Kate Vince, the ex-wife of green energy industrialist Dale Vince, has been awarded more than £40 million after their divorce by a High Court judge.
They disputed how money should be split at a hearing in December last year.
Lawyers for Ms Vince told the court in London that her ex-husband was giving away their matrimonial assets, of which she should be entitled to half, including £5,460,000 in donations to the Labour Party between April 2022 and May 2024.
Mr Vince claimed the increase in donations and other spending came from a rise in the value of his businesses and had “nothing at all to do with” the legal battle.
In a judgment on Friday, Mr Justice Cusworth said Mr Vince could pay Ms Vince in three tranches, of £13.94 million, £14.49 million and £15.08 million, including interest, totalling £43.51 million.
The first payment will be made by April 30 2025, with the further two to follow annually.
He said that including “the value of non-business assets she is retaining”, this would leave Ms Vince with £45.64 million, which he said was “an appropriate outcome for these parties”.
In his 20-page ruling on Friday, Mr Justice Cusworth said: “I consider that the wife should receive 50% of the marital element of the value in the businesses, and not less.”
After the judgment, Mr Vince said his ex-wife would receive about £38 million after costs and that her case was “so lacking in legal merit”.
In a statement, he said: “Today’s judgment is a total vindication of my approach to this case from the very beginning.”
He continued: “Today my ex-wife walks away from court with £12 million less than I first offered her four years ago.
“Along with her legal team she has wasted years of time, not just our own but that of the court.”
Speaking to the PA news agency outside the Royal Courts of Justice following the judgment, Mr Vince said: “If I told you the truth I would tell you that I don’t believe in marriage and that the two times in my life I have done it I did it for my partner at the time for whom it was important.”
Davina Katz, senior partner at Katz Partners LLP, who represented Mr Vince, said she was “delighted” that the court recognised that Mr Vince had “worked very hard for many years before they met, building Ecotricity, the world’s first green energy company, from literally nothing into the extremely successful business it is today”.
Sarah Jane Lenihan, partner at Dawson Cornwell, representing Ms Vince, said: “We are very grateful to the court for the fair and equitable award granted to Ms Vince.
“It is only right that Ms Vince has received an award which reflects her extensive contributions throughout the marriage, which the judge acknowledged, during which Mr Vince built the majority of his fortune.”
Mr Vince claimed they separated in 2021, but Ms Vince alleges they were “continuing a physical and emotional relationship right up to February 2022”.
Mr Justice Cusworth said: “The parties’ separation took place at some point after a conversation between them in late March 2021, when the husband evidently told the wife that he no longer loved her and believed that the relationship had broken down.”
He added: “However, it is also true that for the rest of that year, and until February 2022, they continued to be married, to live effectively under the same roof as a domestic unit, and also on occasions continued their physically intimate relationship.”
The judge said that although Mr Vince bought himself a houseboat towards the end of 2022, “he must have known that the wife’s feelings were not so clear, and by continuing to sleep with her he would only have encouraged her in the hope that their marriage might be restored”.
Lawyers for Ms Vince, 50, said her ex-husband, 63, had been giving away their matrimonial assets in a “wanton and reckless” fashion.
This included the gift to the Labour Party, as well as £100,000 to the Cheltenham Muslim Association and £8.4 million to his foundation, the Green Britain Foundation, which includes support for Forest Green Rovers FC, the National League football side he owns.
However, Mr Vince told the court he donated to Labour because he saw the general election as the opportunity for a government that wanted to do something about net zero.
Mr Vince said Labour always has the need for funding, adding: “I thought it was not just the right thing to do, but imperative, to step into that gap and help Labour get out of the gap.”
Referring to the donations made to Labour, the judge said they “can be seen to have been timed to precede the recent general election” and were at a time when Mr Vince’s company’s “coffers had been filled up”.
He said: “It was therefore both foreseeable and hardly inexplicable that the company should choose to make a specific large donation at that time.
“I am satisfied that the husband’s motivation in endorsing that transaction was political, and not related to these proceedings.”
Giving evidence to the court, Ms Vince said that, during the course of the marriage, she supported the mission of Mr Vince’s company, which was not being run for the personal enrichment of the shareholders, but with the motivation of creating a more sustainable Britain.
Mr Vince had told the court in London he did not want to sell “his life’s work” because of his divorce, having come close to selling his business in 2021-2022.
He said he had considered selling because he thought he might need to for the divorce, and also because he had aspirations of becoming a politician and thought it might pose a conflict of interest.
However, the sale did not go ahead for a number of different reasons, including that Mr Vince “reconnected” with the business.
Mr Justice Cusworth said: “In this case I consider that a fair approach will be to determine the marital period as a proportion of the whole period of the business’s existence to date.
“That proportion of current value should be considered matrimonial.”
