I'm so sorry for this situation.
Regarding the flat IG owned in London, it appears to have paid for the home in LA, and AE should never get a dime from it. Apparently, the flat in London was sold for Β£400,000. This should have fetched $720,000 according to the average pound sterling-dollar exchange of 2005. That's $360,000 for IG, not a bad investment at all. To buy the house in CA for $1,550,000, he would have to put down 20% or $310,000 plus whatever inspection and closing costs. In other words, he really paid for the house himself and continued to pay it off from his earnings since then. In 2006, when he bought the house, the average 30-year mortgage rate was 6.41%. I am sure he refinanced the house at least a couple of times since then and is probably close to paying it off, unless of course he refinanced it for another 30 years each time, which would suggest they are in serious financial trouble. Right now, he should be paying it off at a rate of 3% or so, unless he was stupid and did not take advantage of the cheap mortgage rates which I doubt very much.
So he still has to pay most of the capital, which should be quite hefty, maybe a little under $1,000,000 left? They can sell the house for about $2,400,000 depending on the condition it's in. AE made sure everyone on the planet knows there are some sort of plumbing problems, which will make any buyer very wary of buying it, so the price may drop even lower. If they are lucky and get $2,400,000 and still have another $850,000 of principal, they'll get $2,280,000 after paying the realtors, then they'll have to pay for closing costs, professional cleaning, repairs, staging, and home warranty. Let's assume they have, say, $2,200,000, pay off the mortgage, which leaves them with $1,400,000? They have to pay taxes for any capital gains in excess of $500,000, right? Depending on his income this year, the tax he would have to pay for the capital gain should be up to 20%. He has paid off about half a million from the capital, which should bring the money down to $900,000, so he would have to pay up to $160,000 in taxes. This brings down his net gain from the sale to $1,240,000. If AE can only get 10% of that per the prenup, then, she gets $124,000 and he gets $1,116,000. No wonder mAlice is furious and decided to force him to pay for an expensive school for Ella. He probably told her to get a 3 bedroom (for example) condo with her share of the money for, say, $600,000. If the moron had agreed to the divorce, she could have even gotten a 30 year loan at 3%, but now it's gonna be more because the interest rates are rising. Now she'll have to pay about $2000 a month for a condo, when she could have paid about $1500. Still, it's better than renting.
My numbers may be totally off, but you get the idea.
my congrats to @Amatrine! 
