UK NEWS

PAUL: HEATHER HAD MISCARRIAGE BEFORE BEATRICE

SIR PAUL: Believed the couple's marriage would last for life

Wednesday March 19,2008

By Mark Reynolds

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SIR Paul McCartney has revealed that Heather Mills suffered a miscarriage during the first year of their marriage.

In a candid statement from the former Beatle, included in Mr Justice Bennett’s judgment published yesterday, Sir Paul also talked of his “old-fashioned” approach to love.

And he openly told how he had believed the couple’s marriage would last for life.

He said Miss Mills suffered the miscarriage a few months after their wedding before falling pregnant again with their daughter Beatrice.

Sir Paul, 65, said: “After our marriage the nature of our relationship, to my mind, changed significantly.

“I was and remain fairly old-fashioned about marriage. We decided on a proper wedding for that reason – I did not want any suggestion that we were in any way furtive or ashamed about our marriage.

“I believed it was for life and that it put everything on a different footing. I drew up a will to include Heather.

“We stopped using contraception the night we were married. There was never any question of us doing so before the wedding. Heather had one miscarriage before Beatrice was conceived. Neither of us contemplated children without marriage.”

Miss Mills, 40, has suffered similar problems in the past, losing two babies to ectopic pregnancies during her first marriage about 15 years ago.

The judgment also detailed how even after they got engaged the couple did not live as “man and wife”, with Miss Mills choosing to live elsewhere. This only changed when they finally wed.

Mr Justice Bennett did not dwell on whether there had ever been genuine and prolonged love in the marriage.

But he concluded Miss Mills was wrong to think she should continue to have the same kind of lifestyle she enjoyed with Sir Paul and he accused her of “over-egging the pudding” in a bid to secure a larger settlement.

He said: “After a short marriage to a very wealthy man, it is unfair to expect that she should continue to live at the same ‘rate’. Such an expectation is completely unrealistic.”