Does This Look Like The Face Of A Man Ordered to Pay More Than $728 Million in Divorce Settlement?

WSJ - A London court awarded the former wife of Dubai’s ruler a divorce settlement of more than £550 million, equivalent to more than $728 million, in a rare case that pulled back the curtain on the luxurious lifestyle of one of the world’s richest and most discreet families.

Princess Haya bint Al Hussein, a daughter of Jordan’s late King Hussein, left Dubai for the U.K. in 2019 with the two young children she had with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. She said she feared for her life after Sheikh Mohammed had previously ordered that two of his other children be forced back to the United Arab Emirates. Princess Haya later discovered that Sheikh Mohammed, who is also the prime minister of the U.A.E., had divorced her months earlier under Shariah law without her knowing. 

Princess Haya, 47 years old, sued Sheikh Mohammed, 72, in the High Court in London. She was awarded a lump sum of £251.5 million, to be paid within three months, and annual payments including for the maintenance of an £87.5 million estate near Kensington Palace in West London and about £277,000 for show horses.

I was talking to my friend who just bought a ring and is planning to propose over the holidays about this a couple of weeks ago when he was venting to me about how fucking long it took him to save up to buy said ring, and all the more useful things he could have done with the money.

What's in it for us?

I ask that (VERY) loaded question as a happily engaged man, planning to get married in 2022, myself.

But as men, what exactly are the benefits of getting married legally?

That's an honest question.

Gone are the Puritanical days where you'd be shunned for living together without being wed, or having to fear damnation for your children if they were born out of wedlock. (Bastard children they were called Donny).

It's totally standard to be in "common law" relationships nowadays. 

As men, we spend literally thousands and thousands of hours working, to save up to buy a piece of pure carbon pressurized by heat under the Earth's mantle, that really shouldn't cost that much, but does because there's this whole racket and manipulated market controlled by a handful of blue-blooded families. 

We then have to jump through all these hoops to present that diamond to our girl and hope and pray she doesn't say no and leave us standing there like Connor Roy. 

From there, it's wedding planning and dumping even more money into the whole thing.

After that, we have to hold on for dear life because God forbid things don't work out. Because then the real pain begins Johnny.

Divorce proceedings and settlements are weighed SO SO SO heavily against males I have no idea how nobody's put together a giant class-action suit to swing the pendulum the other way since the equality movement really picked up steam.

You can ask my guy Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid here and he'll level with us without a doubt and tell us, "fuck it man."

3 quarters of a BILLION dollars to the mother of his children. Not sure how Muslim wedding ceremonies go down, but I'm just gonna assume the females also promise to love and treasure their partner until their dying day.

So where in the world do you get off pillaging that same guy for $700 MILLION dollars a few years down the road?

And I don't want to see any tears from the ladies either.

Don't cry for Princess Haya bint Al Hussein Argentina... this chick came to the party with plenty of cake. She was the daughter of Jordan’s late King Hussein. AKA a princess!

She doesn't need the money. Far from it.

Now I am by no means defending the Sheikh here. Rather, just playing devil's advocate for the fellas. Because this guy deserves no defending.

The court found reasonable evidence that Sheikh Mohammed was “the probable originator” of the hacking during the proceedings of phones belonging to Princess Haya, members of her staff and at least two of her lawyers, Nicholas Manners and Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia, a sitting member of the House of Lords. The court previously found that Sheikh Mohammed had ordered and orchestrated the abduction of two of his other children, forced them to return to Dubai and detained them there.

Ruthless.

But again, the women make it SO HARD not to…

The judge awarded Princess Haya roughly £13.7 million in compensation for lost jewelry and £1 million for haute couture. The judge also ruled that Sheikh Mohammed should make a roughly £5.3 million payment on the princess’ home near Kensington Palace now, instead of in 2026, and that he should pay about £1.9 million for a kitchen extension, pizza oven and kitchen curtains in the princess’ home.

A fuckin pizza oven and curtains?!?1

(This part made my mind immediately go to Kevin Hart's "B.O.P." bit)

Talk about getting an inch and taking a mile. This isn’t alimony. Or child support. This is seeing how much you can get away with through a trigger happy, power drunk judge.

Again, don’t really feel bad for a Sheikh from Dubai, who (probably) spend every other weekend aboard one of those boats from “Taken” and flying in girls from the U.S. whose dads didn’t love them growing up, to get peed on. But the court systems makes it hard not to.

P.S.- yah I know Bezos’ wife banked in her settlement too but I’m not gonna knock her. She was with him on the way up. She didn’t come crawling around once he was on the Forbes list like some bottle rat. And she’s gone out of her way to donate almost everything she’s got in the settlement, something which can’t be said for most the people on that same Forbes list. So she gets a pass in my book. Call it bullshit. Or hypocrisy. I don’t care. Write your own blog.

P.p.s.- let’s get a 30 for 30 or something on this guy can we? What an enigma-

Sheikh Mohammed is a major figure in international horse racing and breeding, and has been a regular guest of Queen Elizabeth at the annual Royal Ascot horse races. He has extensive property holdings in the U.K., including several country estates, though the line is often blurred between his personal holdings and those of the city-state he inherited control of from his older brother.