Marie Douglas-David says $100 million should about cover it.
The Swedish countess sniffs that there’s no way she can get by on a measly $36 million payout from her soon-to-be-ex, United Technologies Chairman George David because she spends $53,000 a week on bare essentials.
Read a Breakdown of the Countess’ Expenses (PDF)
She’s already tapped into the postnup she agreed to with her mogul hubby but now that the economy has trashed its value, she claims she’s destitute.
As their sensational divorce trial in Hartford proceeded yesterday, David, the United Technologies chairman and former CEO, testified that his unemployed, blond, beautiful and 30-years-younger wife is too late.
She accepted the terms of a postnup when she asked him to sell off $1 million of company stock on three different occasions in 2007.
David, 66, said he put the cash in a company in which Marie Douglas-David wanted to invest, as the 2005 postnup called for him to do.
He said the convoluted transfers were worked out that way for tax purposes, and because Douglas-David was not an American citizen.
A source said the big-spending David, whose net worth is estimated at more than $320 million, is quite miserly when it comes to taxes and noted that the exec still technically owns the $150,000 engagement ring he bought Marie in London because he didn’t want to pay a gift tax on it.
The 36-year-old Douglas-David still possesses the ring, another source said.
In fact, she made off with a number of gifts from David the pair of 4-carat, $255,000 earrings she was sporting in court yesterday, a $97,000 Mercedes-Benz, some lamps, a chandelier and a Christo drawing, all as the postnup dictated.
David said he also followed the terms of the deal by helping Douglas-David settle up accounts on some real-estate transactions in her native Sweden.
But Douglas-David’s side contends that she was bullied into signing the agreement and that it should be voided because the couple reconciled for a time after their 2007 separation.
Back then, the value of Douglas-David’s postnup was $70 million. But as the Dow has plummeted, so has the amount of her payday.
The postnup is tied into her husband’s huge stash of United Technologies stock. A knowledgeable source said that every time UT stock goes up 1 point, David makes $7 million.
The aerospace and buildings company has been hit hard by the tanking economy, which has also been gutting the wife’s haul.
David’s net worth has fallen from an estimated $500 million in 2005 to about $300 million, a source said. Douglas-David’s payoff fell to about $43 million last December and it’s now worth only $36 million.
The drama in the courtroom became heated yesterday as Douglas-David’s lawyer, Bill Beslow, painted the exec as a deceptive womanizer and coldhearted businessman.
He said David lied in sworn court documents about his spending and in a deposition about his philandering.
David “was clearly dishonest under oath,” Beslow said.
The lawyer referred to testimony David gave in December, when he was asked about the last time he’d had sex with his girlfriend, Wendy Touton.
David said in that testimony that he didn’t remember. Beslow then asked him if he’d had relations with her on any of the trips they’d taken together to Sardinia, London, Paris and St.-Tropez.
“I do not recall anywhere on earth I had sex,” David answered.
He was asked at the same deposition when he’d last seen Touton. He replied that he’d last seen her two to three days earlier at his home in Avon, Conn. when they’d had sex.
Beslow yesterday asked David if he recalled the discrepancies. The obviously angered exec replied, “I don’t recall that.”
The lawyer then claimed David inflated his net worth when he was trying to get on the co-op board of his exclusive apartment building at 740 Park Ave.
Beslow said David claimed to the board that he owned a $1 million apartment in Sweden, although that home actually belonged to his wife.
David sniffed at the suggestion.
“It’s less then 1 percent of my assets,” he scoffed.
David then admitted to having signed off on incorrect information in a sworn court document, saying he’d trusted the person who drafted it and hadn’t bother to read it. “I didn’t think it was important,” he said.
The prolonged attack led David’s lawyer, Anne Dranginis, to blast Douglas-David’s attorney for making “outrageous” accusations and “playing to the crowd.”
It was a stormy opening to a big-bucks divorce feud which, given the current state of the economy, has drawn gasps nationwide.
Douglas-David says the $36 million she’d currently get under the terms of the postnup would be exhausted within 15 years.
In court papers, she estimated her expenses to be $53,000 a week, including $27,300 in mortgage and maintenance payments, $8,000 for travel, $4,500 for clothing, $2,209 for a personal assistant and $600 for flowers.
And that’s nothing compared to her husband, who says he needs to keep what he can to maintain his own lifestyle, in which he spends $200,000 a week.
The pair married in 2002, and David pushed her to give up her job as a vice president at Lazard Asset Management a year later.
They lived the high life together, hobnobbing with the likes of Vladimir Putin and traveling the world, but their union was stormy. Between 2004 and 2008, there were five different divorce filings.
Douglas-David is expected to take the stand today.