Divorce Costs Collins $47M

U.K. newspaper reports say splitting with his third wife will cost singer/songwriter, drummer and sometime actor Phil Collins about $46.68 million, which would be the biggest celebrity divorce case settlement in British legal history.

If the numbers are correct, it’s a shade more than the $45.37 million settlement in the Paul McCartney / Heather Mills divorce earlier this year.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the end of Collins’ marriage to 35-year-old Orianne Cevey, which lasted seven years and produced two children, has brought the Genesis frontman’s total divorce bill to nearly $84 million, about a third of his estimated $280 million fortune.

In 1994 he gave his second wife Jill Tavelman $34 million after famously dumping her via fax.

It’s unknown how much he paid to his first wife Andrea Bertorelli in 1994 but it’s unlikely it was anything close to the payments he’s had to make since.