LONDON:

Heather Mills has walked away from her four-year marriage to Paul McCartney with a £24.3 million ($48.6 million) divorce settlement — an enormous sum, but a fifth of what she had sought and a fraction of the former Beatle’s £400 million ($800 million) fortune.

Mills declared herself “very, very, very pleased” on March 17, but some legal experts were surprised she did not get more. “In the scheme of things, it’s quite surprisingly low,” said Patricia Hollings, a divorce specialist with Finers Stephens Innocent. “It is only offering her about 6 per cent of his assets.”

A Family Court judge awarded Mills a lump sum of £16.5 million ($33 million), plus the assets she currently holds worth £7.8 million ($15.6 million).

McCartney left court after the ruling without saying a word. But Mills emerged from the three-hour private hearing to declare that the settlement had secured her future and that of her four-year-old daughter, Beatrice.

“All of you that have researched know that it was always going to be a figure between 20 and 30 million,” Mills told reporters who thronged the steps of London’s Royal Courts of Justice.

“Paul was offering a lot less than that ... So we’re very, very, very pleased.”