The bitter divorce battle between Jamie and Frank McCourt grows even nastier.
In state court filings, Jamie is asserting that Frank is understating his net worth by possibly over a billion dollars.
Though Frank has claimed that his net worth is slightly over $160 million as recently as last June — down from just over $800 million in 2008 — attorneys on the other side contend that he has represented to investors that his net worth was in the $2 billion range.
The power couple, who once ruled over a vast real-estate empire and, of greater geographic significance, the L.A. Dodgers, have been bickering over a settlement.
Frank McCourt has pleaded (relative) poverty throughout the acrimonious proceedings and tried to deny his estranged wife Jamie McCourt’s claims of co-ownership of the baseball franchise.
But her lawyers argued in court filings this month that under his current settlement offers, Frank is trying to give Jamie just 5 percent of his assets — and is presenting a murky accounting of what exactly those assets comprise.
Jamie is seeking nearly $1 million a month in temporary support.
"It takes a financial Houdini to make 80 percent of the assets disappear in just a few months — and just when he’s getting a divorce," Bertram Fields, an attorney for Jamie, told TheWrap.
Lawyers for Frank contested Jamie’s math and motives.
"Jamie McCourt’s recent court filings, which demand grotesque sums of money to meet her day-to-day ‘personal requirements,’ are astonishing," Marc Seltzer, an attorney for Frank McCourt, told TheWrap. "Rather than shedding light on the relevant issues, her scorched earth spin campaign is clearly designed to harm the reputation and livelihood of others."
To bolster their case, Jamie’s legal team submitted confidential financial documents in which Frank appears to be courting Chinese investors to take a part ownership of the Dodgers and various soccer clubs in Beijing and the United Kingdom.
In it, he anticipates that through a proposed Dodgers television station, team revenues will jump from $295 to $529 in 2018. Jamie’s team is arguing that Frank is not accurately accounting for these television revenues.
