 Christina Estrada celebrated “making history” on Friday when the former Pirelli model won £75 million in cash and assets from her billionaire ex-husband, securing the largest “needs award” ever granted by an English court. "Having grown up in a middle-class family and having enjoyed a successful career until my marriage, I am fully aware that the spectacular life Walid and I led was immensely fortunate and rarefied," she said in a statement obtained by The Guardian. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) 
 
 "And I fully understand how this can be perceived in the wider world. My focus now is to support my daughter and move forward with our lives," Estrada continued. For her sake and the sake of our wider family, I hope we can now resolve matters sensibly.” 
 
 Estrada was cross-examined in court over her claim that she requires £1m a year for clothes, including £40,000 for fur coats, £109,000 for haute couture dresses and £21,000 for shoes. The cancer-striken Juffali could not appear in court as he was in a Switzerland hospital being treated. He said in his statement that he had left the vast majority of his wealth to his three eldest children, including his teenage daughter with Estrada, who cannot be identified. Estrada, 54, and Sheikh Walid Juffali, 61, were married for 12 years before Juffali divorced her back in 2014 under Islamic law without her knowledge. He married a 25-year-old Lebanese model, while still married to Estrada and welcomed his two youngest children with the young woman. The sole purpose of this case was to evaluate an appropriate financial settlement based on Ms Estrada’s needs, as opposed to the extraordinary demands presented by her at the start of this case.” 
 
 The Estrada/Juffali divorce will confirm London’s reputation as the divorce capital of the world, where ex-wives are confident of winning more generous settlements and relatively fast justice for those who can afford the large legal fees.
– Former model Christina Estrada made history Friday when she received a stunning $97 million divorce settlement from a British court, the Telegraph reports. And even that was less than half what she was asking. The settlement includes cash and assets from her ex, Saudi businessman Walid Juffali, and is the largest in English history. “This is what I am accustomed to," the Guardian quotes Estrada as telling the judge. "It is difficult to convey the extraordinary level of luxury and opulence we were fortunate enough to enjoy.” Estrada's initial request included annual payments of $152,000 for handbags, $780,000 for renting private jets, $107,000 for cocktail dresses, and more. The court says the final settlement meets Estrada's "reasonable needs." Estrada, a US citizen, says she knows how all this is "perceived in the wider world." “Having grown up in a middle-class family … I am fully aware that the spectacular life Walid and I led was immensely fortunate and rarefied," the Guardian quotes the former model as saying in a statement. In 2012, Juffali secretly married a 25-year-old model with whom he started a family (Islamic law allows Muslim men to have multiple spouses). Two years later, he divorced Estrada, again without her knowledge. Estrada's lawyers had argued Juffali is worth $10 billion, but the 61-year-old businessman, who is currently being treated for terminal cancer, claims it's more like $147 million, the New York Daily News reports. (A US divorce settlement dwarfs the amount involved here.)