This is quite the Christmas payday. Mel and Robyn Gibson’s divorce was finalized on Dec. 23 after a 29-year marriage that spawned seven children—and Mel's estimated $850 million fortune. Given that the marriage started when Mel was a little-known Australian actor and Robyn a dental assistant (when the couple had very little money), there was no prenuptial agreement in place—and one probably wouldn’t have been valid anyway after the length of their nuptials. According to the few details released about the divorce, Robyn was granted $425 million—an estimated half of his assets, including half of all future paychecks Gibson will receive for the rest of his life. Some assets have apparently already been transferred to Robyn, including two Malibu homes worth a combined $22.5 million. Since Mel and Robyn’s 2009 split, he has publicly fallen from grace after having a baby with Oksana Grigorieva and a nasty custody battle in which it was alleged that Mel abused Grigorieva. In that hearing, Robyn filed a sworn statement in 2010 that stated that Mel was a “wonderful and loving father” and never abused her or their seven children.
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Michael and Diandra Douglas wed just nine weeks after they first met, and they stayed married through 20 years and the birth of one son, Cameron. Their marriage turned sour by 1995, with Diandra alleging that her husband had multiple affairs and was a bad father to their son. The two filed for divorce, and in 2000, she won $45 million—half of his fortune—as well as half of any money he earns on movies he made while the two of them were together. The expensive divorce has been back in the news lately: Diandra is suing for half of Michael's earnings for Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, since it is a spinoff of a movie he made while they were together. Michael, remarried to actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, with whom he has two children, reportedly is not happy to be back in court. His lawyer told the New York Post "he doesn't want her to be an albatross around his neck forever."
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Money is clearly no object for director James Cameron, who reportedly spent nearly $300 million making Avatar and $200 million making Titanic. But the romance between star-struck Jack and Rose did not seem to resonate in Cameron's own relationship at the time: After three divorces, Cameron and his fourth ex-wife, actress Linda Hamilton, whom he directed in the Terminator series, also ended their 17-month marriage. Hamilton is said to have received $50 million in their settlement in 1999, but the damage had already been done, as Cameron moved on to actress Suzy Amis, who had a small part in Titanic. "He was always a jerk," Hamilton recently told The Daily Mail in a scathing interview. "One does want to win, of course, but I've known for many years that this was the very best way to work it. I'm the one that got away and she has to live with that and share him with me."
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The Material Girl spent much of 2008 denying that something was amiss with her husband, filmmaker Guy Ritchie, a rumor that reached a fever pitch amid reports she was having an affair with New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez. But by October 2008, the couple confirmed their marriage was over and the rumor mills churned out stories about how bitter and ugly their union had become. In February 2009, The Sun reported that Ritchie had taken to referring to his famous ex as " It," as in "'Oh, It's in a bad mood today.'" In response, Madonna's press rep, Liz Rosenberg, told Page Six, "It hasn't been in a bad mood since the divorce was finalized." And presumably, neither had the former Mr. Madonna, who reportedly earned anywhere from a whopping $76 million to $92 million in the settlement, since the singer was rumored not to have signed a pre-nup. "I'd assume it's one of the largest payouts ever in a divorce settlement," Rosenberg told the AP.
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Kevin Costner was an all-American guy when he met Cindy Silva in 1975, while the two were studying at California State University, Fullerton. Upon graduating three years later, they married and honeymooned in Puerto Vallarta. On their plane ride back, a chance meeting with fellow passenger Richard Burton changed Costner's life forever. "I told him, 'I was hoping to become an actor, and, well, you're a celebrated actor, but you're a brawler, you've had a lot of marriages, a lot of things... I just want to know, does that kind of life follow an actor? I want to have a life that's not filled with drama,'" Costner recalled to Roger Ebert of his discussion with Elizabeth Taylor's notorious ex. Costner credits Burton with influencing his decision to become an actor, a move that appears to have had a negative effect on his marriage to Silva. According to reports, as Costner's career heated up, things between the two cooled down, and the couple's 16-year marriage crumbled in 1994. Although they settled their divorce privately, rumor has it Silva walked away with about $80 million.
