Charles Eastwood discusses when it may be fair for a party to use capital awarded following the application of the sharing principle to generate income ‘The court will always need to look at all the relevant circumstances of each case when deciding whether and how a party should fairly be using their free capital to …
Continue reading "Financial provision: Sharing the burden"
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Caroline Holley examines dependence, independence and variation in the context of joint lives maintenance orders ‘It has become common practice for a financial remedy order to include a recital indicating the timeframe within which it is intended that a spouse will return to work, or a commitment by them to endeavour to maximise their earning …
Continue reading "Periodical Payments: For better, for worse"
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Daniel Sanders considers the courts’ approach to variation applications and the limited circumstances in which such an application is likely to succeed ‘A clear and highly compelling change in circumstances must have arisen in order to justify variation of the terms of the original maintenance order, whether as to quantum or term.’ For many clients …
Continue reading "Variation: Challenging odds"
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | January/February 2015 #146This was an application for ancillary relief following the wife’s divorce petition of October 2012, upon which decree nisi was pronounced on 17 April 2013. At the time of these proceedings the wife was 44 years of age, and the husband was 41. On paper, the husband had almost no assets and a modest income. However, the husband came from a family of great wealth with substantial lands in Pembrokeshire which they had owned for generations. His financial security was therefore absolutely assured.
The wife and the husband had first met in 1999. They had married in February 200...
Ellie Foster examines the impact of changed circumstances on applications for variation of periodical payments ‘It is critical to advise the payer of their ongoing vulnerability for capitalisation; it is an obvious way for the court to achieve the holy grail of a clean break.’ There is life after divorce and any ongoing financial relationship …
Continue reading "Periodical Payments: Seeking closure"
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In the conclusion to a two-part analysis of periodical payments, Sonny Patel discusses the courts’ approach to the duration of orders ‘Cohabitation with a new partner by the payee will not automatically terminate a joint lives maintenance order but the new partner’s means and capacity to contribute to the payee’s household should be assessed and …
Continue reading "Periodical Payments: Time check"
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Huw Miles looks at the finality of orders and why and how financial orders may be varied ‘Grocholewska-Mullins is an example of a living and variable order going through varying states of health, with a judge attempting to use the resources now available to achieve a belated clean break.’ When a court makes a financial …
Continue reading "Capitalised Maintenance: Last orders?"
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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 ...
