My 'poor' wife left me with nothing

Philip Shaw looks like a man who has been systematically hit over the head with a hammer. Expensive holidays at DisneyWorld, Florida, seem a distant memory. Two ponies in the paddock outside his Lincolnshire farmhouse are up for sale. His teenage daughter, Jackie, is working as a £3-an-hour hotel waitress to make the family's ends meet. Apparently, cash is so short that Shaw has to buy the day-to-day groceries by credit card. And he can barely bring himself to think of the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by his former wife, Jayne Shaw - the "designer divorcee", as she was dubbed by the newspapers - who has set up home with a millionaire businessman 40 miles away.

All this because Philip Shaw, 48, has just been ordered to pay a £300,000 divorce settlement to his ex-wife after nearly seven years of court wranglings, and faces legal bills (including most of his exwife's) which could top another quarter of a million pounds.

A fortnight ago the blonde 45-year-old, who drives an £86,000 Mercedes, carries £1,000 in cash on shopping trips and sports £6,000 Cartier earrings, left the Court of Appeal in London wearing a satisfied smile and what looked suspiciously like a designer jacket. After what the judge called a "sad case", Mrs Shaw said she was glad it was over.

As for her shell-shocked ex-husband, who has already sold off two farms and a £170,000 block of land to finance the settlement, he has returned to Lincolnshire to supervise the sale of one of his final assets: the former marital home, a £160,000 Scandinavian-style house at Covenham, near Louth, where he spent 11 turbulent years with Jayne Shaw.

"Yes, that's our family home going, too. I'm just clinging on to my parents' farmhouse and the last 450 acres to provide a roof over the heads of my three daughters," says Shaw now.

At times, he can't talk at all. The words won't come, but the tears nearly do. "I won't have any income if that farmland has to be sold. There may not be anything left at all at the end of all this."

Shaw can barely believe that the plumber's daughter he met at a village disco in 1974 has taken him to the cleaners so efficiently. "I was 20 and we went out for six months before getting engaged. I soon realised my mistake. She was getting bossy and I broke it off. But we kept in touch." Shaw was something of a catch. He had a farm contracting business, a red Lotus Esprit and cash in the bank.

"One day, seven years later, Jayne turned up at my house with her clothes in two plastic bags saying she had fallen out with her dad. She had a Fiat 126 which was in such bad condition that when I pulled back the mats I could see daylight. We got back together and when she unexpectedly fell pregnant with our first child, Jackie, I asked her to marry me because I thought it was the right thing to do," he explains.

But the marriage was a disaster. In her divorce petition filed 10 years after the 1985 wedding, Jayne Shaw complained that her husband worked too hard, took skiing holidays with his male friends, and - incredibly - that he bought expensive items to surprise her. "I did buy her a Land Rover Discovery as a secret present," he recalls now. "She made a big thing that I should have discussed it with her. I was only trying to make her happy."

As Shaw tells his story his second daughter, Penny, aged 14, arrives in the kitchen with a drawing. It is a childish map of the farmhouse garden where she has pencilled in her plans to grow peas, potatoes and beans to sell to make some money. A third daughter, Harriet, 12, tucks into some sandwiches before starting her holiday job collecting eggs. And there is now a fourth mouth to feed. Mr Shaw had an affair three years ago with a girl called Sue. The result was a baby, Isabella, aged two and a half, who lives with her mother in Cheshire.

Shaw might be short of money, but he isn't short of female company. He now has a new live-in girlfriend, Shirley, a learning support teacher who moved in a few weeks ago.

Jayne Shaw's three daughters visit her a couple of times a week at the sumptuous Georgian cottage near Lincoln, complete with sauna and Jacuzzi, which she shares with divorced, plant-hire tycoon and racehorse owner John Martin-Hoyes. But it is obvious that the girls are horrified about what has happened to their parents.

When, in May 1999, the bailiff turned up to confiscate Shaw's farm machinery as a result of the divorce wrangles, his daughters hid their bikes in the house in case those were seized too. The children have chosen to live with their father.

They do not get on well with Martin-Hoyes. "When we split up," says Shaw, "I came to live at Grange Farm where my parents lived. I moved into my old bedroom. Almost immediately, the three children followed me. When they were taken back to their mother's they kept running back here again."

When the Evening Standard contacted Jayne Shaw at her boyfriend's home, she refused to talk about the Appeal Court ruling which overturned a previous judge's decision that she should receive just £195,000 from her ex-husband. In that county court hearing last year, Mrs Shaw was admonished by the judge for being untruthful about her relationship with Martin-Hoyes.

At the Appeal Court, Shaw's barrister alleged his client's ex-wife had told "abundant lies" about her living arrangements and financial help from her boyfriend.

"She tried to fool the courts into believing she was not really with Martin-Hoyes. She swore in affidavits that she lived at a small house I had bought her as an early part of the settlement," says Shaw. "Yet she was pictured in the Racing Post leading one of Martin-Hoyes's racehorses into the winning enclosure. The paper, perhaps by mistake, called her Mrs Martin-Hoyes. My ex-wife is the partner of a wealthy man. She will treat what I now have to hand over as pocket money."

But while Shaw is no doubt suffering, he is hardly on the breadline. The television in the sitting room is a state-of-the-art one, the kitchen is littered with expensive German electrical equipment, and a newish BMW X5 stands outside. He says, slightly embarrassed, that he bought the car when he thought the divorce settlement was going to be £195,000 and not £300,000.

Philip Shaw was also chastised by the courts for dragging his feet over the sale of his farmland, yet he produces letters proving that he invited his ex-wife and her valuers to try to market the rich Lincolnshire acres for him to speed up events. "I think she deserved something, but not everything. I desperately wanted a swift settlement." He believes he has acted honourably and that the British justice system is partly to blame for his plight. "It always seems to be the person with the assets who comes off worst."

At the start of the divorce proceedings, the courts estimated Philip Shaw was worth £3 million. Today, and we work out the figures together, it is less than £800,000, when Grange Farm is taken into account. The farm has subsidence problems, but is the kind of country house that would fetch a bob or two. There are, he insists, no antiques to sell, no fine works of art to auction.

Whatever the future (and there is talk of an appeal to the House of Lords) it is clear that this Lincolnshire farmer bitterly regrets the day he opened his front door in December 1981 to a blonde clutching two plastic bags.