Tycoon must sell his £15m estate to pay for divorce

A City tycoon will be forced to sell his £15 million country estate after being ordered to pay his ex-wife a huge divorce settlement today.

And in a remarkable ruling three appeal court judges accused the couple of "killing the goose that laid the golden eggs" by their "mutually extravagant lifestyles".

Maurice Robson, 66, had challenged an earlier High Court order that he pay his former wife Chloe £8 million.

Although the Court of Appeal today reduced the sum to £7 million, he will have to sell the family's £15 million estate Kiddington Hall, built in 1763 near Woodstock, Oxfordshire.

Mr Robson had claimed the original award was a punishment for his "overspending and mismanagement". He said she had been equally responsible for squandering the inheritance from his father Sir Lawrence Robson, founder of accountancy firm Robson Rhodes & Co.

Lord Justice Ward said Mr Robson could comfortably afford the settlement after selling the estate. "A good part of his inheritance is still intact provided he can learn to be a more careful steward of it," said the judge.

"They must both learn to tighten their belts but that they ought to have done years ago. They lived off the fruit of the land without properly husbanding it.

"They have by their mutually extravagant lifestyle killed the goose that was capable of laying the golden eggs had they fed her properly."

Lord Justice Hughes added: "Although the assets were inherited from the husband's family the parties had jointly elected to live off them and, in effect, to use them as a substitute for earned income." Kiddington Hall comes with 18th century gardens designed by Capability Brown. and has nine bedrooms, five reception rooms and is decorated with gilded cornices, silk wallpaper and ornate marble fireplaces.

Mr Robson has previously raised more than £2.6 million by selling a 19,000-acre estate in Scotland he had inherited from his father.

The couple married in 1985 in the crypt chapel of the Palace of Westminster and have two children, James, 20, who is studying at agricultural college, and Natasha, 17, who is doing A-levels at boarding school.

The marriage broke down in 2006 and Mrs Robson, 54, was granted a decree absolute in February.

In the judgement Lord Justice Ward said: "The hall [Kiddington] represented their lifestyle. The hall has gone." He said that it was "pure coincidence and faintly ironic" that the settlement represents about "half of the carcass of the golden goose that exemplified their way of life - that seems a fair result to me".