Rabinovitch granted legal aid for divorce

The woman who is divorcing her wealthy husband to marry Anthony Julius Princess Diana's divorce lawyer has been granted legal aid.

The Legal Aid Board confirmed last week that it had granted a legal aid certificate to freelance journalist Dina Rabinovitch, who is divorcing Guido Rauch, a wealthy derivatives trader.

She is instructing Simone Katzenberg, a partner in Hampstead firm Solomon Taylor & Shaw.

Ironically, Julius' wife Judith, who he is divorcing so he can marry Rabinovitch, is a senior official at the Lord Chancellor's Department which, in 1996, launched a crackdown on the granting of legal aid to the "apparently wealthy".

However, the 1996 measures were drawn up largely in response to a string of high-profile criminal cases in which apparently rich businessmen received millions of pounds.

Family lawyers told The Lawyer it who not unusual for legal aid to be granted to apparently wealthy divorcing couples, particularly if one side was not receiving maintenance from the other.

But one leading family lawyer said: "There is a good argument for asking, where you have got a basically wealthy family, should any of its members be receiving legal aid?"