Nicola Wilburn-Shaw looks at the role of the forensic accountant in financial remedy proceedings, including potential issues that may be explored and possible solutions Practitioners should be alive to the relevance of Covid-19 and experts will most certainly, and indeed should, now incorporate a valuation in relation to both the pre and post Covid-19 trading …
Continue reading "Forensic experts: In-depth analysis"
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Moji Sobowale looks at the approach to short marriage cases, in particular as to needs in the context of standard of living ‘The fact that a marriage has been short will unavoidably affect the quantum of the financial fruits that the partnership has been able to produce.’ Although marriage is a contract, it is not …
Continue reading "Short Marriage: The lottery of needs"
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Joanne Green sets out the factors that will be taken into account by the court where a marriage is short, and looks to case law for the principles applied ‘Where pre-acquired non-matrimonial assets have been intermingled with matrimonial assets, the non-matrimonial element is more likely to be excluded from the assets that are to be …
Continue reading "Short Marriages: Brief encounter"
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Fiona Turner considers whether inherited wealth is more likely to result in a departure from equality than earned wealth ‘Assuming the parties’ needs are met, the courts may distinguish between different categories of non-matrimonial property.’ Parties on divorce usually have a strong claim to share in the matrimonial property that has been built up during …
Continue reading "Non-Matrimonial Assets: Further distinction"
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Paula Butterworth and Sohinni Sanghvi provide an overview of the court’s powers to make financial orders and the significance of the timing of the decree nisi ‘If the court purports to make an order, or provides for a judgment to take effect prior to decree nisi, the resulting order will be a nullity and cannot …
Continue reading "Financial Provision: All in order"
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Vanessa McMurtrie examines the lessons to be learnt from the outcome in the long-running case of Wyatt v Vince ‘Good practice means we should always be looking for, and encouraging our clients to consider, the possibility of compromise.’ If ever there was a good example of why divorcees of modest means should agree a clean-break …
Continue reading "Financial Provision: An open door"
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | October 2015 # 153Having entered into a pre-nuptial agreement, WA (‘the wife’) married HA (‘the husband’) in 1997. The wife was an heiress and the husband brought modest assets of his own to the marriage. They kept their finances separate. The couple and their three children lived on a very large estate (‘the Z estate’) during the marriage and restored it using the wife’s finances.
The marriage broke down in 2014. Both the wife and husband instructed expert family lawyers which supported the brokerage of an agreement. Following disclosure of their respective gross and net incomes, it was agreed tha...
Frances Bailey considers the courts’ approach where a party’s conduct during proceedings is in issue ‘An analysis of any add-back argument must also include an analysis of what both parties have spent and that the argument must be analysed in context.’ As ever, the law reports are seemingly full of cases where one party’s approach …
Continue reading "Litigation Conduct: Drawing inferences"
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In the conclusion to a two-part consideration, Frances Bailey and Nikki Saxton consider definitions of cohabitation and settlement and drafting options A payee must be aware that regardless of the means of their new partner, they will have no claim personally against their cohabitant for financial support The first part of this article (‘Passing the …
Continue reading "Periodical Payments: Risk assessment"
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | April 2012 #118The parties separated after a relationship of approximately 25 years and the wife commenced divorce proceedings (decree nisi being pronounced in October 2010). They had one child who was aged 18 (the husband had three children by his first marriage). The husband was aged 66 and the wife 54.
The total wealth was in the region of £21-£24m (all but approximately £1m was in the husband’s name). The source of the husband’s wealth was a business that his father bought shortly after the second world war, which floated in the 1950s and sold in the late 1980s. From his father, the husband ...
