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Charles Villiers with his new love Heidi Innes, a 42-year-old opera singer he met in 2017, at their home in Tyninghame East Lothian<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
And, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind in 200 years, the UK government have asked to be represented by their own QC at the hearing. The last time ministers intervened in a marital dispute at the highest court was to discuss the failed marriage of George IV to Queen Caroline in 1820.<\/p>\n
The stakes are high for all parties in what has become one of Britain\u2019s most bitter and protracted divorce cases. If Mr Villiers, a former racehorse owner and publisher, wins his test case before five judges, it will close forever a loophole created by the EU which sees Scotland and England treated as two separate countries in divorce actions.<\/p>\n
The loophole has led to a rise in \u2018divorce tourism\u2019 where estranged husbands and wives use the English courts to obtain more lucrative maintenance deals against wealthy spouses residing in Scotland.<\/p>\n
For Mr Villiers, who lives in East Lothian, a win would finally break the deadlock he has been in since his wife, Emma, moved to London shortly after their split in 2012. It would also allow him to move a step closer to marrying his new love, Heidi Innes, a 42-year-old opera singer he met in 2017.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, Mr Villiers told The Mail on Sunday: \u2018All I want is to be happy with someone I love and to marry her. But I\u2019m a victim of EU meddling. The Supreme Court\u2019s decision to hear my case is very welcome because there were no guarantees they would do so.<\/p>\n
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Country Manor: Milton House, Scotland, where Emma Villiers was said to like being \u2018chatelaine\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018There seems to be so much justice on my side, however, I feel I can win. I have a human right to be able to move on with my life, to be able to get divorced, to be able to have children with Heidi within a legitimate situation. The circumstances I find myself in are appalling. Nobody in 1972 envisaged the EU would start to interfere with our domestic laws, and I think it is a mark of how worried the Government are about a system they have allowed to develop unchecked that they are sending along someone to defend their position.\u2019<\/p>\n
Ironically, it was on the subject of \u2018divorce\u2019 that Mr Villiers and talented mezzo-soprano Ms Innes, who had recently separated from her own husband, initially bonded when they first met by chance in a central Edinburgh caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n
Ms Innes recalled: \u2018We started chatting and I told him I was about to view a flat because my marriage had ended. He told me he was separated too and that he understood how I felt, it must be painful. He didn\u2019t tell me at that stage he had been trying to divorce for seven years \u2013 that was on the third occasion we met. I was absolutely appalled. I don\u2019t know how he has stayed sane really.\u2019<\/p>\n
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Emma Villiers, (right) with daughter Clarissa (left). For Mr Villiers, who lives in East Lothian, a win would finally break the deadlock he has been in since his wife, Emma, moved to London shortly after their split in 2012<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
She added: \u2018Unlike Charles\u2019s situation, my husband and I have been very mature in acknowledging our marriage didn\u2019t work. It\u2019s never easy but it should be a straightforward process. I wasn\u2019t happy in my marriage and I feel as if the fates have rewarded my brave decision to start over again by sending Charles my way. It makes me feel awful that Charles can\u2019t get divorced. It\u2019s not particularly because I\u2019d like a ring on my finger, but we would like to have a child together and it\u2019s important to us that the child has his name.\u2019<\/p>\n
Mr Villiers\u2019 more modest lifestyle now, in a rented five-bedroom house with Ms Innes and their eight-week-old dachshund puppy, Rosie, is a long way from the \u2018vulgar excesses\u2019 he associates with his estranged wife \u2013 he has claimed she loved the \u2018trappings of wealth more than her husband\u2019.<\/p>\n
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Mr Villiers’ late mother was cousin to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
With their Scottish estate, eight-bedroom Georgian manor house and private loch, the Villiers seemed the epitome of wealthy marital respectability.<\/p>\n
But he has confessed that as the marriage went on he found himself becoming increasingly disenchanted, and bewildered, with his wife\u2019s apparent need for \u2018bling\u2019.<\/p>\n
He said: \u2018I remember giving her nice diamond rings for our tenth wedding anniversary, but when we went to race meetings she would wear these larger glass baubles and people would say, \u201cOh, Emma, what beautiful rings you\u2019re wearing.\u201d I got very bored with it all.<\/p>\n
\u2018She\u2019s the sort of person who had 11 pairs of white jeans, and then would go and buy more. She has no concept of the value of money.\u2019 Mr Villiers, a devout Catholic who has family links with the Duchess of Cornwall through his mother, Elizabeth Keppel, the daughter of Viscount Bury, was first introduced to the woman who would become his wife at a Dorset house party.<\/p>\n
They married in 1994 and settled in Milton House in Dunbartonshire. Their only daughter Clarissa arrived a year later. But Mr Villiers says the marriage started to founder in 2011 after he suggested they downsize, as Clarissa was then 17 and at boarding school in Gloucestershire. He said: \u2018The house was enormous and there was just the two of us rattling around in it. It had served its purpose as a family home and I thought we should talk about a new chapter.<\/p>\n
