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Infighting among wealthy families is unimaginable! My daughter was stabbed in the back by her biological parents after she got divorced, and she secretly gave her divorced husband 250 million yuan worth of property, but my biological daughter didn’t get a dime of it…? !
This article is reprinted from the WeChat public account: Those Things in the UK
Recently, foreign media reported a rather bizarre story about a wealthy family.
A daughter of a wealthy family who came from a shipping empire paid her ex-husband £850,000 out of her own pocket during the divorce.
After all, she was the richer one, so it seemed reasonable to lose some money in exchange for a clear settlement.
What she didn’t know was that at the moment she signed the agreement, her ex-husband was already an invisible rich man with 27.6 million pounds.
And this money was secretly stuffed in by her biological parents without telling her. Not only did she not get a dime, she was also kept in the dark…
The heroine of the story is Maria-Christina Copinger-Symes, who is 54 years old this year. (Hereinafter referred to as Maria.)
This is actually her married name, Copinger-Symes is her husband’s surname.
Before she got married, her real name was Maria-Christina Perez de la Sala.
（Maria）
The focus is on this “Perez de la Sala”.
This surname represents an Australian shipping family,Her grandparents started the shipping business in Singapore and Hong Kong, China, and accumulated a huge wealth of more than 550 million pounds.
And Maria is one of the heirs of the Perez de la Sala family.
She herself is not the kind of rich second generation who just sits there and takes the cake. She once worked for the European management team of the legendary Australian rock band INXS, and later started her own business, operating a high-end aromatherapy brand.
(Maria takes a photo with the lead singer of INXS)
As for her husband, his name is James Copinger-Symes, 57 years old, a retired British SAS major. It is one of the most elite special forces in the world.
In 1998, the two got married in Sydney, and then settled in Chelsea, London, living in a mansion valued at more than 3 million pounds and raising four children.
(Their house in London)
No matter from which angle you look at it, this is a perfect marriage. But beneath the bright surface, this family has already been undercurrents.
The De la Sala family has a long history of internal strife.
After Maria’s grandfather passed away, who would control this huge family business became a big problem.
In 2011, Maria’s uncle transferred a large amount of US dollars from the family business, reportedly between 600 and 800 million. He said he deserved the money.
Thus began a legal battle between the families that lasted for several years.
The lawsuit was fought in Singapore. At the beginning of the war, Maria and her husband James still sided with their father, and the three of them fought against their uncle together.
But as the lawsuit progressed, the situation changed subtly.Maria contacted her uncle privately and offered to exchange money for her to side with her uncle, which was equivalent to stabbing her own father in the back.
Unexpectedly, this private contact was discovered by her father. Her father later wrote in a letter: “You are planning to make a deal with your uncle. This is the ultimate betrayal of the entire family and the ultimate hypocrisy.”
From then on, Maria was known as “Judas” in the family.
（Maria）
Since 2017, her parents have completely severed ties with her, no longer giving her money or contacting her, and even deleted her name from their will.
In 2022, Maria’s father passed away, and the family even refused to allow Maria to attend the funeral, which shows the stiffness of the relationship between the two parties.
In the words of a later judge:“The family’s attitude toward Maria can be summed up in one word: hate.”
In sharp contrast to this,The whole family loved her husband James very much. Because he has always stood firmly on the side of his parents-in-law and has not followed his wife in back-stabbing.
Judging from what happened next, James was undoubtedly on the right team. The more his parents-in-law looked at James, the more they liked him, and the more they liked him, the less they liked his daughter.
that’s all,The son-in-law has become a relative, and the biological daughter has become an outsider. He gradually took her place in the family.
（James）
In 2017, Maria and James officially separated.
Because it involved a huge amount of property division, the divorce was delayed for several years, and a settlement was finally reached in March 2022. The specific content is roughly:
Maria paid James a one-time compensation of 850,000 pounds and paid for the tuition fees of the four children. The remaining assets belong to each other without any liability.
According to this agreement, after Maria pays the 850,000, she will still have about 5.25 million pounds left in her hand.
On the surface, it seems fair for a woman with more than 6 million pounds in hand to compensate her ex-husband 850,000 without losing money to each other.
The problem is that when signing this agreement, James concealed a very critical piece of information – he is actually very rich, much richer than Maria.
So where did the money come from?
Maria’s parents gave it to him.
After the agreement was signed, Maria was supposed to pay the £850,000, but she kept delaying the payment, so James went to court to apply for enforcement. The embarrassing thing is that there is a link in the enforcement procedure where the applicant needs to disclose his asset status, and then he was exposed…
Asset disclosure shows,In just a few months after the divorce agreement was signed in 2022, James received two huge transfers from Maria’s parents.
The first amount was 20 million Australian dollars a few days before his father-in-law’s death; the second amount was 20 million U.S. dollars from his mother-in-law.
According to the exchange rate at the time, the two sums totaled approximately 27.6 million pounds, which was more than four times Maria’s entire net worth.
(schematic diagram)
In other words, Maria’s parents gave this huge sum of money to their ex-son-in-law just after completing the divorce procedures with their daughter. Maria herself didn’t get any money, and she didn’t even know about the transfer.
What’s even more disturbing is that her three siblings received a total of $67 million.
The whole family had a share, but she got nothing. The “outsider” who divorced her got more than anyone else.
