ONE of Australia's richest divorcees has been ordered to pay her waiter husband $4000 a week in spousal maintenance so he can keep up the wealthy lifestyle to which she got him accustomed.

The wife, who cannot be named, is a beneficiary of a trust with $600 million in assets. According to court documents, her income is $58,529 a week and, while she was married, she had treated her husband to many luxuries.

Now they are separated, she wanted to pay him $18 a week to supplement the $380 a week he earns waiting tables between two and six nights a week in a Sydney restaurant.



Family Court judge John Cohen said that was unfair, because the husband had "lived the life of a very wealthy gentleman" until the marriage broke up in 2008.

"To expect him to work as a waiter in a suburban restaurant or club, as he was when he met his wife, and as he is now doing, is quite unreasonable," Justice Cohen said.



"He has been a gentleman of leisure for many years . . . the marriage is the direct reason the husband has not maintained or developed employment skills, is not used to work and is used to a life of leisure, luxury and privilege."

The court heard the couple, known as Read and Chang, met in 1985 and initially lived modestly.



The husband "worked full-time at a club when they started living together" and at one point held two waiting jobs, one during the day and one at night.

In 1989, the wife began receiving income from a trust. The amounts were initially modest - some $60,000 in the first year, for example - but the trust is now valued at $600m.



There are seven beneficiaries. The husband told the court his wife insisted he give up work when she had their second child "because they could afford to live on the trust she was receiving".

Justice Cohen said a "good measure" of the manner in which the couple lived was the statement from the black American Express credit card for the year July 2006 to June 2007.



Total charges were $500,527 or a touch over $9000 a week. The court heard the couple "always owned expensive cars, they travelled overseas, they spent $1200 on one dinner at a restaurant in Tokyo and $1000 at another in Paris, the whole family travelled business class by air".

The couple moved overseas in 2007 so the children could go to exclusive schools.

They spent $19,230 on a television set and $4500 on an espresso machine for the new house, but the marriage ended soon after, upon which the husband returned to Australia and resumed work as a casual waiter.

The husband told the court he would need $8543 a week to "maintain the lifestyle he has become accustomed to".

The wife will have to pay the $4000 a week until a final split of assets is agreed, at a later date.