Milliionaire Retired BA Pilot Sued...

A millionaire airline pilot is locked in a “scandalous” divorce battle over payouts for a daughter he says is not his.
Four-times married former British Airways pilot, Richard Michael Edmund Wilmot, is at the centre of one of Britain’s longest ever divorce rows – a dispute, which he has been warned by his lawyers, could bankrupt him.


He claims his third wife, Viki Maughan, is a “liar” and that a child she says is his was in fact fathered by a lover she was secretly seeing before they divorced.


Ms Maughan denies his accusations and says DNA testing has proved that Mr Wilmot is the father of her daughter, who is now almost 18.


But the pilot insists his signature on the child’s birth certificate was “false and fabricated” and that two samples of genetic material were switched before the test.
The former couple, who married in 1991 and separated in the late 1990’s have been at war over money ever since their divorce in 2001.
Lawyers have compared the a case in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, which saw all the money fought over end up in lawyers’ pockets.
But Mr Wilmot has fought on despite warnings that his entire fortune could be swallowed up by legal bills.


Mr Wilmot was officially declared the father of Ms Maughan’s teenage daughter in 2000 and has paid out a total of almost £400,000 in maintenance to his former family.
But his barrister, Nicholas Bowen QC, told the court: “He says the girl isn’t his child. He continues to deny it. He says new evidence had emerged that the wife was a liar.”
At a previous hearing, Lord Justice Lloyd outlined Mr Wilmot’s allegations that the 2001 divorce settlement was “obtained by fraud on the part of Ms Maughan”.

Mr Wilmot, who now flies for Turkish Airlines, is asking the Appeal Court to block Ms Maughan's bid to enforce the settlement and make him pay maintenance for her daughter.