Women millionaires will outnumber men in 15 years | the Daily Mail

Women millionaires will outnumber men in 15 years | the Daily Mail

Kenneth McFarlane was ordered to pay his ex-wife Julia £250,000 a year for life.

An age of huge divorce settlements together with the growing numbers of female entrepreneurs will boost the numbers of women among the wealthiest, it said. And women millionaires will become more common than men because they live longer - while the men will die off quicker.

The analysis from the Centre for Economics and Business Research said that at present, slightly more than half of the people whose assets rank between £500,000 and £1 million are women. Inflation alone will push them into the million-plus bracket.

But it added that by 2020 the spiralling level of divorce settlements awarded to wives of rich men will add to the numbers. The forecast comes in the wake of new legal precedents set by judges who have ruled that divorced women are entitled to up to half of their former husbands' assets - even if they have only been married for a short period or can claim to have done little to help amass his fortune.

In May the House of Lords handed down key decisions in two cases. Law Lords ordered Deloitte tax partner Kenneth McFarlane, who was earning more than £750,000 a year, to pay his ex-wife Julia £250,000 a year for life.

And in the other case, fund manager Alan Miller was told to pay his ex-wife Melissa £5million after a childless marriage which lasted less than three years.

Earlier this month leading insurance broker John Charman was ordered to pay his former wife Beverley £48 million, more than a third of the couples' assets.

CEBR research Jaspreet Sehmi said: 'We estimate that by 2020, 53 per cent of millionaires will be female, with numbers boosted by comparative longetivity and by generous divorce settlements.' Women are also helped because the life expectancy of an average woman is between 80 and 81 year, while men can expect no more than 76 years of life.