Former BA pilot faces £600,000 bill after losing court battle with ex-wife to prove daughter is not his

A former British Airways pilot has been told to pay his ex-wife nearly £600,000 by a divorce court judge after losing a 16-year battle to prove his daughter was not his. 

Mr Justice Mostyn has also imposed an e-mail ban on Richard Wilmot after his ex-wife Viki Maughan complained about a barrage of emails sent to her solicitor.

He ordered Mr Wilmot, who now flies with Turkish Airlines, to stop sending messages to the lawyer's private email address.

The judge has outlined his decisions in a ruling after analysing the latest leg of the case at a hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

He said Mr Wilmot should pay £593,598 - a sum which including money owed for child support and lawyers' bills.

The couple divorced more than 15 years ago after a marriage lasting less than a decade, but litigation has continued.

Mr Wilmot has been unhappy about orders relating to the payment of child maintenance and claimed that his daughter, the youngest child in the family, was not biologically his. 

However, a DNA test ordered by the family court in Germany concluded that this was almost certainly untrue, the judge said. 

A report from the University of Bonn "which having analysed DNA which was unquestionably taken from both Captain Wilmot and his daughter concluded that the probability that Captain Wilmot was the true father of the child E was 99.999999 per cent," he added.

Last year three Court of Appeal judges dismissed an attempt he made to overturn rulings made by Mr Justice Mostyn.

The court issued an order freezing Mr Wilmot's assets, including his properties, money held in bank accounts, his pension and money held by insurance companies. 

The judge also criticised the "utter folly" of Mr Wilmot's behaviour, and criticised him for not attending court. 

He said £396,929 had been recovered and he still needed to pay £196,669 to his ex-wife. Assets worth £300,000 will be frozen. 

Mr Wilmot has previously complained that orders served on him by email are invalid, but has since bombarded the court, the judge's clerk and his ex-wife with emails, the judge added. 

"One cannot help but note the irony that he should use the medium of email for his campaign of bombardment in circumstances where his argument in the Court of Appeal was that all the orders that had been made against him were invalid because they had been served on him by email. 

"He has sent directly to named members of staff in the court office since 27 October 2017 27 emails. 

"He has sent to the court's generic email address in that period, 36 emails. 

"He has sent to my clerk in that period, 26 emails. He has sent to the applicant's solicitor, 26 emails and he has sent direct to the applicant's counsel Mr Swift, 5 emails."

Staff at the Court of Appeal "have also been assailed by numerous emails from Captain Wilmot", the judge said. 

"I am asked to make an order restraining Captain Wilmot from communicating with the applicant's solicitor on her private email address. It is completely unacceptable that this form of harassment should take place," the judge said.