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Elin Nordegren Woods hires top celebrity divorce lawyer over star's £337million fortune
Tiger Woods's estranged wife could get up to £169 million of his fortune after calling in California's top divorce lawyer, it was claimed today.
Elin Nordegren is believed to be meeting celebrity attorney Sorrell Trope - who has represented Nicole Kidman and Britney Spears - in the hope of obtaining half of what the golf star has earned in the five years they have been married.
The 29-year-old former model is also likely to file for divorce in California where the couple have a home, and not in Florida, where they live.
Under California law, the 'no-fault divorce' means there is an equal division of assets and property.
This could mean any pre-nup agreement Ms Nordegren has signed with Woods, 33, could be torn up and she could get half of the £337.5 million fortune.
Mr Trope, 82, is said to be the 'best divorce lawyer in the business'.
Elin is also believed to be in talks with sportswear manufacturer Puma about becoming the face of its Swedish-inspired clothing line Tretorn, according to website TMZ.
To add to the billionaire's woes, a 48-year-old blonde, Theresa Rogers, became the oldest woman to be linked with the golfer.
Woods, 33, is said to be living apart from wife, Elin, 29, and a removal van was parked outside Woods's family home in Windermere, Florida, yesterday prompting speculation that his wife was moving out.
The speculation is that she is planning to return to her native Sweden, where she recently bought a house.
A TV news helicopter flying over the £1.7million house spotted the white van in the driveway.
Workmen were seen removing what looked like several pieces of art from the waterfront mansion.
Mrs Woods, who had earlier been spotted out with her two-year-old daughter Sam having lunch at a Thai restaurant, was supervising the men.
There was no sign of Woods at the house. He has not been seen for more than two weeks after crashing his luxury 4x4 into a fire hydrant and tree and sparking lurid allegations about his private life.
Meanwhile, Miss Rogers claimed to a friend she taught Tiger all he knew in the bedroom.
Miss Rogers is said to have been married several times and is described as a mother and 'fitness nut'.
She was said to have had the longest affair with Woods, lasting more than five years with flings both before and after his 2004 marriage.
'She just wanted to be the woman who schooled Tiger in the bedroom,' the friend was reported to have said.
Sources close to the star claim he is 'only just coping'. One told the New York Post: 'He sees everything is crashing down around him. His career, his family.'
It also emerged last night that Woods allegedly paid women regularly to be discreet about the affairs.
Several mistresses reportedly said they received between £3,000 to as much as £13,000 a month in hush money from the golfer.
'The money comes via a wire transfer,' one woman told MSNBC in the U.S.
In among all this, the golfer suffered a new blow when it was revealed that a doctor who performed a controversial 'blood-spinning' procedure on his knee injury was under investigation by the FBI for providing athletes with steroids.
Although there is no suggestion Woods has taken performance-enhancing drugs, he may still have to explain his relationship with Canadian sports specialist Dr Anthony Galea to investigators.
The doctor made at least four 'house visits' to Woods' home earlier this year to treat the golfer's troublesome knee injury with his platelet-rich plasma injection therapy.
The contentious treatment involves spinning blood in a centrifuge and reinjecting it into injured joints in the hope of accelerating healing.
Dr Galea, 50, was arrested in October and his Toronto clinic was raided after an assistant was stopped at Canada's U.S. border and was allegedly found to be in
possession of illegal drugs.
These included the human growth hormone and Actovegin, a substance extracted from calf's blood that is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
He is suspected of providing athletes with banned drugs and is expected to appear in court on Friday.
Woods's advisers reportedly asked Dr Galea - known in sporting circles as the 'miracle man' - to treat the sports star because they were concerned about his slow rehabilitation from knee surgery in June last year.
The sports doctor said he used a centrifuge from a local doctor in Orlando, Florida, to carry out the platelet therapy.
He said he drew blood from Woods, spun it to increase the platelet's count and then injected a small amount directly into the golfer's left knee.
Blood spinning has long been a controversial procedure in sport.
The World Anti-Doping Agency has modified its rules for next year to allow its use when injected into joints and under the skin, but ban injections into muscles because they could promote muscle growth.
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Tiger's friends worried
Charles Barkley says Tiger Woods changed his cell phone number the day after his car accident and is not talking to some of his famous friends.
On a show that airs Sunday on news network HLN, Barkley and filmmaker Spike Lee worry that Woods isn't taking advantage of the invaluable advice that can only be offered by friends who are used to the spotlight.
"You should reach out to your celebrity friends when things go bad," Barkley told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday. "They're the only people who understand what it's like."
