Seven years ago, while serving in Afghanistan, Corporal Simon Vaughan volunteered to lead a reconnaissance patrol and was blown up by a Taliban bomb. He came so close to death that he was flown home with an obituary pinned to his bag.
Today, Simon still needs round-the-clock care. He is in a wheelchair and his speech is halting and indistinct. Yet despite everything, the accolade from his commanding officer cheers his mother. (…) Today, Simon still needs round-the-clock care. He is in a wheelchair and his speech is halting and indistinct.
[…]
Were it not for his implacable spirit, Simon might have perished. But Simon is a fighter, and his stubborn will and humour are undiminished — qualities he has needed during a court battle with his former wife, Donna, over money.
Lynne suspects that even as Simon fought for his life in intensive care, Donna ‘was working out how much would be paid out if he died’.
Then, on Valentine’s Day 2013, after ten years of marriage, a pregnant Donna, 33, walked out, taking their son. She didn’t even tell Simon she was leaving. In the messy aftermath, he tried to strangle himself. It later emerged that Donna had ‘squandered’ — in the words of Simon’s mother — a large part of the £1.1 million compensation money that was intended for his long-term care and rehabilitation.
She bought a bungalow in rural Shropshire for £295,000 without a survey, then found it was structurally unsound. It was demolished and rebuilt by her father, at a cost of £300,000, but still failed to meet building regulations.
By the time Donna took him to court in September, Simon’s compensation pot had been whittled down to £200,000. She was demanding almost all the money he had left, plus a one-third share in the bungalow, which was specially adapted for his needs — even though he was still paying the mortgage on their former home in Telford, which is in negative equity.
He must find £1,500 a month in maintenance for his children, aged 13 and two — payments he does not begrudge because ‘taking care of their needs was always my priority’. What rankles is a raft of further payments he must find. Donna was granted ownership of the house they had shared in Telford and Simon was ordered to pay her £30,000 to offset the negative equity on the property. Not only that, he had to give her another £10,000 for expenses such as buying a car.
Incredibly, he must pay her £84,163 legal bill and his own £28,615 court costs, and on top of that foot the £20,000 cost of putting right his new home — a sum he believes his former father-in-law, who built it, should have found.
Left with around £28,000 and unable ever to make more, he can no longer afford the thrice-weekly intensive physiotherapy sessions or the hydrotherapy and speech therapy that was improving his quality of life.
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