\u2018But Emma basically said, \u201cIf you\u2019re ever thinking of selling this house, I\u2019m off!\u201d She said, \u201cI\u2019d rather sell my engagement ring than this house.\u201d She was clearly saying, \u201cI\u2019m married to this house, not you.\u201d She liked being chatelaine of Milton House.\u2019<\/p>\n
By 2012 the couple had separated, with Mr Villiers moving to Edinburgh while his wife moved to Notting Hill, west London, with Clarissa, now 24. He was subsequently declared bankrupt and, although discharged the following year with around \u00a3250,000 inherited from his mother, the family manor was repossessed in 2015. Mr Villiers then filed for divorce \u2013 in Scotland \u2013 but three months later his wife applied to the English courts for financial maintenance.<\/p>\n
In March 2016, Mrs Justice Parker ruled Mrs Villiers was \u2018habitually resident\u2019 in England and approved a monthly \u00a35,500 interim maintenance payment pending the divorce \u2013 although Mrs Villiers is seeking \u00a310,000 a month.<\/p>\n
Her lawyers say her husband has a half-share in a \u00a33.5 million trust fund inherited from his maternal grandmother, Sonia Rosemary Keppel, plus another \u00a3600,000 from his mother. Mr Villiers says he has no direct access to the fund and has provided generously for Clarissa.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Mr Villiers appealed to the Supreme Court on grounds including that the British government exceeded its powers when it allowed the EU Maintenance Regulation to dictate domestic divorce laws \u2018without it being debated in parliament or without it having any proper scrutiny\u2019.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court will hear his case on December 9 and 10. The five judges, including Lady Hale, who delivered the judgment in September that Boris Johnson had acted unlawfully in proroguing parliament, are expected to publish their ruling in early February.<\/p>\n
Mr Villiers\u2019 barristers, Michael Horton and Alex Laing, from Coram Chambers in London, are working pro bono because of the uniqueness of the case and warn that if the EU regulation continues to operate unchecked, there is likely to be a \u2018significant increase\u2019 in such cross-Border cases.<\/p>\n
Mr Laing said: \u2018The Villiers case is notable because it is like \u201cthe perfect storm\u201d \u2013 parties having lived in Scotland for nearly all their marriage, the only child of the marriage being born in Scotland, Mr Villiers being made bankrupt and then being discharged from bankruptcy in Scotland, with the money he inherited from his late mother being used to pay his (and Mrs Villiers\u2019) debts, him having no assets or significant income, and the only potential resource he might have would be if the trustees of his grandmother\u2019s will decided to use their discretion to appoint money to him.<\/p>\n
\u2018The UK is already the divorce capital of the world, but because of the ostensibly more favourable position in England than in Scotland for those seeking maintenance, this may lead people to race to start claims in England. It might well be said to encourage forum shopping. The Villiers decision is unquestionably a precedent for future cases. If the Supreme Court case is successful, its decision will bind all the courts in the UK.\u2019<\/p>\n
Exasperated that five years on from setting their divorce in motion at Dumbarton Sheriff Court, the only people to benefit so far are his wife\u2019s lawyers, Mr Villiers said: \u2018It\u2019s a prime example of the EU trying to create a super-state. It can\u2019t have been intended that one party can just say \u201cI\u2019m going to have a divorce in two different jurisdictions and you\u2019re going to be compelled to go along with that, having two sets of solicitors\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2018What she\u2019s done so far is she\u2019s been able to force the Scottish divorce to continually be put on hold. The last delay was for another year and this continually goes on. I must be the only person in Western Europe who is actually prevented from getting divorced. It\u2019s got to the stage where my divorce is now in the highest court in the land and we\u2019ve got the government of the day asking to intervene. It\u2019s only happened twice before \u2013 with George IV and Queen Caroline, and before that with Henry VIII when he was trying to divorce Catherine of Aragon.<\/p>\n
\u2018I do feel confident but I have a horrible feeling they will try to justify their position to try to continue the use of statutory instruments or so-called \u2018Henry VIII clauses\u2019 to keep lots of EU law in the UK law after Brexit.\u2019<\/p>\n
If he is successful, his Scottish divorce action will resume and Mrs Villiers will receive maintenance payments only for three years after the decree, whereas in England it would have been for life or until remarriage.<\/p>\n
Mr Villiers said: \u2018One of the extraordinary things about when you separate is… you slightly wonder whether you ever truly knew the person in the first place. It will all come out in the case. Meanwhile, I\u2019m looking forward to moving on and starting a new life with Heidi.\u2019<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Mrs Villiers\u2019 legal team said: \u2018At this time, we\u2019re not prepared to comment.\u2019<\/p>\n
A Ministry of Justice spokesman added: \u2018We cannot comment on ongoing legal proceedings.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For seven dispiriting years, Charles Villiers, a scion of one of the country\u2019s oldest families and whose late mother was cousin to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, has been attempting to divorce his estranged wife, without success. With his 18-year marriage in tatters, he jokes he must be the only man in western Europe unable to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":135823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-news"],"yoast_head":"\n