Barkley appears on "With All Due Respect" with two other Turner Sports analysts, baseball Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley and longtime NASCAR driver Kyle Petty. Lee is one of the guests in the one-hour special during which the sports stars discuss a variety of topics.
Turner Sports and HLN are owned by Turner Broadcasting System.
"He's insulated," Lee said during the taping for the show. "If Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan can't get to him, and those are his boys, then other people are making bad moves."
Barkley said Tuesday he has not spoken to Woods since the Nov. 27 accident, which unleashed a series of events that resulted in him admitting to marital infidelity.
"I've been trying to get to him and can't get to him," he said. "It's very frustrating."
Barkley said he just wants to tell Woods, "Hey, man, we love you. If you need anything, pick up the phone."
Chatting about subjects ranging from sports to world news, entertainment and current events is a natural for the outspoken Barkley, who has long expressed an interest in entering politics. He said he wants potential voters to be familiar with his views, which include support for abortion rights and gay marriage.
"I hope people get a chance to see where I am on different issues," he said.
While taping the show, the three athletes found they had similar feelings about another of the year's big stories: the death of Michael Jackson. Each felt at peace about the saga after seeing "Michael Jackson's This Is It," the film about the King of Pop's final rehearsals.
During the conversation, Barkley said, "I thought Kyle was going to cry."
How Elin Woods couldn't be less like the women Tiger jumped into bed with
Even in a country with more than its share of fairhaired beauties, the two blondes who arrived at a secluded island off the coast of Stockholm two weeks ago would struggle to maintain a low profile.
And, indeed, the visit of identical twins Elin and Josefin Nordegren did not escape notice by the locals. Their destination was Faglaro Garden, a £1.4 million estate accessible only by boat, with a private beach, harbour and boathouse sauna.
Until a fortnight ago, it was owned by a footballer, but following a whirlwind visit, Elin, 29, is the sole owner.
The property is in her name, not that of Mr and Mrs Tiger Woods, the title for which she is better known.
Her decision to invest in this expensive property - helped by her lawyer sister who, I understand, conducted the negotiations on her behalf - could be evidence of nothing more than a desire to build a property portfolio of her own.
Faglaro, which translates as 'Bird Island', could be a wonderful summer home for the entire family. The speculation in Sweden this week, however, is that it might prove a retreat for Mrs Woods as she struggles to come to terms with her husband's multiple infidelities - or, at the very least, a place where she can hide from the worldwide attention that has left her 'mortified'.
It would certainly be a mistake to underestimate Elin Maria Pernilla Nordegren - as Tiger found to his cost when he crashed his car into a fire hydrant after a furious row at the family home in Florida.
For while Elin is the product of a broken home, following the divorce of her parents when she was just six, she has no intention, I have learned, of playing the stoical, suffering wife.
But then in many ways, despite her appearance - and flirtation as a model - Elin is an unlikely golf WAG.
Even before the ignominy of becoming one of the world's most well-known wronged wives, she had struggled with the expectations of being Mrs Tiger Woods.
Unusually, given her profile since their relationship became public in 2002, she has never given an interview. While polite and friendly, she keeps her distance from the other wives on the circuit.
'She's like Greta Garbo,' says one. 'When she started dating Tiger, it was as if there was this unwritten agreement she would not say anything to anyone. She's nice, but when you talk to her, you don't get anything out of her.'
The twins - and their elder brother Axel, 31, who works for a Swedish bank in Shanghai - were raised in the picturesque coastal village of Vaxholm, 50 miles from Stockholm.
Their liberal, Left-leaning parents encouraged discussions about politics and social issues around the dinner table.
Her mother, Barbro Holmberg, is a leading politician who was once migration minister; her father, Thomas Nordegren, is a correspondent for the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, who describes himself as a former 'revolutionary'.
The co-author of The A To Z Of Drugs - a guide he's admitted was 'controversial' - has married twice since his divorce from Barbro, latterly to Swedish children's author Anna Hoglund.
Elin has four half-siblings, aged between 11 and one, and has children of her own - Sam, two, and ten-month-old Charlie.
She is close to her parents, calling her mother and then her father in quick succession in the aftermath of the fallout from Tiger's infidelities.
'She is protective of them, and they of her,' says a friend. 'All the siblings speak on the phone a lot.'
Following her parents' divorce, the children lived with Barbro in Stockholm, spending holidays with their father before, aged 15, Elin moved with him to Berlin, where he had been posted for a year.
The Nordegrens instilled a strong work ethic in their children and neighbours recall them taking menial jobs in the holidays, including working as a supermarket cashier.
