Fay Weldon has reportedly been granted a divorce from her husband.
‘The Life and Loves of a She-Devil’ novelist, 90, is said to have secured a decree nisi, two years after leaving her third husband, Nick Fox, whom she accused of “coercive control and financial mismanagement”.
A family friend told the Daily Mail on Thursday night (14.07.22) she got the news at a nursing home where she is said to have lost the ability to talk.
They said: “Fay’s divorce has been granted in the past couple of weeks. Fay’s now in a nursing home and can’t talk.”
Former bookseller Nick, 75, became her manager after their marriage in 1994 and is understood to be bewildered and saddened by the break-up.
He told the Daily Mail: “People can get very strange when they get old — they can turn on the person closest to them.
“She’s no longer the person I knew for 40 years.”
Responding to claims he “did well” out of the divorce from multi-millionaire Fay, he said: “They insisted on going to arbitration and we had to spend a fortune on lawyers.
“I was forced to sell the house I inherited from my mother, because I added Fay’s name to it. The judge gave me just about enough to buy another house.
“A lot of people I thought were my friends were, in fact, just her fans.”
Fay moved in with her eldest son, also called Nick, after the split.
He is a musician, whose father was Colyn Davies, a partner of Fay’s before her first marriage.
Fay said in 2020 – a day after apparently writing an article about her “happy” 26-year marriage – she had attempted suicide by taking an overdose,
The prolific writer, who also spent years writing for TV, alleged: “In effect, Nick (her husband) wrote the article in my name. It’s shocking, but I didn’t have the strength to argue with him.”
She added about her suicide attempt: “The next day, I took an overdose. I was in such pain, emotional and physical. It seemed like a rational thing to do at the time.”
Her first marriage to Ronald Bateman, a teacher 20 years her senior, after only two years.
Fay’s second, to antiques dealer Ron Weldon, with whom she had three more sons, lasted for three decades but he left her for his “astrological therapist”, dying from a heart attack eight hours before their divorce was finalised.