How could she be willing to do so?
In 2024, Maria applied to the court to revoke the original divorce agreement on the grounds that James knew that he was about to receive this huge sum of money when he signed the agreement, but deliberately concealed the information, which constituted “material non-disclosure.”
After an eight-day trial and thousands of pages of evidence, the judge discovered the truth behind the case.
First, James already knew the money was coming.
The judge found that in fact, one or two years before the divorce agreement was signed, that is, around the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, James began to look at some very outrageous luxury homes. With his financial ability at the time, he was still far from being able to afford these mansions.
This suggests that from at least that point on, he knew he was going to receive a large amount of money, and the approximate amount of the money.
Second, Maria’s parents deliberately waited until the two signed the divorce agreement before transferring the money.
The judge believed that in order to prevent the money from being counted as “premarital property” and divided by Maria, the parents deliberately waited until they signed the divorce agreement before starting to divide the family property.
Third, the whole family colluded in this matter.
The judge noted that Maria’s mother, three siblings and ex-husband James “deliberately coordinated” each other’s testimony in court in an attempt to join forces to defeat Maria.
In the end, the judge ruled that Maria won the case, the original divorce agreement was invalid, and both parties needed to redistribute their finances.
At this time, Maria’s mother once again expressed the hope that James would return the money. The reason was very simple: the premise of her giving money was that Maria would not get a dime. If Maria could get the money, she would rather not give it away.
But this request was also rejected by the judge. The judge determined that the money was an “unconditional gift”. If it is given, it is given, and there is no reason to take it back.
(Maria’s mother)
In other words, Maria wins big.
After the first trial, she came up with a new financial division plan: of the 27.6 million pounds James received, she should get 14 million.
But how could the whole family let Maria succeed?
Their hatred for Maria was beyond imagination. James and his mother-in-law immediately filed an appeal, and a new round of legal battle began…
In December 2025, the British Court of Appeal announced the opening of the hearing.
There are three main parties in this lawsuit: James, mother, and Maria. The arguments of the three parties are different.
The core argument of James’ side is that the money is a “non-marital asset” and was given to him personally by his wife’s family and has nothing to do with the marriage.
Moreover, Maria-Christina herself had long expected that her ex-husband would benefit from her natal family.
As early as 2020, her own lawyers wrote in court documents: “There is no doubt that after the lawsuit is concluded, he will be handsomely rewarded for his loyalty to the family.”
In other words, since you already knew it, so what if I didn’t officially tell you the exact number?
The mother’s side still insists on the previous argument:If the court decides that Maria can get a share of the money, then I will take all the money back on the grounds that it was “sent to the wrong person.”Either she won’t get a penny, or everyone won’t get it.
Maria’s side refuted their arguments separately:
First, the money comes from Maria’s family. Without this marriage, James would have no chance of entering the family, let alone getting the money;
Second, the first-instance judge had determined that the money was an “unconditional gift.” Since it was given away voluntarily, it cannot be taken back on the grounds of “mistake”.
(schematic diagram)
The case was fought for several months, and finally on March 17, 2026, the Court of Appeal made the final judgment.Maria wins overall。James and his mother’s appeals were all rejected.
The three justices dismantled James’s side’s arguments piece by piece.
In response to the reason that “she had already had a premonition,” the judge responded directly: Even if one party has suspected that the other party has hidden assets, it does not exempt the other party from the obligation to truthfully disclose the assets.
His wife guessing that he might get the money is completely different from him knowing that he would get a huge amount of money but keeping silent about it.
In response to the statement that “the money had no substantial impact on the divorce agreement,” the judge made a calculation: at that time, the total assets of both parties were between 3.6 million and 6.2 million pounds, and the first amount of money that James concealed was nearly 15 million U.S. dollars, which is not a negligible fraction.
As for the mother’s desire to get the money back, there’s no chance.
The judge found that she had said in her own testimony that after giving the money to James, it was his to spend as he pleased. Since it was given unconditionally, you can’t turn around later and say “it was wrong”.
This means that the original divorce agreement is completely void.
Next, Maria can go back to court and fight for her share of the £27.6 million.
(Report of Maria winning the lawsuit)
However, the above is just one aspect of the family’s legal battle.
At the same time as the “divorce war” in London, there is also an “inheritance war” on the other side of the world.
As mentioned earlier, Maria’s father passed away in July 2022, leaving an inheritance of more than $500 million.
According to his will, basically all of the 500 million was left to his wife. Maria didn’t get a penny.
In 2023, Maria sued her mother in the Supreme Court of Sydney. Because according to Australian law, children who are ignored by the will can claim “reasonable maintenance” and compete for part of the inheritance.
However, this inheritance lawsuit was not so friendly to Maria.
On March 6, 2026, the judge dismissed some of the claims in Maria’s complaint, but allowed her to resubmit it with modifications. This inheritance lawsuit is far from over…
Next, Maria will need a long legal battle before she has the opportunity to “seize food from the tiger’s mouth” from her family and ex-husband.
But even if she gets the money, this family will definitely not be able to return. The long disagreements have exhausted the feelings between the family members, and what is left is indeed only hatred.
Probably in wealthy families, “loyalty” has the most expensive price tag, and the saying “blood is thicker than water” is often worthless…
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