LONDON – Will she still need him when he’s 64? The answer is no – but Paul McCartney still insists that his money didn’t buy Heather Mills’ love.
The billionaire ex-Beatle and his wife admitted yesterday they can’t work it out. Their split leaves Sir Paul facing the prospect of a possible $400 million divorce payoff for a four-year marriage.
McCartney lashed out yesterday in a posting on his Web site at the notion that his much-younger wife, a former model who lost her lower left leg in a motorcycle accident, was a gold-digger.
“It’s been suggested that she married me for the money and there is not an ounce of truth in this,” he wrote.
The couple blamed the media for just failing to let it be.
“Having tried exceptionally hard to make our relationship work given the daily pressures that surround us, it is with sadness that we have decided to go our separate ways,” they said in a statement.
They said the separation was “amicable” but said “constant intrusion into our private lives” made it difficult to have a normal relationship.
McCartney, who turns 64 next month, married Mills, 38, in 2002 in a lavish ceremony at Castle Leslie in Ireland. They have a daughter, Beatrice, 2.
He had previously been married for 29 years to Linda Eastman, who died of breast cancer in 1998. They had three children together, Mary, Stella and James, and McCartney adopted Linda’s daughter from her first marriage, Heather.
Under British law, Mills could be entitled to about a quarter of McCartney’s estimated $1.6 billion fortune. She told Vanity Fair magazine in 2002 that her husband turned down her offer to sign a prenuptial agreement.
“I wanted to prove that I loved him for him,” she said. “He said, ‘I wouldn’t let you.'”
McCartney may also have known that prenups are not binding under British law, though judges can take them into consideration.
He has been living recently on his farm in East Sussex, southern England, while Mills stayed at another McCartney mansion in Hove on the south coast. Press reports speculated that Mills was constantly seeking publicity through her Heather Mills Health Trust, which campaigns against land mines, and was fighting with her husband over his wish for a lower profile.
Her influence was detected when he dumped his longtime press spokesman, Geoff Baker, and dyed his graying hair a strange shade of chestnut.
It was rumored that McCartney’s adult children, especially fashion designer Stella, loathed their young stepmom, but the ex-Beatle said on his Web site that wasn’t true.
“In fact we get on great and anyone who knows our family can see this for themselves,” he wrote.
Long(ish) & winding road to divorce
Paul McCartney met Heather Mills in 1999, a year after the death of his beloved first wife, Linda. The May-December romance wasn’t all silly love songs, though. Here are some of the problems they faced:
# The media wouldn’t let the new couple alone. “If this is to develop, then give us a chance,” McCartney pleaded in 2000. “I don’t want to be surrounded by photographers because that could wreck something.”
# McCartney’s kids were less than thrilled about the new woman in their dad’s life. Daughters Stella and Mary left the 2002 wedding three hours before it ended, according to the Sun newspaper. According to the Daily Mail, designer Stella also dissed Heather’s bridal ensemble, sniffing, “Doesn’t she know lace is out of fashion?” according to the Daily Mail.
# The couple had different lifestyles. Mills said she gave McCartney an ultimatum before their marriage: Quit smoking pot or forget about it. “I [told him I] would not get married to him if he was taking drugs. I hate it,” she told The Observer.
# Mills was blamed for meddling in McCartney’s career. She was allegedly behind his decision to ax his longtime publicist, and she was accused of nagging the aging ex-Beatle to dye his graying hair and consider plastic surgery.
# Mills told a British TV reporter in 2003 the nasty press about her feud with Stella had left her “absolutely wiped out.” She also felt being married to a famous musician was leaving her own accomplishments short-changed. “Everything I’ve worked for in my life, tried to do and overcome, it’s just all been forgotten. It’s all just, ‘She’s the bird of Paul McCartney.'”