ALISON BOSHOFF on the divorce of Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall
EXCLUSIVE: Who gets what in Rupert and Jerry’s $305M high-stakes ‘Game of Homes’ divorce… and the Succession-style family twists and turns behind the break-up drama, by ALISON BOSHOFF
- Media mogul Rupert Murdoch and supermodel Jerry Hall finalized their divorce on Wednesday as they promise to remain good friends
- Despite signing a prenup, Hall will leave with $305 million and at least three of the billionaire’s houses, according to sources familiar with the proceedings
- Among the properties grabbed were a $200 million ranch in Montana, and two estates in the UK valued at $36 million and $13 million
- Likely out of reach for Hall would be the family’s sprawling $150M mansion in Los Angeles, where she was mostly recently living
- Murdoch’s adult children Prudence, 64, Elisabeth, 53, Lachlan, 50 and James, 49, allegedly weigh every twist and turn of their father’s fortune to see how it might affect them, and their inheritances
The marriage was hasty — entered into less than a year after they started dating. But, aged 59 and 84 respectively, the bride and groom were certainly old enough to know what they wanted.
And now, six years after they said ‘I do’, the divorce between supermodel Jerry Hall and billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch is being conducted at equal lightning speed.
A bare six weeks after Jerry filed for divorce on the grounds of ‘irreconcilable differences’, they have reached a settlement.
A joint statement, released by the New York PR firm Rubenstein on Wednesday night, after the Mail revealed that Jerry had asked the LA courts to cancel the divorce petition, ran: ‘Jerry Hall and Rupert Murdoch have finalized their divorce. They remain good friends and wish each other the best for the future.’
Jerry, now 66, exits with her dignity mostly intact and around $305 million, plus at least three houses according to sources familiar with the proceedings.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch (left) and supermodel Jerry Hall finalized their divorce on Wednesday as they promise to remain good friends
Wedding photo of Jerry Hall and Rupert Murdoch with their family. Back row, left to right: Georgia May Jagger, Laclan Murdoch, Prudence Murdoch, James Jagger, Gabriel Jagger, Elizabeth Murdoch, James Murdoch and Lizzie Jagger. Murdoch and Jerry Hall are seated in the middle of the picture with his daughters Chloe (left) and Grace (right) in the front row
MONTANA: Only seven months ago it was revealed they had purchased a $200million 340,000-acre cattle ranch in the US
GREAT TEW: This Cotswolds estate was bought for around $18 million but now valued at $36million set aside for its renovation
HENLEY: Holmwood House, the $13 million mansion near the Thames, which they bought in November 2019
Considering the marriage lasted only six years and three months, it appears as though her $1,000 an hour New York lawyer Judy Poll, who has also looked after actresses Drew Barrymore and Scarlett Johansson, struck a good deal for Jerry.
Texan Jerry, though, remains ‘very sad’ about the way things have worked out.
She has told confidantes that her love story with Murdoch was like the Shakespearean tragedy Romeo and Juliet — with the two star-crossed, albeit rather senior lovers, driven apart by their families. In this case, Rupert’s children.
It’s an arresting claim — but is there any truth in it?
Certainly, the Murdoch clan teems with highly intelligent and competitive adult children, notably Prudence, 64, Elisabeth, 53, Lachlan, 50 and James, 49, Murdoch’s children by his first and second marriages. (His daughters by third wife Wendi Deng are 21 and 19, and too young to have a role, yet).
The popular view is that, as per the TV drama Succession, these adult children naturally weigh every twist and turn of their father’s fortune to see how it might affect them, and their inheritances.
If that is the case, then they will probably be having champagne for breakfast as it can be revealed that one of Jerry’s wishes, to be given the giant $200million ranch in Montana, has been denied.
It can also be revealed that she has been displaced from what all consider to be the key family property, the Moraga vineyard in Bel Air.
Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall outside St Bride’s church in London following a service to celebrate their wedding in 2016
The 91-year-old tied the knot with Hall, 65, in a low-key ceremony in London in March 2016. The couple pictured shortly after the ceremony
Pictured: Sons Lachlan (left) and James (right) posing with their father on his wedding day
Moraga is the only vineyard in LA, and the estate comprises 14 acres atop the Benedict Canyon fault. The house, built in the 1920s, looks like a Tuscan farmhouse and has 11 bedrooms. Murdoch bought it for nearly $27 million in 2013.
Jerry was brought here for extended visits during their courtship and always loved it. She fully bought into the lifestyle and held court at a lavish ‘backyard BBQ’ held there in 2019 to celebrate 30 years of wine production.
She even told guests that she had completed a course in viticulture because she had such a love for the place. Her former partner, Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, was incidentally among the invited guests enjoying Mrs. Murdoch’s hospitality on that occasion.
Jerry listed Moraga as her address in her court filing on July 1, and was living there along with her daughter Lizzie and grandson Eugene during the winter — but Rupert Murdoch is firmly in residence now.
He was spotted being driven in and out of Moraga, stern-faced, in a chauffeur driven car this week.
In Murdoch’s corner for the divorce — and making sure that he kept his slice of paradise — was Robert S Cohen, an impressive legal force who went into bat for Melinda Gates in her massive divorce from tech tycoon Bill Gates.
It’s whispered in New York that he was hired on the advice of Murdoch’s son and heir apparent Lachlan, and it was suggested recently on the Daily Beast website that Lachlan has helped his father to exit this, his fourth marriage.
Hall has moved out of the family’s primary sprawling $150M Be-Air home, in Los Angeles, where she was mostly recently living
The house, built in the 1920s, looks like a Tuscan farmhouse and has 11 bedrooms and a large swimming pool. Murdoch bought it for nearly $27 million in 2013
The home is the only is the only vineyard in LA. The estate comprises 14 acres atop the Benedict Canyon fault
The large estate also features its own tennis court located in the missive backyard of the estate
Again, it’s not possible to be sure that this is the case, but a source says: ‘There’s no love lost between Lachlan and Jerry. Lachlan will definitely not be getting a Christmas card from Jerry this year.’
While all parties were declining to comment yesterday, I’m told that the divorce deal largely sticks with the prenup which the couple agreed before their wedding in London.
Jerry gets two properties in the UK — the $13 million house in Henley, and a $36 million home in the Cotswolds — and a house in France which was quietly bought for her about four years ago.
Rupert Murdoch got what he wanted, which was to get out — fast and clean — and keep hold of everything that he could.
He is renowned, not to say feared, as a wily operator who strikes at speed. This speedy and bloodless skirmish — giving him homes in New York, Australia and America — will only burnish that reputation.
However the question remains: why and when did the marriage go wrong?
Friends of Hall in the UK say that they saw the couple together in late April and May and they appeared delightfully happy.
The Daily Beast website suggests, though, that things started to fall apart last autumn.
Murdoch and Hall were last seen together in public in London in August 2021, when they were pictured arriving separately at a dinner (seen). They are understood to have then left together in a shared car
Jerry Hall is now officially divorced from Rupert Murdoch. She is pictured (above) in Los Angeles in 2016
What appears clear is that the thread which unraveled the union was Murdoch’s decision to sell up in New York.
He has a three floor ‘Master of the Universe’ style penthouse in the One Madison building in Manhattan, plus a smaller apartment on the next floor down in the same building.
Those properties — with magnificent, 20ft glass walls giving floor to ceiling views of the Hudson and East Rivers, the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center — went on the market in March for $78 million. They are still up for sale now.
Before they could be sold there was some paperwork to sort out as the New York apartments were part of the pre-nuptial agreement.
Sources close to Jerry say that Murdoch generously offered to swap Jerry’s interest in the properties for ownership of his Montana ranch, which is more than twice as valuable — it was bought for $200 million in 2021.
It’s said that some in the family weren’t happy with this.
Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall pictured together in California in 2019
Sources now confirm that Jerry never got the Montana ranch, and it seems that rumblings about that deal may have ultimately ended in the collapse of the marriage a few months later in June.
