Judge Hits Out At Divorcing Couple For Racking Up 'Apocalyptic' Legal Bill

A High Court judge has branded a divorcing couple’s eye-watering legal bills as ‘apocalyptic’. 

Russian businesswoman Alla Rakshina and ex-husband Lazaros Xanthopoulos, from Greece, have racked up the staggering costs in a London family court where they are attempting to reach an agreement in regards to their children and finances. 

Mr Justice Mostyn has said the shocking cost involved was hard to accept even in relation to the ‘uber-rich’. 

The judge said: "I have struggled to find the language that aptly describes the exorbitance of the litigious conduct of the parties in the case before me since it began on 21 September 2020."

Alamy

Over the last 18 months, the former couple have accumulated £5.4 million in lawyers fees. 

"But that is not the end of the story. There are vast amounts of future costs in the pipeline," the judge continued.

He added: "We are looking at the total cost of the litigation between these parties being somewhere between £7.2m and £8m."

Judge Mostyn said Rakshina had disclosed two properties in London, each worth about £5 million, and about £11 million in a bank account.

“The wife also discloses properties in Siberia worth a little over £1 million,” said the judge.

“The husband, who has next to nothing in his name, says that this is an entirely false presentation and that the wife is correctly ranked by Forbes as the 75th richest woman in Russia, with vastly valuable interests in supermarkets in Siberia.

“Even if this were true, and the suggestion is hotly contested, to run up in domestic litigation costs of between £7 million and £8 million is beyond nihilistic.

“The only word I can think of to describe it is apocalyptic.”

Alamy

He said it was ‘difficult to know what to say or do’ while in the face of ‘such extraordinary, self-harming conduct’. 

Judge Mostyn went on to suggest that Lord Chancellor Dominic Raab should consider whether rules could be brought in to ‘limit the scale and rate of costs’ in divorce proceedings such as these. 

"In my opinion the Lord Chancellor should consider whether statutory measures could be introduced which limit the scale and rate of costs run up in these cases,” he said. 

"Steps must be taken."