Star wars: Celebville's messiest splits

As Christie Brinkley's marriage is dragged through the courts this week, gossip rags around the world are rubbing their hands together with glee. Another edition of Divorce Magazine hits the newsstands and the public are kept entertained for at least another month thanks to mud-slinging spouses revealing the most intimate details of their former life together. Here are a few high profile divorces that have pepped our appetite in the past.

Woody Allen and Mia Farrow

Although Mia and Woody never married, they enjoyed a relationship lasting many years. In the early 1990s, Farrow discovered that Allen was having a sexual relationship with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn — Allen's later wife.
Farrow was devastated and filed child abuse charges against Allen. At the height of the fiasco, Frank Sinatra, Farrow's first husband, even contacted the actress offering to have Allen's legs broken.

Farrow has 15 children, 11 of them adopted. She has been estranged from Soon-Yi since her marriage to Allen. Farrow later told The Observer that their relationship breakdown was a “tragedy".

“She's not coming back," Farrow said of Soon-Yi. “She was on the streets in Korea when she was captured and brought to the state orphanage. And in a way I can see from her perspective a very limited perspective that she's improved her situation. For a little orphan kid from Korea... Perhaps she's not to be blamed."

In a widely circulated statement, Soon-Yi claimed that Farrow was “no Mother Teresa".

Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall

Jerry Hall filed for divorce in 1999 after discovering that Mick had fathered a child with another woman. But despite their 20-year marriage and four children, Mick argued that their Hindu marriage in Bali was never legally binding. It was a ploy that he got away with and Jerry is thought to have walked away with far less than the $50 million (Dh183.6 million) settlement she was after.

Harrison Ford and Melissa Mathison

Ford's divorce was one of the most expensive in history. Rumoured to be enjoying a dalliance with Ally Mcbeal actress Calister Flockhart during his marriage, Ford's wife, Melissa Mathison, walked away with an estimated $85 million (Dh312 million). He also forked out a share of his future earnings of the films he made during their marriage — including the Indiana Jones trilogy, Witness and The Fugitive.

Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook

Christie Brinkley's divorce is proving as juicy as the best of them — especially since the former supermodel insisted on the court proceedings being open to all and sundry.
In the past week Brinkley has revealed her husband, architect Peter Cook, 49, was addicted to porn, swinging and teenage girls during the course of their marriage.

Cook's lawyer fired back that Brinkley is an “angry, angry, furious woman".

“I think a certain amount of anger is perfectly normal," said Brinkley when questioned in court. “After all, I supported this man for almost 10 years. He never paid for a single thing. He lived a wonderful life. And all the while he was carrying on like this behind my back."

Brinkley first caught wind of Cook's lifestyle when a teenage girl's stepfather whispered it into her ear at a high school graduation ceremony.

She told the court: “Suddenly I heard these words… ‘That husband of yours just won't knock it off. He's having an affair with my teenage daughter and [he] won't knock it off and I have to come to you'. My world was completely shattered," Brinkley said.

Her lawyer Robert Cohen added fuel to the fire saying that Cook was a “narcissist who needs constant reassurance that he is handsome, accomplished and centred".

With the case just a week in and the fate of the children still hanging in the balance, this courtroom battle is set to get juicier.

Paul McCartney and Heather Mills

They seemed to have it all. They were madly in love — and devoted to their charity work and animal rights. But then the rumours started. Heather's former lovers began selling stories branding her a gold-digging nasty piece of work and the press went wild. Six years on Heather filed for a divorce — the pressure of being married to a Beatle was too much, she said.

Despite both saying their divorce would be amicable, the knives soon came out. Heather was accused of being a high-class escort and Paul a wife beater — all of which was splashed across the headlines throughout the world. In May 2008, Heather walked away from her marriage with a fortune of £24.3 million (Dh176.2 million).

Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen

The divorce between Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen was one of the most bitter and public in recent celeb history. Richards avoided the usual claim of “irreconcilable differences" used to protect celebrity couples from public scrutiny and instead wrote on the divorce papers that he was abusive and addicted to porn and prostitutes during the course of their marriage. Despite Sheen recently remarrying, the pair continue to exchange bitter words about each other publicly, with Richards choosing to air their laundry on her new reality TV show.

Britney Spears and Kevin Federline

Spears put the wheels in motion by filing for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. She asked for physical and legal custody of their two young boys with visitation rights for Federline.

Federline was reportedly entirely surprised by the divorce proceedings and his shocked reaction to “that" text message from Spears was widely circulated on YouTube.

A representative for Federline's lawyer confirmed that the proceedings “caught Kevin totally by surprise".

The following day Federline filed a response, seeking physical and legal custody of the children.

The custody battle and fights between the couple were great gossip fodder with the press reporting every moment of the singer's subsequent breakdown.

The couple reached a settlement in March 2007 and their divorce was finalised in July.

Britney's marriage to Federline wasn't her first. In 2004 she married childhood sweetheart Jason Allen Alexander. The wedding took place in Vegas and was annulled just 55 hours later.

The annulment paper stated that Spears “lacked understanding of her actions to the extent that she was incapable of agreeing to marriage because before entering into the marriage the Plaintiff and Defendant did not know each others' likes and dislikes, each others' desires to have or not have children, and each other's desires as to State of residency."

Top 10 celeb settlements

1) Michael and Juanita Jordan, 2007: Dh608.9 million
2) Neil Diamond and Marcia Murphey, 1994: Dh543.5 million
3) Steven Spielberg and Amy Irving, 1989: Dh362.2 million
4) Harrison Ford and Melissa Mathison, 2004: Dh304.2 million
5) Kevin Costner and Cindy Silva, 1994: Dh289.7 million
6) James Cameron and Linda Hamilton, 1999: Dh181 million 7) Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, 2008: Dh169.5 million
8) Michael and Diandra Douglas, 1998: Dh162.9 million
9) Ted Danson and Casey Coates, 1993: Dh108.6 million
10) Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, 1999: Dh90.4 million