Depending on who you listen to or read, Guy Ritchie may look to get up to $260 million in any divorce settlement with his wife Madonna, or he may try to get nothing and live off his own fortune,  variously estimated at anywhere between $30-50 million.

When big celebrity divorces are announced, as Ritchie and Madonna’s was on Wednesday, a frenzied bout of speculation by media and lawyers alike tends to follow, and more often than not it ends up being a load of rubbish.

You only have to look back to the divorce between Paul McCartney and Heather Mills to see how wide of the mark the theories generally are. Some lawyers were confidently predicting McCartney would have to pay out $350 million to Mills. (It is only fair to point out that one such expert was quoted by none other than Reuters at the time.) The actual sum? Less than $50 million.

Still, perhaps it is true that the bigger the amount in the headline, the more copies a newspaper sells. Surely the press wouldn’t be so cynical?

In the two high-profile divorces captivating New York, model Christie Brinkley has this advice for Cynthia Rodriguez, wife of Yankees baseball star Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez: hire my lawyer.

It was the fourth day in the widely-watched divorce and child custody trial between Brinkley, 54, and Peter Cook, 49. Psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Herman tesitifed that Brinkley should get custody of their two kids – 13-year-old Jack and 10-year-old Sailor Lee — because Cook displayed poor judgment when he engaged in an extra-marital affair with a teenager, according to various news reports.

But Herman took Brinkley to task, too, for her parenting and for her choices in men — she’s had three other husbands before Cook, including singer Billy Joel.

Still, in a news conference after Tuesday’s court proceedings, Brinkley smiled when she was asked for a reaction to Herman’s determination on custody. ”I hope that the judge agrees with him (Herman). I just have to wait for him to make his decision.” Asked later if she had advice for Cynthia Rodriguez, Brinkley smiled again and said: “Yes, yes. I think that the best advice I could give Ms. Rodriguez is to hire Bob Cohen,” who is Brinkley’s lawyer. 

One day earlier, Cynthia Rodriguez filed for divorce from her husband citing “extra marital affairs and other marital misconduct.” That’s them in happier days in the picture at left.

In New York, where Rodriguez is a major sports star, news reports circulated last week that the professional baseball player was having an affair with pop singer Madonna, who is married to film director Guy Ritchie. On Sunday this week, Madonna strongly denied those rumors.