By 1999, Elin had enrolled at Lund University, one of Sweden's top colleges, to study Child Psychology. But it was not her academic abilities that were attracting attention.
Having seen a photograph of her at a social event, Bingo Rimer, a leading Swedish fashion photographer, was quick to spot her potential as a model and asked her to do a photoshoot.
She was initially reluctant. 'Elin doesn't care about modelling,' he says. 'I had to drag her into the studio. Being famous, the whole celebrity thing, she really and truly does not care about that.'
Elin did five shoots with Rimer - some in bikinis, but never nude. But her heart wasn't in it. Even when, in 2000, she made the cover of a men's fashion magazine, she did little to capitalise on it.
Instead, she chose to focus on her studies. But it was a job in a high-end Stockholm boutique, Champagne, that would set her on the path to becoming Mrs Tiger Woods.
One of her customers was Mia Parnevik, wife of Swedish golfer Jesper Parvenik. With four children, she needed two full-time nannies at her home in Florida.
After chatting to Elin at Champagne, Mia all but offered her a job on the spot.
'Elin was smart and down to earth. I could tell immediately that she was great with children,' she says.
Ironically, Mia recalls that her new nanny was unimpressed by the golf world - and the players. 'She thought they were so silly and was always making fun of them,' she says.
Nor was she particularly impressed by Tiger Woods when they were introduced at the British Open in 2001, particularly as, I have learned, he sent an intermediary to ask her for a date.
'Elin's reaction was: "What the hell was that?"' says a friend. 'She thought it was so weird and pathetic. So, of course, she said: "No." '
That wasn't the only reason she declined, according to Bingo Rimer. 'One of the reasons she didn't date him right away was because she did not want to be just a celebrity girlfriend,' he says.
'She knows how it looks. People see her - so young, so beautiful - and assume she is a gold digger. Elin is not like that. She is a smart girl, raised in a family of intellectuals. She has dreams. She didn't want to be seen just as a decoration on Tiger's arm.'
Bingo was not the only one who feels Elin was the prize, not Tiger. In a 2002 interview, Jesper Parvenik declared she was 'almost too good for him'.
She certainly played hard to get even after agreeing to a first date, frequently ignoring Tiger's calls and text messages.
By December 2001, however, Elin felt suitably sure of her romance to confide in Rimer on her return to Stockholm for Christmas.
She also demonstrated an impressive sense of the inevitable international interest in their relationship, insisting they go through his stockpile of photos to establish a handful of which she would approve the release and ordering that the rest should never be used.
Eight years on - following a romantic proposal while on safari and a £1million wedding in Barbados in 2004 - Elin is said to have continued to reconcile her down-to-earth upbringing with her role as wife to one of the world's most famous sportsmen.
She makes only an occasional foray to designer shops and drives a practical 2009 Cadillac Escalade rather than a flashy sports car.
'She has modest tastes considering how much she and her husband are worth,' a friend told me. 'You'd expect someone of Elin's position to have a really swanky car, but she is not like that. She's very practical and not materialistic.'
'Elin's an outdoorsy sort of girl. She's happiest playing soccer on the back lawn,' says another friend.
So, before the recent revelations, what was the state of the Woods's marriage?
Friends have pointed out the extent to which Tiger's golfing commitments have dictated the couple's timetable, and the strain this must undoubtedly cause.
Tiger missed his elder child's baptism in Stockholm in October 2007; he was at a golf charity event in California. Nor was he present this summer when his sister-in-law Josefin married engineer Daniel Lonnbord in the Swedish town of Gavle, with her twin as bridesmaid.
Elin often visits her family in Sweden and by all accounts speaks to her children in Swedish rather than English.
Her mother and sister flew out to the U.S. within days of the revelations about Tiger's infidelities. All have remained tight-lipped, other than to say it is a private matter.
None more so than Elin herself. She has remained publicly silent, just as she has throughout her courtship and five years of marriage.
'She's incredibly hurt by what has gone on, but she's working it out as best she can,' Lindsay Davenport, the former tennis Grand Slam champion and a friend of Elin's, told a network TV news show last week.
'Elin is a strong woman who knows what she wants and who no one plays with,' says an old schoolfriend. 'I don't believe she'll take any c**p from him - she's a tough girl with confidence and a mind of her own.'
In the coming weeks, observers of the Woods' marital rollercoaster would do worse than keep an eye on movements around that vast estate off the coast of Stockholm.
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Sources: Daily Mail, ESPN, MSNBC, NBC Sports, US Weekly Mag., NY Daily News, Access Hollywood, TMZ, WFTV, The Daily Beast, Splash News, EPA, Google Maps
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