A businesswoman who left behind her career in order to become a “stay at home mum” while her husband continued with his high-flying career has been awarded virtually all of the family fortune by a divorce judge.

Jane Morris, 52, had been criticised by her former husband for not bringing more money in after they split, having quit her career as a recruitment consultant to keep house for him and their three children for 20 years.

However, it emerged on Monday that she was awarded half a million pounds while husband, Peter Morris, the managing director of a software company with a seven-figure turnover, was left with just £66,000.

Details of the case came out as he launched a challenge in the court of appeal against the financial outcome of the divorce and a six-week prison sentence which is hanging over his head after it was imposed on a suspended basis for non-payment of maintenance.

The court heard that the 51-year-old businessman “took credit” for the “high standard of living” the couple enjoyed in their £1.2m cottage in the Chiltern Hills.

However, the couple’s “extravagant” spending, both during their marriage and after their “bitterly contested” break-up in 2013, brought them “to the brink of financial disaster”, reducing multi-million-pound family assets to just £560,000.

One divorce judge, Glen Brasse, described Jane Morris as being a “competent and effective operator” during her pre-marriage career, but who then “stayed at home to look after the home and care for the children by agreement with her husband”.

Awarding 90% of the family assets to her, the judge had said that she “needs adequate maintenance” because sacrificing her career had left her with a “low earning capacity... in her middle fifties with rusty skills.”

He pointed to “the husband’s very substantially larger earning capacity into the future” and his bigger pension pot.

“It is self-evident that not all the needs of the parties could possibly be met in full, or even substantially, from the available resources so the parties expectations have to be scaled down. Some of their needs will have to be prioritised over others. The priority must be given in my judgement to the housing of the wife and children,” he concluded.

Another judge, Judith Hughes QC, ordered the husband last July to pay £77,000 for unpaid maintenance and other debts “from his share”, effectively leaving him with nothing from the marriage.

Morris had hit out at his wife’s own expenditure and criticised her for not earning more, having re-entered the labour market since they separated. But she was ruled to be “a sensible woman” who was “probably in need of emotional and psychological comfort” during her own spending sprees.

Peter Morris appeared to represent himself in court on Monday, but Lady Justice Black adjourned the hearing for him to obtain a legal aid barrister, saying that his “liberty is at stake”. The case will now return to the court of appeal at a later date.