Lachlan Spark reveals details of split with ex-wife Lauren Phillips

Lauren Phillips and Lachlan Sparks’ short-lived marriage inspired many rumours about the reason behind its demise. Now, he’s revealed what actually went down.

The dream home Lauren Phillips and ex-husband Lachlan Spark built to start a family will go under the hammer next month.

After splitting in early 2018, the couple have been hammering over a financial settlement, which was decided just weeks ago.

When the lawyers get involved things turn ugly.

Phillips employed Mick Gatto and Danny Nikolic’s gun lawyer for hire Pat Lennon and it wasn’t just ugly, it was brutal says Spark.

“He was an absolute freak, an unbelievably gifted lawyer and he just destroyed me,” says Spark.

Lennon was later dealing with his own issues. Ice trafficking charges can do that to you.

But you wouldn’t have known it when he rocked up for mediation talks in an Adidas tracksuit the day after his own hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates court. The lawyer is now on bail.

“It was a masterstroke by Loz,” says Spark. “They toyed with my lawyers for about 18 months and it cost me over $50,000 in legal fees.

“When you are naive to it all, you play along. But in the end I just said to my lawyer, let’s just settle and get it done. The house was all part of it.”

There is always two-sides to the sad story of a marriage breakdown.

Spark gave his side this week, garnering plenty of headlines.

He could no longer be in a relationship with someone who was more interested in Instagram-likes than in substance.

“A while ago I married a girl who cared much more about herself and how she was perceived than she did about me,” Spark posted.

Lauren Phillips and Lachlan Sparks were married in late 2017

“I truly believed there was more to a relationship and life than skin-deep friends, free holidays and Instagram followers. I just needed to find it.”

It was a cruel barb, but that can happen when the honeymoon is over and love turns sour.

Sour is putting it mildly. Sources close to the couple say he’s turned “toxic”, with many siding with Phillips.

It doesn’t usually play out in the headlines, but that’s how the cookie crumbles when you are in the spotlight.

Spark didn’t want to be known as an influencer’s husband.

He concedes the tone he used in the Instagram post might have been a little harsh and using a social-media platform to belittle an Instagram influencer was somewhat ironic.

“I needed a wife really,” Spark told Page 13. “It was lots of fun for a few years, but when things get serious you need a bit more substance.

“We were just completely different humans. I wanted a family and to settle down and all that kind of stuff. But Loz, well, her life is good.

“I was doing everything I could to try and get something back out of the relationship. I could have stuck around for 20 years, but it would have all been on Lauren’s terms.

Lachlan Spark says his wife moved out “straight away” after the wedding.

“Her terms are fine if you are happy with that lifestyle, if you want to live a Peter Pan style lifestyle, then no worries. It was a funny world.”

Toss the coin and the other side might show a man at first attracted to a pretty, bubbly, popular socialite and TV presenter, only to want to later change her.

There were plenty of whispers after the split that Spark had sent an email to the Weekend Today weather presenter outlining a “list of demands” to make their marriage work, including telling Phillips to lose weight.

Spark says it wasn’t a list of demands as such, but “a framework” on what was needed to move forward as a couple.

The Antartica marathon runner said he never told Phillips to lose weight, instead saying he was attracted to people who kept an active lifestyle.

“I said for it to work some changes had to be made. Pay your tax so I don’t get stuck with a bill, help out around the house, lift a little bit, I told her, and I regret framing it the way I did, but I said I’m more attracted to people when they are active because I’m an active person.”

The pair are now selling the Fitzroy home they barely lived in. Picture: Supplied,

Sparks and Phillips have now moved on in new relationships. Phillips, who first made her mark onto the scene dating Geelong superstar Gary Ablett, is living in Byron Bay with her biz jet tycoon boyfriend Paul O’Brien and hanging out with the Hemsworths and Thor director Taika Waititi.

Spark now lives in Sydney and is in a relationship with Courtney Wynbergen, a communications executive at Qantas before COVID hit.

They were once mutual friends, but Spark says that has deteriorated and Lauren and Courtney don’t “see eye-to-eye.”

After dating for some years, Spark and Phillips married to much fanfare in December 2017 on the Mornington Peninsula.

Described as one of the flashiest nuptials of the year, guests included Bec and Chris Judd, Jonathan and Kylie Brown and Phillips former Myer ambassador colleague Kris Smith.

No expense was spared.

But Spark says the Insta-perfect nuptials were all for show, with what seemed a rent-a-crowd more interested in posing up for a camera.

The home is hoped to go under than hammer for $1.3m. Picture: Supplied

“There were 180 people at my wedding and I’ve probably spoken to about 10 of them since I left Melbourne. That says a lot to me.”

Spark says going different ways involved a lot of different things. He admits he expected a lot from people and could be “difficult at times.”

But it was also a Melbourne thing. The endless events, always the same cashed-up crowd fawning over one another and endless air-kissing.

“When you live in Melbourne the people you see at all those events become your friends.

“It’s a bit self-fulfilling. It’s a vicious cycle. It’s a fun life. But there is more to life than fun.

“It’s not all beer and skittles. They have a different perspective on life than I have.

“If you smile with a big beautiful smile in life the troubles of the world disappear. They are dealing with these things behind a white picket fence and I prefer to be the same person that I was brought up to be.”

Smile alert: Phillips is actually paid for that smile, as a brand ambassador and part of a smile squad alongside AFL WAG and influencer Jessie Murphy for dental practitioners Smile Solutions.

The couple renovated the home before getting married. Picture: Supplied

“Loz does have a nice smile,” says Spark. “Lauren is a great girl, but not the girl for me. It wasn’t for me.”

The Fitzroy townhouse they bought together when in the giddy, heady days of their relationship goes up for auction on December 8 with an asking price of more than $1.3 million. Private inspections through real estate agent Jellis Craig for the “high-end inner city home evoking Melbourne’s captivating heritage” start today.

Spark says the house, designed and built by Phillips’ Channel 9 stablemates, The Block’s Dan Reilly and Dani Wales, was completed a month after their wedding.

“The renovation was finished in Jan 2018. It’s sad no one has really lived in it. It was a month after we got married. But Loz moved out pretty much straight away and I moved out after that.”

“The place looks unbelievable, its just such a shame we built it and then three months later we separated.

“I’d always dreamt of owning a beautiful family home to have a family in. That was the hardest thing about letting go of that property. I worked my arse off for that, I got into massive debt.”

For now it appears Phillips’ strategy is to maintain “a dignified silence” as she soilders on silently while the mud slinging continues.

The fall of the auction hammer can’t come fast enough.