I grew up poor as a church mouse – now I’m the ‘diva of divorce’ for the rich & charge duelling celebs £1.2K an hour
SHE’S the self-made multi-millionaire who went from being “as poor as a church mouse” to the most expensive divorce lawyer in London.
Ayesha Vardag, known as the ‘Diva of Divorce’, charges clients – many of whom are mega wealthy – a whopping £1,200 per hour (plus VAT) for her services.
The 55-year-old, who splits her time between London and Florence, represents celebrities, footballers and even royalty in cases that often run into the hundreds of millions of pounds.
Ayesha tells us family law, which deals with “love, sex, children, homes and our future” is the most compelling field – but it’s also high stakes.
She says: “I work at the coal face of people’s lives, which can make the difference between them having a depressing, miserable and poor existence or having a positive future that everyone deserves.”
Ayesha’s own journey to the top was far from smooth. Her mum Barbara left her dad, who was based in Pakistan, when she was five months pregnant, and moved to Northumberland to stay with family.
Before Ayesha turned two, her mum and grandmother – who was in an unhappy marriage – decided to flee and “start life afresh” while her grandfather was away at sea.
She said: “My mother decided it wasn’t a place that she wanted to bring up a child and told my grandmother, ‘If you want to get out, this is the time.’
“There was me, the dog, and anything they could stuff into a Ford car. They left together and moved to Oxford, went ex-directory and my grandfather never found them again.”
From then Ayesha had a happy and loving childhood, but admits they struggled money-wise and were “as poor as church mice”.
She said: “We didn’t have any extra money for anything. My mum was constantly on the edge and regularly would stay up until midnight working.
“I remember she used to buy big job lots of meat – rabbit and coley fish because it was cheap – and freeze it, just to make sure I got enough nutrition.”
‘Catastrophic bullying’
Despite the family’s financial struggles, they were determined to give Ayesha the best education they could and scrambled enough money together to send her to Oxford High School.
She was awarded the highest bursary, but they still had to fork out to cover the rest.
Ayesha said: “I remember the family sitting around the table working out how they could afford to send me there.
The bullying was catastrophic and dreadful but it made me much more of an individual and more disposed to doing my own thing
Ayesha Vardag
“My grandmother and great aunt had savings, which gave my mother time to raise the rest. They always put me as their absolute priority.”
There Ayesha says she was bullied because she “didn’t fit in”.
She recalled: “I faced various forms of oddly racist bullying, which was based on people not being able to place me or where I came from.
“I didn’t fit in with the South Asian kids because I didn’t have the same clothes or the same accent and I looked different to the standard, local kids.
“The bullying was catastrophic and dreadful but it made me much more of an individual and more disposed to doing my own thing and not worry about being popular.”
Turning point
Ayesha was accepted into Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge, where she initially studied English Literature before switching to Law.
She admits she found it “incredibly dull” but graduated and after a short stint as a TV researcher at the BBC, landed a scholarship to study a masters in European Law in Brussels that paid £7,000.
Ayesha intended to return to the UK to become a journalist but admits she lost her nerve after the recession hit in the 90s.
“I didn’t come from big financial backup and was very conscious about being financially secure, so I decided to become a lawyer,” she explains.
Ayesha climbed the ranks in financial law – but her own divorce in 2001 proved a turning point.
To save money she worked alongside a leading Mayfair lawyer and drafted her own affidavits and correspondences.
“I really got really into it and after the dust settled on my divorce, my divorce lawyer hired me,” she said.
After 10 months Ayesha left the firm and became a lecturer at Cambridge to provide her with more stability while raising her children – but she always harboured plans to start her own firm.
“I needed to go out and make a bit more bacon,” she says. “I wanted to start my own firm but it was really nervewracking and I didn’t have a name in family law.
“Two things tipped me over the edge. There was the Gwen Stefani song What You Waiting For?, which is about getting up off your ass and not making excuses.
“Then there was the film Fields Of Dreams, which had the whole thing of, if you build it, the people will come. Both of them seemed like a sign to me.”
Landmark cases
Ayesha launched Vardags in 2005 from her home, which she shared with lodgers to cover the rent and regularly slept on the sofa.
After winning some strong cases, it all paid off. One was Radmacher V Granatino, which led to prenuptial agreements being recognised as enforceable under British divorce law in 2010.
It meant Ayesha’s client, German heiress Katrin Radmacher, was able to protect her £106million fortune after her ex-husband contested a pre-nup.
She also worked for beauty queen Pauline Chai, who was awarded a £64m divorce settlement – one of the largest ever recorded – in 2017.
It followed a complex and lengthy legal battle with ex-husband Khoo Kay Peng – who has a multi-million pound business empire including high street name Laura Ashley.
Sneaky spouses
Ayesha believes she is “the most expensive divorce lawyer in London” and only works on cases that “are in the hundreds of millions” to justify her fees.
These include celebrity and high-profile divorces, which require sensitivity, privacy and skill to negotiate.
Ayesha explains that some clients try to go through arbitration to “avoid going to court”, which she has done “for some members of royal families” so they can keep details “completely confidential”.
In the higher net-worth cases, her team has to conduct deep investigations to find wealth hidden by sneaky spouses.
They include structures for tax planning which become a “spouse repelling mechanism” – to hide money from their ex.
She said: “Sometimes they think they can get away with hiding all sorts of things, you have to find the little leads and look at all the information.
“It could be offshore trusts, using charities or foundations and all kinds of stuff like giving money to relatives or investing in cryptocurrencies.
“We had one case where somebody declared pretty much nothing in their disclosure and we discovered they had hidden away £350m.”
Another issue in celebrity and high-end cases is debating a budget for their entourage and security, which she claims has “become a big thing”.
She says: “You look at how much of a security risk there is to that person, what kind of place they need to live in, what kind of security detail and retinue they need to go around with them.”
Britney’s divorce
One of the most high-profile celebrity divorce cases at the moment is between Britney Spears and Sam Asghari.
TMZ reported they had an ‘extensive confidentiality clause’ in their prenuptial agreement to prevent him from talking about their relationship if they split.
It has been claimed that Sam may seek to contest their prenup agreement – but according to Ayesha, who has not worked on the case, that may not be wise.
“People will try to challenge prenups if they think they were unfair at the point of inception if they were under duress or deceived, but that happens even less in America because they are tougher at enforcing them,” she explained.
“Prenups in California are pretty robust and I’m sure there is a confidentiality clause. He would be ill-advised to try to breach that.
“There have been some reports saying he’s lobbied to get more money in return for not publishing embarrassing stuff about her – but that’s been strenuously denied and he would be ill-advised to do that too.
“I also noticed that they have said, in relation to Britney, that the prenup includes money for each year of marriage.
“But it doesn’t include any access to the back catalogue of her music, which is kind of important. You need to carve up what you’re dealing with and what you are sharing out.”
She doesn’t anticipate it will be a messy divorce due to the “nice statements” Sam has released relating to Britney so far, asking for the public and reporting to be “kind and considerate”.
To find out more about Ayesha’s work or her company Vardags, visit www.vardags.com.