Ex-wife awarded £215,000 after divorce in 1985

Philippa Vaughan asked the Court of Appeal to reverse a ruling by a

High Court judge who refused her application for a lump sum payment after her 27,175-a-year maintenance was discharged last year.

David Vaughan QC, an expert on European law, had been paying her maintenance since 1991 and had applied to the High Court when he faced a reduced income because of retirement.

Allowing her appeal, Lord Justice Wilson said the High Court judge was "plainly wrong" to conclude that Mrs Vaughan could adjust without undue hardship to the ending of the husband's periodical payments.

Richard Anelay QC made his ruling in the Family Division on the understanding that Mrs Vaughan had no children and her desire to leave a legacy to a niece would be covered by the value of her home.

"In my view, it is invidious for the court to try to analyse a person's relationships in order to seek to measure the extent of reasonable expectations of benefit under her or his estate," said Lord Justice Wilson.

Mrs Vaughan, 66, an expert on Islamic and Indian art but who now has no earned income, lives alone in a four-bedroom house in Hammersmith, west London, worth 1,091,000.

She was married to Mr Vaughan for 13 years.

Mr Vaughan, 71, remarried after his divorce and lives with his 56-year-old wife, Leslie, in North Kensington, west London, in a house worth 4,365,000.

Nicholas Mostyn QC, representing him at the Appeal Court hearing, told the three judges that Mr Vaughan's first wife was claiming that his pension pot should be included in assets available to her.

Mr Mostyn said the fund, which could generate up to 100,000 a year, was set up during his second marriage.

He said Mr Vaughan's second wife was entitled to half of it and to argue that the fund should be available to support Philippa Vaughan "would mean the second wife would be chipping in to the maintenance of the first".

Philippa Vaughan had been asking for a 560,000 lump sum but reduced her claim to 341,000.

The ruling gave her 215,000 to be paid by July 2010 and, until then, periodical payments of 14,000 a year backdated to November 2009.

Lord Justice Wilson said: "In my view, the judge in the present case wrongly gave priority to the claims of the second wife."

He said that, whatever the length of the second marriage in relation to the first, however substantial the contributions made by the second wife to it and whatever the extent to which the pension fund was built up during the second marriage, it was "illogical" for the judge to attribute one half of the pension income to the second wife.

The judges were told at the hearing by Christopher Wagstaffe, representing Mrs Vaughan, that the husband's overall wealth was more than 5m and he had an income in "six figures".

In a statement after the ruling, Mrs Vaughan said her ex-husband had engaged the services of top advocate Nicholas Mostyn QC, who has previously represented Paul McCartney, forcing her to instruct a similarly high calibre advocate, thereby incurring great financial risk.

She accused them of "an aggressive case of attrition, no doubt hoping I would give up" and said it raised serious concerns which she hoped the Bar Council and the Law Society would investigate.