She’s imperious! Demanding! Aggressive! Assaultive!
It’s countess-versus- mogul time again in a Connecticut divorce court, and yesterday, the mud flew anew, with the unhappy multimillionaire groom slinging more insults from the wit ness stand at his blueblooded, unhappy-with-her-$27-million-postnup bride.
When last we tuned in, back in March, the mogul was calling the countess a greedy, nagging seductress who “forced” sex on him in hopes of voiding the postnuptial agreement and grabbing up to a third of his $300 million fortune.
The countess, meanwhile, was calling the mogul a greedy, controlling bully who locked her in a gilded cage, keeping her utterly asset-free and dependent — a pitiful pauper in pearls and Birken bags. He even kept legal title to her $190,000 engagement ring — to save on gift tax, he says. The bell rang — Ding! — on Round 2 yesterday with the mogul coming out swinging.
“She spoke in an imperious, demanding, aggressive, assaultive way,” complained the bachelor wannabe, United Technologies honcho George David, 67, of his 37-year-old wife, Swedish countess Marie Douglas-David, who these days uses the couple’s $39 million Park Avenue penthouse as her temporary castle.
“I was subjected to an imperious, aggressive attack,” David said of a 2006 spat at their $425,000-a-year beachfront rental in Sagaponack, LI. “It was tough!” he said of the “ugly experience.”
The mogul is chairman of the board at the technologies giant — Connecticut’s largest private employer — and is worth some $300 million. The countess — her family earned its first knighthood in 1651 — was a $400,000-a-year Wall Street aerospace analyst when the couple fell in love during a tour of one of his fuel-cell production plants. She now claims no income. None, but for the $20,000 a week David gives her in temporary support awarded by a judge in this, the fifth divorce filing in their six-year marriage.
Twenty grand is not enough, her highness has complained in court papers. She’s tallied up her weekly needs at $53,000. That includes $4,500 a week on clothing, $8,000 in travel, $2,209 for her personal assistant, $1,000 in health and skin care, and $1,570 for “horse care.”
Hey, she argues, while they were together, they spent $200,000 a week.
Today, David remains on the witness stand, where he’s due to be grilled about his Manhattan girlfriend, Wendy Touton.
David two-timed his wife with Touton before the couple reconciled for the first half of 2008 — a reconciliation that the countess says voids the postnup. The mogul’s side has countered that if the countess brings up Touton, they’ll bring up her highness’s own extramarital fling with a suave Swedish swordsman.