Refugee husband lived off me for years... but wants half my fortune

An American heiress and former jazz singer who married a penniless refugee today spoke of her court battle to stop him claiming half her fortune.

Linda Berkeley, 53, inherited £514,000 aged eight when her engineering magnate father Frederick Berkeley died.

But Ms Berkeley, who divorced a Kosovan immigrant in 2005 after a stormy 13-year marriage, says her fortune has dwindled to £86,000 after years of supporting him and his family.

She is now awaiting an Appeal Court judgment which she hopes will overturn an initial ruling that her estate is divided equally between them.

Speaking from her £450,000 home in Twickenham, she said: "I'm very ashamed of what I allowed to happen. It was my father's money and I allowed this man into my life and I allowed him to take it. I know that it's because of my own stupidity and that bothers me a lot. It's heartbreaking."

She added that "the yardstick of equality" had been wrongly applied in the initial judgment at Kingston-upon-Thames county court because her husband had not contributed equally to the marriage.

She said: "He didn't want to work - he lived off me for years. I even let his parents move in for three years. He didn't contribute to my assets growing, he depleted them. I was both the husband and wife. I was the home-maker, child carer and financial provider."

Ms Berkeley, who is now a care worker for substance abusers, moved to London in 1974 to read English at the Schiller International University and nurture her talent as a jazz and blues singer.

She met her former husband, 10 years her junior, in 1989 while she was performing with her blues band Linda's Box Of Tricks at a Covent Garden pub.

Several weeks later he moved into her house in Chelsea's Oakley Street. He had several jobs but eventually Ms Berkeley supported him financially, buying him cars and giving him money to send back to his family in Kosovo.

The couple moved to Twickenham in 1991 where Ms Berkeley gave birth to the couple's son, who is now 16.

The following year they married and she bought another property in Hampton Wick, where her husband started a car washing business which now generates £100,000 a year.

But the marriage turned sour and they divorced in January 2005. He later issued a court application for an equal division of the marital assets claiming "a fair share on a clean break basis".

A judge at Kingston County Court ordered Ms Berkeley to hand over the business property worth £1 million to her husband. He was ordered to pay £102,000 in maintenance over the next five years. After various mortgages and loans were paid off they would be left with almost equal shares in a family fortune of about £1.6 million.

But at an Appeal Court hearing yesterday James Turner QC, representing Ms Berkeley, told the judge: "She bought the house they lived in from her own inheritance and with a mortgage that she financed. He has never paid the mortgage.

"Fairness demands something other than equality in this case. There are very powerful reasons, indeed overwhelming reasons, to justify and require a departure from the equality principle."

Judgment was reserved to a later date.