A wife should expect nothing less than half

Has it really taken this long for divorce lawyers to appreciate the true value of a skilled housewife?

Hats, aprons, and bras if you insist, off to Shan Lambert, the divorcée who has just elicited a landmark ruling from an appeals court judge about the value of a non-working wife's contribution to her husband's successful career.

You must have read the story. Mrs Lambert, 50, was not impressed with the measly £7.5m her husband, Harry, settled on her when they divorced five years ago. She argued that she had contributed as much to the success of his business by selflessly and efficiently running his home, rearing his children, sharing his bed, entertaining his dreary colleagues, sorting his socks, making his boiled eggs and soldiers, and doing the other thousand things that wives are expected to do, for the 24 years that they were married.

Three years ago, Harry sold his newspaper business for £75m, personally pocketing £20m, and he now lives in Thailand with a nightclub dancer called Umaporn. Some men have all the luck, I heard my husband mutter, but Harry's ran out when his former wife won her appeal and was awarded a further £2.6m and costs. Fifty-fifty was a fair share for her contribution to the marriage reasoned the judge. Damn right. I don't know the Lamberts but I know a lot of couples like them and I have no doubt that, without his wife's support, Harry Lambert would have been a drone.

Has it really taken this long for divorce lawyers to appreciate the true value of the invisible assets that a skilled housewife brings to the job of home management? For a start, they're hardly invisible so when, as apparently happened in Lambert v Lambert, the legal eagles began arguing as to how exactly you determine what constitutes good housewifery, I would humbly beg their honours to stop quibbling. Instead they should draw up a simple questionnaire similar to those you find every week in Woman's Realm under the heading "Are You The Perfect Partner?" Alimony would be awarded according to your final score.

Here are some obvious questions and, by the way, no grey areas – it's either yes or no: do you iron his underpants, make lavender bags, bake bread, change the flower water, renew his golf club membership, go to parents' meetings/school plays/sports days on your own, buy his secretary Christmas presents, take his car for servicing, remember his mother's birthday/his best friend's phone number/his collar size, book his dental appointments, laugh at his jokes, wash his comb, watch him examine the contents of his handkerchief without comment, pick his clothes up from the floor without complaint? Etc etc.

Men whose wives do all that have little else to worry about except the success of their businesses. All the humdrum chores and pettifogging nuisances of everyday life have been removed by their loyal, long-suffering partners so when disaster in the shape of a nubile nightclub dancer from Bangkok called Umaporn looms and threatens their marital bliss, they are perfectly entitled to equal shares of the lot.

The Lambert case raises other interesting issues. What, for instance, in terms of alimony settlement, is the precise financial contribution to a marriage of the wife who goes out to work instead of staying quietly at home making bread and lavender bags? Sweet FA is the simple answer, or at least it was in my case. Well, maybe not quite in that I went out to work but I also made bread and lavender bags and Lego houses and fairy castles out of yoghurt pots and lavatory rolls when I got home because I felt so guilty about leaving the children with a nymphomaniac Norwegian au pair girl called Helle.

Taking the Lamberts as a precedent, I should have got 90 per cent of my husband's assets but 90 per cent of nothing isn't much of a deal. He didn't have a newspaper empire worth £75m. He had a reasonable salary (which stopped when he decided to give up work), and a rented flat. He generously made the rent book over to me (it was in his name) but stipulated in the divorce settlement that when the children had grown up he should have it back so that he could rent out their rooms. I'm not complaining. My job kept the wolf from the door and the children in shoes and my lavender bags are still going but, when the chips are down, landmark rulings about fair deals for divorced wives only work if, to paraphrase Iago, there's money in the purse.

Still, I'm glad Mrs Lambert won her case and even though he's £2.6m down, I hope the lovely Umaporn is still wild about Harry.