You know, it sounded too good to be true.

In 2000, a few weeks before Guy Ritchie and Madonna tied the knot, the groom promised he wouldn’t touch a cent of Madge’s fortune if the marriage sputtered out. He even offered to make child-support payments to her, even though she was the one with all the money.

Yet two months ago, the Material Girl was calling her hubby a “gold-digger” and insisting that he was looking to cash in. Whereupon Guy fired back, saying through a spokesman that he wanted “not one penny” of her estimated  £300 million fortune.

And we all said: “Awwwww… finally, a divorcing star who’s not just in it for the money!”

Oops.

Breaking on the wires at this hour:

The pop queen and the film director were granted a divorce last month, and some reports around the time claimed that Ritchie was walking away without a penny of Madonna’s fortune, estimated at £300 million.

However, a source close to the matter said today that they believed Ritchie would be receiving between 60 and 70 million dollars (£40 million to £47 million) in cash and property which included the couple’s country retreat Ashcombe House in Wiltshire.

A source close to Madonna’s camp was also quoted in the Evening Standard, describing it as “one of the biggest celebrity divorce settlements”.

“You can imagine how Madonna feels,” the source told the newspaper. “She has been very generous to him. It isn’t about being acrimonious. It is just so inaccurate and unfair that people believe he walked away with nothing.”

One source, presumably one of Madonna’s back-up dancers, tells The Evening Standard:

“He is not like some monk running around saying he doesn’t want money. You don’t get money unless you ask for it. And he asked for it. This is one of the biggest celebrity divorce settlements. It is said she is being horrible to him but he is hardly poor Guy.”

To be fair, I suppose Guy wasn’t technically lying when he said he wanted “not one penny” of his wife’s fortune. He didn’t want one penny. He wanted between 6 and 7 billion pennies.

Then again, maybe that’s the equivalent of a pain-and-suffering jury award for having to listen to “American Life” more than the rest of us.