AN artist who lost a bitter battle with her millionaire ex claimed she is “living on benefits” despite a £72k divorce payout.
Top barrister Jason Galbraith-Marten, 57, and his Australian painter ex Catherine de Renée have been battling in divorce courts in the UK and down under since their marriage failed in 2009.
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De Renée, 45, specialises in “erotic” female portraits, with titles such as Molten Thunder and The Debutante – that she said created a “mood filled with drama, intensity and lingering eroticism”.
She lost an attempt to increase her divorce payout from her former husband after 16 years of “furious litigation”.
De Renée was previously unhappy with a financial settlement reached in Australia, in which she was handed just £72,500 of the marital assets.
She said she was left relying on benefits, whilst her millionaire barrister ex continued living in the £1.6m former matrimonial home in Fulham with his new partner.
The painter’s first attempt to have the divorce settlement increased was rejected in 2016.
However, de Renée has pursued further legal claims mainly focused on maintenance payments for her teenage daughter, whom she had with Galbraith-Marten.
In 2022 De Renée initially succeeded in having those monthly payments raised from £1,315 to £2,684.
But the amount was reduced to £1,960 after a court assessed her former husband’s tax return.
Now the barrister has defeated her attempt to reopen the legal battle.
Galbraith-Marten obtained a two-year extension to a civil restraint order that bans her from suing him on “vexatious” or “unmeritorious” grounds.
Granting Galbraith-Marten’s application, Mr Justice Cobb described the dispute as “depressing” and noted that the pair had been litigating in England and Australia since 2009.
The judge summarised the barrister’s argument that, since a civil restraint order was made in 2019, his former wife had “shown little sign of letting up in her unwavering ambition to reopen the long-since-concluded matrimonial litigation”.
The order was extended in 2022 but expired late last year.
The court was told De Renée had several legal applications lined up against the barrister.
And just this month Galbraith-Marten applied to extend the order for another two years, by which time their daughter will be older than 18.
The judge said De Renée had displayed a “continuing fixation” with her former husband’s alleged failure to disclose financial information that went back two decades.
He said an extension of the order was also necessary to protect the finite resources of the court.
Mr Justice Cobb, in a December 2023 judgement, said: “[The mother] has spent all of [her daughter’s] life putting her own warped sense of reality before any care or consideration of [her daughter’s] best interests.
“She has come across during these proceedings as nasty, vindictive and self-absorbed.”
Mr Galbraith-Marten is a top employment law specialist who took silk in 2014.
He and his painter ex were together for two and half years and had one daughter before the marriage collapsed in 2009.
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