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During the trial, the court heard details of the vast luxury in which the princess lived before she fled Dubai with her two children, Zayed, 9, and Jalila, 14. The case also exposed a dark side to the glittering image of the Dubai royal family including Mohammed’s abusive behavior toward his family, which prompted Haya to divorce her husband and flee to Britain in 2019, saying she feared for their lives.
The award comprises a lump sum of $333 million and annual payments to cover the costs of education and education and security for the children, which are to be secured with a guarantee $385 million — making this one of the biggest custody settlements in British legal history.
In justifying the amounts, Justice Philip Moor, the High Court judge who presided over the case, cited the need to preserve the “truly opulent and unprecedented standard of living enjoyed by these parties.”
Included in the provision is a large sum to cover security costs after the judge concluded that the princess, 47, and her two children faced legitimate threats to their security from the sheikh. The court had heard evidence that Mohammed had abducted and forcibly returned to Dubai two of his daughters, Sheikha Latifa and Sheikha Shamsa, hacked Princess Haya’s phone and issued threats to her life, including text messages that read, “we can find you anywhere.”
In addition to security, the amounts are intended to cover the costs of the upkeep of Haya’s two homes, near Kensington Palace in London and in the suburban town of Egham in Surrey, as well as vacations, clothes, horses and salaries for staff. The costs were diligently itemized — $500,000 for food during vacations, $368,000 to maintain three horses and other pets for the children, $51,000 to replace two trampolines they had owned at their palace in Dubai.
Haya had originally sought in excess of $1.1 billion, but the judge reduced many of her claims. A request for $42 million to replace the haute couture wardrobe she was forced to leave behind in Dubai was cut to $1.3 million because, the judge said, he was unable to put a price on the items of clothing he was shown in a video.
A request for $26 million worth of jewelry was reduced to $18 million. A budget for the costs of hiring private planes for vacations was reduced from $2.3 million to $1.3 million. Moor commented that he did not believe children should go on vacation too often, especially when they are facing school examinations.
Among the requests the judge rejected was for the cost of a car collection for her son because, he noted, it wasn’t necessary for a 9-year-old to own cars.
It was important, he said, that the children “should be able to have a lifestyle that is not entirely out of kilter with that enjoyed by them in Dubai,” But, he also added, “it will be quite impossible to replicate, pound for pound, the standard of living enjoyed before their parents separated.”
But Moor allowed the cost of a $1.9 million renovation to Haya’s kitchen in London, including a pizza oven. “I remind myself that money was no object during the marriage” he said.
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