TMZ says that Johnny Depp paid his plaintiff $7 million. The Independent published the litigants’ statement in full:
“Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love.
“Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm.
“Amber wishes the best for Johnny in the future. Amber will be donating financial proceeds from the divorce to a charity. There will be no further public statements about this matter.“
In my first posting on this subject, I wrote the following:
My prediction: When the dust settles the lawyers will have gotten paid a fortune, but Heard won’t net much more from her acquaintance with Depp than what she could have obtained by having quiet one-night encounters with a couple of successful married radiologists and collecting 23 years of child support under Massachusetts law.
If you assume that Heard ran up a $1 million legal bill, which supposedly is to be paid from the $7 million, she netted $6 million. This will be tax-free and therefore via a year of marriage she has more than doubled her estimated net worth of about $4.5 million. On the other hand, as noted above, if she had sex with two married radiologists or Medicaid dentists in Massachusetts she would have been entitled to collect roughly $2 million from each via child support, a total of $4 million. However, if she could have persuaded the judge that the defendants were not fit to take care of the children at least 30 percent of the time, she would have been entitled to more. Also, her defendants might have voluntarily paid a supplement over the guideline amount to keep the extramarital encounters from becoming public. Finally, sticking within the guidelines, she could have had sex with a third physician or dentist to realize a total of $6 million and/or found an unusually high-income defendant to have sex with.
[Note that Depp’s attorney, Laura Wasser, has two children of her own, each with a different father, married neither father, and lives with neither father. (Bloomberg)]
Let’s look at the statement, above: “Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain.” As California is a no-fault divorce state and therefore Amber Heard was automatically entitled to her freedom, what motivation other than financial gain could she have had for making what were, apparently, false statements regarding “intent of physical or emotional harm”? I had been looking forward to what kind of expert witnesses would be called to testify regarding Johnny Depp’s Ninja-style iPhone throwing skills. I had asked a divorce litigator about the case and she said “The truth of a domestic violence allegation is seldom relevant in divorce litigation” (see “The Domestic Violence Parallel Track” for how a domestic violence allegation dovetails with a typical divorce lawsuit).
The most curious part of the statement is “Amber will be donating financial proceeds from the divorce to a charity.” If she had wanted to donate money that Depp earned to a charity she could have written a check from a joint account during the marriage, then filed a straightforward “I want to be divorced but don’t need alimony or seek a share of the defendant’s savings” petition. Why go through all of that litigation if the goal was to enrich a charity? And is Amber Heard actually going to donate more than half of her net worth to charity?
[Courts are reluctant to look at money transferred prior to a lawsuit being filed. In a Massachusetts case that we looked at, a stay-at-home wife was having sex with a carpenter while the husband was at work. She transferred money from a joint account to her boyfriend, including transfers to offshore accounts in the boyfriend’s name. After a year or two of these gradual transfers she sued her husband and the judge awarded her 50 percent of the remaining assets. The defendant was unable to persuade the judge to look at dividing the assets based on the total before she started her offshore transfers and counting the transferred funds as already having been divided in her favor. The judge said that during the marriage the wife had legitimate access to the joint funds and could do whatever she wanted with them. Adding up the pre-lawsuit transfers, the lucrative alimony that the wife obtained via litigation, and the profitable child support that she obtained via the Massachusetts guidelines, the non-working plaintiff in this case ended up with substantially more than 50 percent of the savings accumulated from the working defendant’s earnings.]
A handful of friends on Facebook have taken a break from expressing hatred of Donald Trump and those Americans who would consider voting for him to discuss this case. One interesting assumption, expressed explicitly, is that Amber Heard could not have had a financial motivation to sue Johnny Depp because “she was a successful actress for years”.
Related:
Maybe Heard will, if she hasn’t already, set up a “charity” akin to the Clinton “Foundation” with herself as the “chief cook and bottle-washer” and thus entitled to a nice salary. Reportedly only about 15% of CF revenue goes to “charity”. We can all guess where the other 85% goes.
Also, I probably don’t pay enough attention to “popular culture”. Amber Heard a “successful actress” who doesn’t really need Depp’s money? Never heard of her before you started writing about her.
From Johnny Depp’s point of view: assuming he had sex with Ms Heard 3x/wk, each sex session cost about $46,000. Granted Ms Heard is attractive, but is she really $46k per shag attractive?
The charity wheeze seems likely, though I don’t see why it’s necessary if the loot is not subject to taxation. Perhaps it’s a PR thing to clean up Amber Heard’s grasping, whorish reputation.
The divorce court system is so laughably, ridiculously unjust and biased that you can only shake your head and think about HL Mencken.
As with Lynn, hadn’t heard of Miss Heard until she sued Depp for divorce. Similar to ABT ballerina Melanie Hamrick for all but hard-core ballet enthusiasts until she started shagging Sir Mick Jagger spring 2014. Curious as to how much child support will be paid there, as apart from occasional visits with their expected child together, Jagger has made it clear he won’t be living in same country as Hamrick.
If what is said here is true (and I understand the information correctly), apparently Amber Heard has already donated the money: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/amber-heard-donates-7m-divorce-920796
Elisa: As there was no trial and therefore no judgment from a Court, the public will never know the full terms of what Depp might have paid to get the plaintiff to drop the part of her lawsuit that was seeking immediate cash (property division) and long-term cash (alimony/spousal support). If the media reports are in fact the full story, it is a strange result. Purportedly Depp paid his plaintiff $7 million and the plaintiff’s legal fees were to be paid from this amount. The media reports that the entire $7 million was donated to charity. That means Amber Heard paid her own legal fees from her pre-marital savings? She would therefore have given away more than half of her assets to charity and given away another perhaps 1/4 of her assets to lawyers.
The deeper question is if this had been her objective, why would she have gone to all of this trouble? She could have stayed married for two additional minutes and spent those minutes writing two $3.5 million checks from a joint account to the charities of her choice. Supposedly Depp had a net worth of about $400 million. He had a track record of donating to at least one hospital (see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-508227/Johnny-Depps-1m-gift-Great-Ormond-Street-hospital-saved-daughters-life.html for a story on the subject). Heard could then have petitioned for a no-fault, no-money divorce and won that lawsuit in a few months with no publicity.
(Put in simpler terms: There aren’t too many people who aren’t interested in money for themselves who yet go down to the courthouse and file a lawsuit seeking money. In this particular case it makes even less sense because the plaintiff previously had access to presumably substantial joint funds.)
Maybe we are overestimating the intelligence of gold diggers. Mel Gibson seems to have gotten a better deal out of his last situation. He was prepared to offer $15 million but she turned it down, hoping for more. Then it turns out she only got $250k because of she gave an interview that broke the conditions. Now she gets a measly $30k/month (she also gets $2.5k child support from her ex-husband, one former James Bond 007). Like Johnny Depp, there was violence in the relationship.
More comedy, Bill Burr’s There is No Reason to hit a Woman: