A millionaire businessman from Sydney has been ordered by court to pay his estranged wife – who was formerly a lap dancer - 3.25 million dollars in accordance with their pre-nupital agreement.
The 58-year-old who met his wife at a lap-dancing club has argued he shouldn’t have to pay her a slice of his fortune because she was a gold digger who used frequent high-quality sex to lure him into a loveless and childless marriage News.com.au reported.
The businessman claimed in the Family Court he became infatuated with the dancer, who was 14 years younger than him, when they met in 1998.
He claimed that when they discussed marriage many years later he was 'emotionally or pathologically dependent' on her, and she used this influence to force him to sign away 3.25 million dollars of his 17 million dollars fortune to her in a pre-nuptial agreement.
He claimed that once they were married the quality and quantity of the 'intimate relations' they enjoyed before marriage declined steeply.
He also believed that she didn’t love him or want to have children with him. They separated after just two years of marriage.
Family Court judge Robert Benjamin ruled that the husband had failed to prove his claims that he had been unfairly coerced into the pre-nup by a manipulative lover.
Justice Benjamin found the wife’s claim that the sex did not change much after marriage, and that she did love her husband more believable.
“(A) change in the nature of intimacy between parties when they marry is not an indication of fraud, coercion or unconscionable conduct. It is indicative of normal human behaviour,” the judge said.
“These parties were not in the ‘first blush’ of their relationship in 2005, they had commenced living together about eight years previously,” he said.
The wife has been awarded the 3.25 million dollars she is owed under the pre-nup.
The judge also found that the husband tried to demean his wife and her work as a lap dancer during the court hearing.
The husband gave evidence that she only deserved a 'modest' divorce payout because her contribution to the marriage was minimal.