Hello, Goodbye to McCartney's Marriage

Wed., May. 17, 2006 8:25 AM PDT by Sarah Hall

Apparently, Heather Mills won't be needing or feeding Paul McCartney when he's 64.

The 63-year-old ex-Beatle and the 38-year-old model turned activist have announced their plans to separate after four years of marriage. The twosome attributed the rift to the challenge of living life in the spotlight.

"Having tried exceptionally hard to make our relationship work given the daily pressures surrounding us, it is with sadness that we have decided to go our separate ways," the couple said in a statement.

"Our parting is amicable and both of us still care about each other very much."

Mills and McCartney are the parents of two-year-old Beatrice, for whose sake they said they hoped they would "be given some space and time to get through this difficult period."

The couple first met in 1999 at an event for Mills' charity, the Heather Mills Health Trust, which she launched in 1993 after losing a leg in a motorcycle accident. They wed in a lavish ceremony in 2002, four years after the death of McCartney's first wife, Linda, from breast cancer.

Their union was surrounded by controversy from the start, with rumors abounding that Sir Paul's kids were no fans of their new stepmother.

Mills was also frequently panned in the press for allegedly influencing her husband on everything from dying his hair and undergoing plastic surgery to the dismissal of his longtime business manager, Geoff Brown.

In 2004, McCartney came to his wife's defense following one particularly damaging article. In a letter that Mills posted on her official Website (which was unavailable on Wednesday), he wrote:

"Although some of these articles can be funny, there are others that are plain malicious, and you need to be strong not to be hurt by some of the cruel suggestions that flow from these peoples' pens."

On Wednesday, McCartney came to Mills' defense once again, releasing several statements on his official Website in which he denounced the majority of media reports about his separation as "100 percent untrue."

"I'm really disappointed that during a very difficult and emotional time for both Heather and myself there are certain people in the media that are writing things about Heather that are just plain untrue," McCartney wrote.

"It's been suggested that she married me for the money and there is not an ounce of truth in this."

Since the couple is believed to have no prenuptial agreement in place, legal experts have estimated Mills could be entitled to as much as one-quarter of McCartney's estimated $1.5 billion fortune.

Mills told Vanity Fair in 2002 she had offered to sign a prenup before tying the knot, but McCartney had refused.

"I wanted to prove that I love him for him," she told the magazine. "He said, 'I wouldn't let you.' "

Love may be all you need, but in this case, Macca could probably use a good divorce lawyer.