Wife of Shropshire soldier paralysed by Afghan bomb fails in £185,000 divorce bid
The estranged wife of a Shropshire soldier who was paralysed while serving in Afghanistan has lost her legal battle to claim most of his remaining injury compensation money.
Simon Vaughan, of Ercall Heath, near Newport, was awarded £1.1 million from the Ministry of Defence after being blown up by the Taliban in Afghanistan's Helmand Province in 2008.
However, only £200,000 of this money was left, and his estranged wife Donna was seeking £185,000 as part of her divorce settlement.
During the hearing at Telford Family Court, Mrs Vaughan also asked for £1,500 a month in maintenance and a 20 per cent stake in Mr Vaughan's specially-adapted bungalow where he lives with his mother.
District Judge Richard Chapman rejected her claim, criticising a series of financial decisions made by Mrs Vaughan.
He said: "In managing the one million pounds or so that came under her control, Donna made some decisions that both in hindsight and at the time, she should not have made."
He said the first of those was to buy the bungalow in Ercall Heath, near Newport in Shropshire, for £295,000 in cash without a survey. The house was structurally unsound for adaptation and had to be demolished and rebuilt at a cost of a further £300,000.
She had also failed to tell financial experts at the Ministry of Defence who had been assigned to her husband's case of what she was planning.
The judge found she also "failed to provide full and truthful information" when seeking grants and other sources of income for the family, and that Mrs Vaughan had ignored an offer of help from an MoD caseworker to manage the money properly, including putting it in a trust fund.
Judge Chapman, however, ruled Mrs Vaughan was entitled to just under £85,000 to cover her legal fees and a further £10,000 in cash. Mr Vaughan was also ordered to pay off £30,000 on a mortgage on a second property that will transfer into Mrs Vaughan's ownership.
In his 26-page ruling, Judge Chapman, although critical of Mrs Vaughan's decisions, was "satisfied that at no time was it ever Donna's intention to convert any of the monies paid to Simon for her own use to the exclusion of Simon's benefit".
