Kirk Stevens expected to be financially secure after he and his live-in girlfriend won a £10,000 a month for 30 years lottery.
Instead, he’s now hurt and angry after Laura Hoyle, 40, apparently ditched him, moved into a £500,000 new-build house and cut him off from the ‘allowance’ she was giving him from the jackpot worth a total of £3.6 million.
She left with the cash despite the win coming after Kirk, 39, told her to pay £25 a week into the lotto for them instead of paying her own share of the rent fee while they lived together.
The couple made headlines in March 2021 when they won the Lotto’s Set For Life prize.
They both announced after they posed with a lottery cheque that was written out in both their names they were setting up a ghost-hunting business.
Kirk, a Rolls-Royce engineer met Laura in 2018 through a friend and they wasted no time, with Laura quickly moving into his £240,000 three-bedroom detached home in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.
Kirk added he didn’t ask for a ‘penny’ in rent when she offered to contribute, and said about the lottery deal he came up with instead: ‘She spent around £25 a week and told me that if we won, we would both live it up.’
Laura continued to play the lottery from her account after she landed a job with delivery firm Hermes – then ignored a message from Lotto bosses telling her she had won as she feared it was only going to be a £5 prize.
When she realised the size of the jackpot, she immediately quit her job and bought a Porsche Cayenne.
Speaking with The Sun, Friday August 26, exactly 18 months after their jackpot jubilation, Kirk said:
”Laura had told me we’d live the life of Riley if we won. Now she’s gone. She pulled the plug and took everything. She even wants our two dogs.’
Kirk, who bought a ring and planned to marry Laura said they went on to ‘semi-share’ the money and had plans to ‘buy properties together and build an empire’.
Kirk said Laura had promised to change her name by deed poll but she wasn’t interested in marrying again as she had already been married before.
Speaking about when she started to change, Kirk said: ‘I felt Laura was reluctant to commit and that the money was part of the problem.’
He added he never felt secure enough to ditch his day job, with Laura only giving him £1,000 a month from the winnings, which she said she considered as ‘rent money’
Even though the couple have put down a deposit on a new-build £500,000 home near Kirk’s, he said he felt she became ‘snobbish and superior’ and felt bigger than life after getting money.
In June 2022 she broke up with him after they attended a friend’s wedding in Bristol, and when the house they were going to buy together was ready, Laura moved in alone and stopped paying him the £1,000 a month.
Kirk said: ‘She just told me she didn’t want to be with me anymore. Our relationship had gone downhill but I wasn’t expecting the split.’
The SUN UK reports that despite Kirk and Laura’s names being jointly emblazoned on a winner’s cheque, all Lotto wins are paid to an individual, and the winning account used was Laura’s.
Kirk pleaded: ‘I just want 10%. If she continues to pay me £1,000 a month, I’ll happily walk away. She won’t even notice it.’
