FORMER Premier League winning team captain Wes Morgan hid assets and income to avoid paying child support to the mothers of two of his children, the Court of Appeal heard.
The ex-Leicester City idol – whose team famously won the Premier League against all odds 10 years ago in 2016 – is accused by two former partners of “deliberately diverting” money to qualify for a nil rate of child support.
Wes Morgan hid assets and income to avoid paying child support to the mothers of two of his children, the Court of Appeal heard Credit: AFP
Karla Morrell, who had a son with Morgan, outside the High Court
Leyla Antoniou and Karla Morrell, who separately had relationships with Morgan and each had a son with him, argued that he misled the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) after he stopped playing professional football in 2021, telling them he was unemployed.
The court heard he had money in a “profitable” service company called WM5, rental properties and a house in Portugal which should have been declared as “qualifying assets” – all amounting to around £5mln.
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A judge ruled in March 2025 that Morgan, 42, had exceeded the annual £156,000 CMS cap from 2021 to 2024, the period he claimed he was unemployed.
It came after Morgan was probed in October 2003 by the CMS’s financial investigation unit for alleged “misrepresentation” of his income and assets.
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But father-of-four Morgan, who has two other children with wife Sheneen Fisher, who he married in 2021, contested this at an appeal court hearing in London on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The judge Lord Justice Stephen Cobb lifted reporting restrictions naming the ex-footballer and his two former partners.
The court heard Ms Antoniou, 41, has a 12-year-old son from her previous relationship with Morgan.
And Ms Morrell, 35, has an eight-year-old son from her previous relationship with him.
Both women claim Morgan owes them substantial money from the period when the CMS rated him nil for child support.
Nicholas Wilkinson KC, representing Ms Antoniou, told the court that Morgan did not “accurately represent his true financial position” to the CMS and only provided “partial information” about his income.
He told the court Morgan had received around £3mln a year as a Premier League player and even though he retired in 2021, he still received income.
He said: “Mr Morgan knew that he continued to receive weekly income.
“While his retirement was foreseeable, it does not support an argument that a child support order should have ceased to exist altogether.”
Meanwhile, Jody Atkinson, representing Morrell, claimed that Morgan “diverted his income” elsewhere to avoid paying.
He said: “Mr Morgan did not tell the Child Support Maintenance Service about his property rent, or his company, or his assets.
“Instead it fell to the mother (Morrell) to point out these things.”
He added: “She did not accept that the father was unemployed especially when her children saw him on television doing punditry.”
Despite claiming he was unemployed after retiring, he is understood to have also earned income from punditry work for Sky Sports and BBC Sport, and as a scout for his boyhood club and Premier League team Nottingham Forest.
Morgan’s barrister Simon Charles said the claims against him were nothing other than “a naked attempt to subvert” child support schemes.
He said: “When he retired from professional football, this led to a drastic reduction in his income.”
Mr Charles pointed to a judgement in Morgan’s favour in earlier proceedings which stated £3,000 a month payments may not be “sustainable” in his retirement.
Mr Charles added that there was a “power imbalance” between Morgan as a “wealthy player” and “less wealthy parents” but that the mums should become “financially independent”.
Speaking about the mums, he added: “They should be careful what they wish for.”
The legal battle has been ongoing since 2021 when Morgan retired from football and told the CMS he was unemployed.
The CMS made an initial decision to stop child support payments to the mothers.
Following a tribunal’s decision to reverse that, one judge in the case of Ms Antoniou said the CMS’s decision to stop payments in 2021 did not kill her previous court order, meaning her previous payments should continue.
But a different judge in the case of Ms Morrell ruled that the CMS’ decision to stop payments permanently killed her court order, meaning she was not owed any more payments.
Morgan appealed against the judge’s decision in Ms Antoniou’s case, while Ms Morrell appealed a previous judge’s decision to stop her payments.
Both appeals were heard together.
