, had been nonetheless in a relationship.
The pair initiated divorce proceedings towards each other in September 2019. Caroline issued monetary treatment proceedings at Horsham Household Courtroom later that month.
She instantly utilized for her husband’s belongings to be frozen; hardly shocking on condition that Paul had closed their collectively owned firm, Atlantic Marine & Aviation, and transferred its belongings to a brand new firm in his sole title.
Paul argues: ‘We couldn’t stick with it working collectively, on condition that we couldn’t be in the identical room. She needed to maintain management of the funds and take cash out of the corporate that we couldn’t afford. I needed to shield the enterprise.’
Certainly he understands Caroline’s suspicions about his intentions?
‘I perceive her upset and anger, however I’m unsure what choices I had,’ he says. ‘Neither of us trusted the opposite. And none of this affected Caroline’s monetary declare. She may have come after the brand new firm as a “marital asset” simply as simply.’
In courtroom, nevertheless, Mr Justice Peel stated there was ‘no justification’ for Paul’s actions.
‘It’s exhausting to conceive of a extra inflammatory option to set about divorce proceedings’, including that his ‘egregious conduct . . . set the tone for litigation’.
In the meantime, the couple’s attorneys’ meters had been already merrily ticking over. And these had been simply the authorized preliminaries. The worst was but to return.
The pair have additionally clashed a few £10m fleet of boats owned by offshore firms. Pictured: The Atlantic Discovery, one of many boats fought over
On the coronary heart of their protracted and dear dispute was Caroline’s declare {that a} £10 million fleet of 5 ships owned by offshore firms was, in actuality, an asset of the wedding and will kind a part of her settlement.
She stated the ships had been held ‘on belief for us’ to be able to ‘scale back our tax liabilities’. Paul, who insisted the ships weren’t owned by him, Caroline or their firm, stated they shouldn’t be included.
In courtroom, Caroline’s attorneys accused Paul of ‘illegal tax evasion as distinct from official tax avoidance’, and stated that regardless of the actual fact Caroline was a enterprise companion, liable for monetary issues, and current at a gathering the place these preparations had been agreed, was ‘not a participant in illegal exercise’.
In response to Mrs Justice Lieven: ‘It was obvious that Mrs Crowther was nicely conscious of no matter was organized and negotiated at the moment and had been content material with it till the wedding started to fail.’
Caroline dropped the declare 5 days earlier than it was on account of go to trial. By then, she’d run up practically 1,000,000 kilos in prices.
Paul was awarded greater than £300,000 in prices — a sum that was worn out by the ultimate monetary award made in Caroline’s favour.
It’s this what Paul describes as a ‘ruinous fishing expedition’ which angers him essentially the most. With no alternative to defend himself towards these unproven allegations, extensively reported within the Press on the time, he says the damaging spectre of ‘fraud’ hangs over him. ‘The deserted trial made it inconceivable for me to clear my title,’ he says — a place acknowledged by Mrs Justice Lieven, who described the state of affairs as ‘grossly unfair’.
‘He has confronted a barrage of allegations . . . and vastly advanced litigation for a few of which era he has not been represented. He has been put to huge expense . . . his fame should even have been tremendously broken.’
Whereas declining to talk in full in regards to the divorce battle, Caroline insists: ‘What I’ll say is that Paul shouldn’t be the sufferer right here. The victims are our kids.
‘Paul was represented all through the proceedings and he had each alternative to decide on a special path for his litigation. Sadly, he did what he did and we ended up in courtroom, the place I used to be awarded 90 per cent of what was left, plus prices. The revealed judgment reveals the place the reality lies.’
Pictured as a contented couple: Caroline Crowther, and Paul Crowther on their Marriage ceremony Day
However by the point that judgment was given, there was so little left that Mr Justice Peel stated he ‘largely had to focus on methods to divide the money owed pretty’.
The couple had argued about ‘virtually each possible subject, regardless of how trivial’, he stated, including that ‘they and their attorneys have adopted a bitterly fought adversarial method’ which had led to ‘huge prices and lowered scope for settlement’.
Paul insists he made quite a few real makes an attempt to settle the litigation, one thing his spouse denies. However he’s additionally extremely vital of the household courts — ‘the Wild West of the authorized system’ as he places it — which ‘helped destroy my whole household’s wealth’. He believes a cap must be positioned on authorized charges in household proceedings.
However Paul himself got here in for heavy criticism within the remaining judgment made on the finish of final 12 months. Mr Justice Peel stated that he had ‘at varied occasions sought to hide or minimise the extent of earnings accessible to him’, and that he had been ‘lower than frank about his earned earnings’.
Caroline, added the decide, was additionally ‘not fully freed from blame in her conduct of the litigation’, though, general, he thought of Paul ‘to have been extra blameworthy’.
Satirically, due to delays brought on by the pandemic, the pair are legally nonetheless husband and spouse. May they ever see themselves placing all this behind them, even perhaps changing into associates for the sake of their youngsters?
Paul, who’s now in a brand new relationship, says: ‘I don’t suppose that may be doable. The vendetta has been approach past damaging with out sense or cause. I stay up for rebuilding my life.’
Caroline says: ‘I simply need to transfer on with my life. I want Paul all the very best for the longer term.’
As to what is perhaps discovered from their two-year courtroom ordeal, it’s exhausting to say. For whereas the case of Crowther v Crowther might stand as a warning towards the perils of blending private {and professional} relationships, certainly no courtroom can ever wholly account for the bitter depths of the human coronary heart.