Beaverhead Ranch is worth bickering over: it is jaw-droppingly vast, spanning 340,000 acres and measures around 50 miles from north to south. Close to the Yellowstone national park, it teems with cattle and was sold as a working ranch.
At the time of purchase it was the largest property deal ever done in the state. Murdoch promised that he would ‘enhance’ the commercial cattle business and the ‘conservation assets’ of the wilderness.
The Montana ranch was the site of several gatherings of their large, extended family.
There was perfect privacy for all in Montana, plus spectacular mountain views, 4,000 elk, 800 antelope, and a 28-mile creek teeming with trout. You can understand why Jerry, raised in Mesquite, Texas, was keen on it.
It wasn’t to be, though — and sources confirm that Jerry didn’t get the ranch in the final division of property, either.
The marriage was declared over by email in June, with Murdoch telling her that from that point they should correspond only via lawyers. Jerry was stricken — professing heartbreak and saying that she was still ‘in love’ with him.
At that point she was in the UK and was planning to spend the summer here with him — at his side at his annual media party in June in London followed by the wedding of his granddaughter Charlotte Freud in Oxfordshire early in July.
Her reaction to the bombshell is fascinating. Within a week of the split becoming public knowledge Jerry had filed for divorce — in California — giving her home address as the Moraga vineyard.
Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall attend the ‘The Quiet One’ screening at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival at SVA Theater
And here began the ‘Game of Homes’ maneuvering. For not only would Murdoch never countenance losing Moraga, he would also instantly grasp the message given.
For California is what is known as a ‘community property state’. This means that when two people get married, they are considered a single entity for the purpose of property ownership.
Thus, any property or assets that either buys during the marriage is considered community property — and is owned by both spouses.
Including a certain $200 million ranch in Montana, plus the two Oxfordshire homes.
Assets bought before the marriage — including the New York apartments, the Moraga vineyard and a 25,000 acre sheep station in Australia — are not included in the common pot.
Murdoch, as the veteran of three divorces, will have been well aware of all of this, and painfully aware of how much a divorce could cost him. Wendi Deng reportedly got more than $464 million and her predecessor Anna, his wife for 31 years, $1.58 billion in 1999.
The tycoon, whose empire includes The Sun and Times newspapers as well as Fox News in the U.S., is worth nearly $19 billion.
Jerry received only $14.6 million from Mick Jagger after they split and you can see why, this time around, she would have been determined not to have a disadvantageous deal.
It turned out that the marriage Jerry and Jagger went through in Bali had no legal force — a nasty surprise for her — and the Rolling Stone didn’t even give her their old marital home in Richmond. Instead they remained co-owners.
Another act which you might interpret as legal trickery was the serving of the divorce papers. These were thrust into Rupert Murdoch’s hand as he waited to board a private jet at Brize Norton following his granddaughter’s wedding.
Elizabeth Jagger, Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Rupert Murdoch, Harvey Keitel and Daphne Kaster pose together at a garden party in LA in 2019
Process server Michael Colacicco, a former Met Police detective, did the deed and it is confirmed in writing that Murdoch was served ‘in the car park’ in a written note filed into court.
At the start of the summer, Jerry was in Henley, at the house which was bought for over $12 million. I’m told that she filed for divorce giving her address as California even though at the time she was actually there.
A local shopkeeper said: ‘There was somebody at the property about six weeks ago. We always know when the house is being used because they will ring us and ask for newspapers to be delivered.’
But since then, according to locals, the house has been used by her son Gabriel rather than Jerry herself. A neighbor said: ‘I don’t think she’s there. Six or nine months ago they went to California for the winter. It’s her son who is living there now. With everything going on, she doesn’t have much reason to be here, I suppose.’
Friends believe she is currently in St Tropez, one of her favorite parts of the world. She has owned property in the hills above St Trop for decades, and likes to spend August in the Med. Around four years ago she quietly sold the house in St Tropez which she was given by Mick Jagger and bought a new, bigger and better one. ‘The old place was too small when Rupert’s family came to stay,’ she explained.
Perhaps that makes the space and freedom she is now enjoying all the sweeter.
Additional reporting by Daniel Bates
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