KA v MA [2018] WTLR 125
Spring 2018 #171When the parties met in July 2000, they had both been previously married. In the husband’s case, a difficult divorce caused him to set his face against remarriage. He had three sons who spent significant periods of time with their father in a substantial property near Reading (Property G) which had a value of £3.35m. He (together with his brother) had a successful business in international travel and tourism, owning 51% of the shares in the company valued at £30m. The wife, who had no children, had two rented properties with a combined equity of £245,615. By the time she moved into Prope...
AAZ v BBZ [2017] WTLR 765
Autumn 2017 #169AAZ (W) applied for financial orders ancillary to her divorce from BBZ (H). H was the sole director of the second respondent C Ltd, a Cypriot registered company and the trustee of a Bermudian Discretionary Trust (the trust). P Ltd, the third respondent, is a Panamian company which H said was within the trust. P Ltd was said to hold the bulk of the wealth in the case. None of the respondents took any part in the trial. H was in breach of several court orders, including one compelling his personal attendance for the duration of the trial.
H and W had been married since 1993 when the...
J v U; U v J (No. 2) Domicile [2017] EWHC 449 (Fam)
Summer 2017 #168The question before the court was, in the context of divorce proceedings between the petitioner and the respondent, whether either party to the marriage were domiciled in England and Wales. The respondent’s position was that neither were so domiciled, such that the divorce petition of the petitioner should be struck out for want of jurisdiction.
At the time of the proceedings the respondent was 72 years old. He was born in Mumbai, India. He moved to London with his family when he was 13 or 14. He studied in England, married and purchased a property in London, and pursued a ...
Re JS (Disposal of Body) [2016] EWHC 2859 (Fam)
March 2017 #167JS, a 14-year-old, terminally ill girl wanted to pursue cryonic preservation: the speculative and controversial scientific theory of freezing a dead body in the hope that resuscitation and a cure may be possible in the distant future. JS’s parents disagreed about what should happen.
JS’s parents were divorced. For most of JS’s life she had lived with her mother (M) and had no face-to-face contact with her father (F), who was also suffering from cancer, since 2008. M and F had a very bad relationship. M supported JS’s wishes.
At the start of proceedin...
TM v AH [2016] EWHC 572 (Fam)
September 2016 #162The wife applied to join the trustees of the A trust and the B trust as parties to the litigation between the husband and wife. The husband was the settlor of both trusts. At one point husband and wife had been beneficiaries. They have now been irrevocably excluded from benefit. The wife was applying to vary both trusts.
One trust was subject to BVI jurisdiction and the other to the jurisdiction of the Swiss courts. The trustees of each trust were not submitting to the jurisdiction, and were intending to apply to the foreign courts for directions as to what to in respect of the l...
HN v AN [2005] EWHC 2908 (Fam)
June 2016 #160HN (the wife) married AN (the husband) on 30 September 2001. In July 2000 they had chosen a property known as Brooklands Farm (Brooklands) to be their future matrimonial home; it had been purchased in July 2000 for £725,000 by a Bahamian company called WP Ltd, which was owned by a Guernsey trust called the F Trust.
The F Trust was created on behalf of AN’s grandparents by a trust deed dated 19 January 1989. In 1998 various beneficiaries had received distributions in satisfaction of their respective entitlements and from this date only AN remained a beneficiary. In July 2000...
WA v The Executors of the estate [2015] EWHC 2233 (Fam)
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...
Dellal v Dellal & ors [2015] EWHC 907 (Fam)
September 2015 #152The defendants applied for an order summarily terminating the claimant’s application for an order under s10 of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 (the Act) without trial.
J was a well-known, successful property dealer who died on 28 October 2012 worth a large fortune. The claimant (C) was his widow and had married J in 1997 following ten years’ cohabitation. They lived a high lifestyle. J had been married previously and had nine children; two children with C, four children from a previous marriage (D1, D2, D3 and D...
Quan v Bray & ors [2014] EWHC 3340 (Fam)
June 2015 #150In 2000 Li Quan (the wife) created a charity called Save China’s Tigers. In 2002 her husband Stuart Bray (the husband) established a fully discretionary trust in Mauritius called the Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust (CTSAT) – the sole beneficiary of which was the charity.
In July 2012 the wife was removed as a director of the charity and in August 2012 she filed for divorce and made no mention of the trust. On 17 July 2013 she filed an application by way of amendment to her form A seeking a variation of the post nuptial settlement. The core of her case being that CTSAT was ...
AB v CB & anr [2014] EWHC 2998 (Fam)
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...