Shari-lea Hitchcock settles battle with Jeanne Pratt

Visy mogul Richard Pratt’s 17-year-old daughter Paula stands to collect almost $23 million in private shares.

Shari-Lea Hitchcock at the unveiling of a Charles Billich portrait of Ian Thorpe at the Billich Gallery in The Rocks, Sydney.

Shari-lea Hitchcock, the long-term mistress of deceased Visy mogul Richard Pratt, has secretly settled her bitter court battle with widow Jeanne Pratt for a larger slice of her lover’s billionaire estate.

In a further embarrassment to the Pratt family, Ms Hitchcock and the couple’s now 17-year-old daughter Paula agreed to walk away from potentially damaging litigation.

The Australian understands the surviving members of the Pratt family have been desperate to keep the matter out of the public domain and only agreed to the settlement early last month upon strict confidentiality being established with Shari-lea, Paula and their legal representatives.

Ms Hitchcock refused yesterday to discuss the settlement, ­which was negotiated in Victoria, where the Pratt dynasty is based. The Pratts also refused to discuss the settlement, which came after Ms Hitchcock failed to gain a greater slice of the estate via the NSW legal system.

Pratt died from prostate cancer in 2009 aged 74 and in his will left Paula a mansion in the Sydney eastern harbourside suburb of Watsons Bay, where she is understood to still live with her mother, as well as a rural property on the NSW coast.

Paula stands to collect almost $23 million in private shares when she turns 21.

Ms Hitchcock, who has claimed a larger proportion of the estate as a de facto spouse, and Paula launched the action against Jeanne Pratt as executor of Pratt’s estate in 2010 claiming they had not been adequately provided for.

The matter was initially set down for mediation in August 2013, but was postponed while Sydney escort Madison Ashton made a similar multi-million-­dollar claim against Pratt’s ­estate through the courts in NSW.

Ms Ashton, another long-time lover of the billionaire businessman, claimed Pratt promised to look after her and her two children when she became his mistress in the early 2000s.

She alleged a business agreement with Pratt whereby she would give up her lucrative escort work to act exclusively as his ­mistress, and in return she would be given a $5m trust for her two children, $500,000-a-year allowance, $36,000 a year for accommodation and $30,000 a year for travel expenses.

Her initial court action in the Supreme Court failed after judge Paul Brereton found that, while conversations with Pratt probably took place, they did not amount to a legally binding contract.

Justice Brereton also found that, on separate occasions in ­February and November 2005 — when Ms Ashton’s relationship with Pratt was effectively over — Ms Ashton accepted termination payments of $100,000 and $50,000.

Despite owing the Pratt estate tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs, Ms Ashton launched an appeal against the decision in 2012, arguing Justice Brereton erred in finding that Ms Ashton and Pratt had properly entered into the 2005 deals.

In February, the NSW Court of Appeal rejected Ms Ashton’s appeal claiming Pratt did not ­intend to create a contract.