The actor met Ms Hart while filming the Channel 4 series Longitude in 2000, and within a year he was introducing his girlfriend to fellow actors.
For two decades, the actor split his time between her and Lady Gambon, who was said to have initially been devastated by the news of his other relationship and moved out of the home they shared.
However, she then came to terms with the arrangement and moved back.
Eccentric but certainly some traditionality there. But even more traditional:
Sir Michael Gambon has bequeathed his £1.5 million estate to his wife but left nothing to his long-term girlfriend and mother of two of his sons.
The money stays with the legal arrangement, the scarlet woman gets nothing.
Not syaing I approve – or not – but it is all rather traditional….
I know the idea is to leave life with the same amount as you came into it (nothing) but even so I’d have expected him to leave more than a half decent terrace house in London.
I rather suspect some estate planning has gone on. The wife (tenant in common or whatever) doesn’t pay IHT, children and mistresses do.
Also interesting to learn he wasn’t a homosexual.
@Philip
He could, in theory, have left a total of £325k to his children and/or mistress and left the rest to his wife. There would have been no IHT in those circumstances.
The wife lives in a £5m house in Kent and the mistress has a house they shared in West London so the story is rather more complex and probably rather less ‘sensational’ than the newspaper version would have one believe.
Andrew C said:
“He could, in theory, have left a total of £325k to his children and/or mistress and left the rest to his wife. There would have been no IHT in those circumstances.”
Wouldn’t he have done that by lifetime gifts into trusts every seven years? Potentially gets more money to them, if he survived for more than one seven year period, but also it isn’t public in the way a will is.
Note, not just Michael Gambon but Sir Michael Gambon. Apparently that is some sort of an honour. The kind that ex British PMs yearn for. Whale Oil Beef Hooked.