After months of mudslinging, the Countess and the Mogul have halted their lurid divorce trial and are on the brink of settling, according to sources who’ve been briefed on the negotiations.
Early reports from both sides today had credited the progress to the mogul’s new willingness to consider forking over a $16 million waterfront apartment in Stockholm that her highness has desperately wanted.
By late this evening, however, sources were backpeddling frantically, insisting the posh Scandinavian pad was off the table, and that the mogul was merely sweetening the pot by throwing a little more loot his wife’s way.
Prior to this morning, multi-millionaire United Technologies Chairman David George and his beautiful Swedish countess bride of seven years, Marie Douglas-David, had been at a messy impasse.
His longstanding position, since suing for divorce two years ago, was that her highness should take the post-nuptial agreement she OK’d four years ago — then worth $70 million, now, due to stock market fluctuations, worth $45 million — and not let the Park Avenue penthouse door hit her on the way out.
Her longstanding position? The post-nup isn’t enough — she’d burn through that money in 15 years. In court papers of her own she demanded $99 million — almost a third of his more than $300 million assets — and said she was struggling to get by on only $22,000 a week.
Then followed an ugly, public battle complete with details of his-and-her cheating and astronomical spending habits. He spent $10,000 a pop on Manolo Blahniks for his mistress, he testified Tuesday, matter-of-factly. He admitted buying his wife so many $27,000 Birken bags he couldn’t remember the number — Six? Seven?
Meanwhile she called him a controlling bully who wouldn’t come see her after a miscarriage and who, after serving her with divorce papers, had sex with her when she started to cry.
And he called her a greedy nag who complained about how he held his fork and who “forced” him back to the marital bed last year as a calculating attempt to void the post-nup and empty his wallet.
But this morning, their line in the sand moved — in the countess’s favor, though nowhere near the $99 million she’d sought.
A sticking point in the talks has likely been the valuable apartment they bought together — with his money — in the summer of 2005.
According to court papers and testimony, the hubby bought the palacial pad for 26 million Kronen — about $3 million. Then, over the next two years, poured in another $13 million in renovations.
He bought it for her, the countess insists, but kept her name off the deed, giving her some rigamarole about how, due to her family’s notorious background, the sale might attract negative publicity in the Swedish press. The Countess had once been one of the wealthiest teenaged girls Sweden, until her daddy, Count Carl Philip Douglas, got sent to prison for tax fraud.
The happy couple were dining in Capri when they heard the sale had closed, according to divorce trial testimony from back in March. They toasted with Champagne.
“But isn’t it true that during the Champagne toast you told her it would be hers forever?” countess lawyer William Beslow had asked David.
“I didn’t say that,” David had answered.
“Didn’t you promise her that everyone should have a home forever?”
“Not at all,” the mogul sniffed. “That is not a sentiment that I would have.”
David later admitted that he’d promised to give her only the purchase equity — not the apartment outright — “and not if there’s going to be a mud fight.”
Closed-door negotiations were planned to continue throughout the night, with the warring parties returning Thursday morning to update the trial judge.