Supermodel Christina Estrada awarded £75m in divorce settlement
Earlier this month, former supermodel and Pirelli calendar girl, Christina Estrada, was awarded a £53 million settlement following a high court divorce battle with her ex-husband, Dr Walid Juffali.
The parties met in 2000 and married shortly afterwards. Their marriage ran into difficulty in 2012, when Dr Juffali, a Saudi businessman, married a 25-year Lebanese model, whilst still married to Ms Estrada. Islamic law permitted him to have more than one wife, but in 2014 he divorced Ms Estrada in Saudi Arabia, without her knowledge.
This meant despite the fact that the parties’ former matrimonial home was in London and Ms Estrada lives here, she could not apply for financial relief in the English court under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, which is the usual basis on which the court has jurisdiction to award financial settlements on divorce. Nor could she apply for any form of financial relief in Saudi Arabia. Instead, Ms Estrada had to apply for permission from the court to bring a claim under Part III of the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984. The court granted her application because it deemed that the couple had sufficient connection with this country and that the interests of justice required it.
There was a further twist when Ms Estrada had to apply for the Final Hearing in the case to be brought forward because Dr Juffali had terminal cancer. If Dr Juffali had died before the hearing, the court would not have had the power to make an award.
The most noteworthy aspect of this case is the level of the award. The court awarded Ms Estrada a £53 million settlement. Together with her own assets, this leaves her with a total of £75 million. The court’s decision to grant this sum was based on an assessment of Ms Estrada’s needs, making this the largest ‘needs award’ ever made by an English court, by more than £50 million. Ms Estrada’s lawyers estimated that Dr Juffali was worth £8 billion. Dr Juffali, who was not able to attend the hearing due to ill-health, said in a written statement that this was a grossly exaggerated “fantasy figure” and put his net worth at about £113.8 million.
Ms Estrada was required to prepare a budget for the court, in which she set out what she needed to meet her annual outgoings. The list included:-
£1 million for clothes
£600,000 for hiring a private jet
£4,000 for sunglasses
£46,000 for Wimbledon and Ascot tickets
£39,000 for watches
Ms Estrada said that she needed a total of £6.5 million a year to meet her outgoings. She told the court: “I am Christina Estrada. I was a top international model. I have lived this life. This is what I am accustomed to”. The Judge accepted that Dr Juffali and Ms Estrada had lived an extraordinary and exorbitant life and that this should be reflected, but not replicated, in the award. On this basis, the judge pared down Ms Estrada’s annual budget to a marginally more modest £2.5 million.
In a final twist, Dr Juffali died on 20 July, just three weeks after judgment in the case was handed down. Ms Estrada was reported to be “devastated” at the news.
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