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Perhaps we now know why it took eight years for Harrison Ford to wed longtime girlfriend Calista Flockhart—he had to rebuild his bank account after his second divorce, to screenwriter Melissa Mathison. The actor met Mathison on the set of Apocalypse Now in 1976. But after two children together and 18 years of marriage, they filed for separation in August 2001, citing irreconcilable differences. Though she didn't get the Indiana Jones star in the end, Mathison, accomplished in her own right as the screenwriter behind E.T., made out fairly well, with a rumored $90 million divorce settlement in 2004. Again, the two reportedly did not sign a prenuptial agreement, a decision that likely haunts Ford more than snakes.
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Rumor has it Elin Nordegren originally only sought $500 million, thinking it was half of Tiger Woods' estimated $1 billion fortune. But subsequent reports reveal that she will be getting "close to $100 million" instead of the original $750 million report. As part of their divorce settlement, Nordegren must remain silent about his numerous alleged affairs, since a friend told London's The Sun tabloid that Tiger's main fear was "her telling her story after he's rebuilt his reputation, sending him back to the gutter." Custody of the couple's 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son was also in dispute—Nordegren wanted to have the children spend part of the year in Sweden, and Woods wanted to make sure he had a say in how they're raised. Nordegren ended up with sole legal custody, and the pair will share physical custody. But Nordegren might have the last laugh on this one: Woods cannot bring any of his girlfriends home until they're married. Well, that ought to stop him from having so many affairs. Perhaps.
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Amy Irving's post-divorce bounty, $100 million, awarded in 1989, still ranks up there as one of the most expensive celebrity divorces. Although she and Steven Spielberg signed a prenuptial agreement—they married in 1985, after huge hits like Jaws and E.T.—Irving successfully had it nullified, as it was written on a napkin and without legal representation. The couple had one son, Max Samuel, and Spielberg has said he wanted to stay on good terms with Irving for his son's sake, given the trauma of his own parents' divorce. Post-split, both Spielberg and Irving have remarried: Spielberg married actress Kate Capshaw, and the couple had five children together, and Irving first married Brazilian director Bruno Barreto and then, after their divorce in 2005, she wed documentary filmmaker Kenneth Bowser.
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It takes a pretty generous man to say his ex-wife is "worth every penny" after giving her $150 million—or half his fortune—in a divorce, but that's exactly what Diamond claims. The pair married in 1969, long before his big hits started coming, and split in 1994, meaning she was rewarded an estimated $5.5 million for each year the two were together. The cause for the split was "irreconcilable differences"; could that be why good times can seem so blue?
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Michael and Juanita Jordan were married in Las Vegas in 1989, after he had spent only five years in the NBA, and a year later they signed a "post-nuptial" agreement that gave her access to half his fortune. He possibly did not know what he was signing away, since the $168 million she won in their 2007 divorce was only one-third of his net worth. By the time the ink dried on the settlement, Jordan said he wanted to get on with his life, and his wife had already become involved with a banker 20 years younger.
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Yowza, Elin Nordegren is not quite the queen of divorce settlements: Anna Murdoch Mann, newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch's ex-wife, received $1.7 billion—$110 million in cash—from the couple's infamous 1999 split, in what is called the "most expensive" divorce settlement in history. Although at first they broke up amicably after 30 years together, Mann (who has since remarried) was determined to give Murdoch's older children, three of whom were hers, the right to approve any change in the family trust that controls News Corp., ensuring that they could not be pushed aside for any new children. Murdoch remarried company employee Wendi Deng just 17 days after the divorce was finalized and has since had two more children. Mann said her ex-husband "behaved badly" in the divorce, and two years after it was finalized, she said she felt as though she was "coming out of a state of mental illness."
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