Author: Matt

I’m sure I’ve said it here before, but I’ll say it again: financial remedy orders are intended to be final. A party is not usually entitled to have a ‘second bite of the cherry’. Accordingly, unless there are grounds for an appeal, the order will usually bring the financial remedy proceedings to a conclusion, save for any action necessary to enforce the order. Anyone who is aggrieved at the contents of a financial remedies order will therefore find it very hard to have the order set aside, and that is especially so if they consented to the terms of the order.

That, however, is what the wife sought to do in the recent case W v H.

The relevant facts of the case (for the purpose of this post – I am simplifying matters to keep the post to a reasonable length) were as follows. The parties were married in 2008 and they have two children. They separated in about July 2013. The husband issued divorce proceedings in that month, and the wife issued her own petition in August 2013. Financial remedy proceedings ensued, agreement was reached, and a consent order was drawn up, setting out the terms of the agreement. The order was approved by the court in May 2015. It provided, amongst other things, for the wife to receive a lump sum of £1.6 million, plus maintenance. The divorce was then finalised, in July 2015.

In September 2018 the wife applied to set aside the consent order, giving four grounds for the application:

1. That she had been subjected to undue influence by the husband;
2. That she had been subjected to duress by the husband;
3. That there had been fraudulent non-disclosure on the part of the husband; and
4. That she had not received proper legal advice on the terms of the agreement.

The application was heard by District Judge Duddridge in the Central Family Court in London. He dealt with the wife’s grounds as follows.

As to point 4, he explained that bad legal advice can never be a ground for setting aside a final financial remedies order, whether made by consent or otherwise. This was because “the interest in finality of decisions outweighed the risk of injustice to a party who had received defective advice”, and also because the consent order would have been approved by the court. The wife’s complaint, however, was not that she had received bad legal advice, but rather that she received no advice about the fairness of the consent order. This was not accepted as a good ground by District Judge Duddridge: the wife was receiving advice from a solicitor at the time of the consent order, and the point about bad advice applied equally to incomplete or insufficient legal advice.

As to points I and 2, District Judge Duddridge found that the wife’s allegations (which I will not detail here) could not amount to duress. They were capable of amounting to undue influence, but did not do so, as her actions revealed that she was acting under her own agency, and were inconsistent with her case that she was compelled by any threats by the husband to agree to the terms he presented her with.

Which leaves point 3, non-disclosure by the husband. Here, District Judge Duddridge found that, before the consent order was approved, the wife was actually aware of most of the matters she claimed that the husband had failed to disclose, and that other matters were of such “doubtful materiality” that he considered that the wife would not succeed in having the consent order set aside on that basis.

There was also the issue of the wife’s delay in making her application. In relation to this, District Judge Duddridge said that he had to consider whether there was a good explanation for the delay. In particular, if the wife was subjected to undue influence or duress, her obligation to act promptly had to be measured by reference to the point in time when she became free from that undue influence or duress. He found that this was likely to be by July 2017, when she sought advice about the implementation of the consent order, but was at the latest by February 2018, almost seven months before she made her application, when she instructed new solicitors. That delay was unexplained and inordinate, and would mean that the application should be struck out, even if, contrary to District Judge Duddridge’s findings as set out above, it had any real prospect of success.

Accordingly, the application was dismissed.

The full judgment can be read here.

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News of Adele’s separation from her husband, Simon Konecki, has dominated the media over the last few days. Whilst, perhaps, given her success, this is no surprise but ti did make me pause and think, how often do any of us ever stop to think what it must be like for those involved?

The breakdown of any relationship, marriage or civil partnership, is one of the most stressful experiences any of us will ever have to endure.

How much harder it must be to live out that experience under the glare of publicity.

Figures vary as to how much Adele’s fortune might be worth, ranging from US$200million to US$180million and £145 million. There is frenetic speculation as to whether Adele will need to agree to share that equally with her husband.

In reality, we will probably never know but the case does raise a number of important and interesting issues.

The first of those is whether the divorce will take place in England and Wales or in California where the couple has lived and where they have property, even though both are British.

If a divorce were to take place in California, there may well have to be an equal division of their net assets.

The choice of jurisdiction is increasingly an issue which couples must deal with immediately after or even before they decide to separate. It is vital that they receive expert advice from lawyers who specialise in international family work.

If a divorce were to take place in this country, it does not necessarily follow that there would be an equal division.

One point that seems to have been overlooked by the media is that the Court would look at the total capital which had been built up during the marriage not just by Adele but by both parties and then decide how that should be divided.

The “starting point” might be equal division but might not be the result.

The reasons for that are various:

Firstly, English law is based on achieving a fair resolution which does not always mean equality.

Secondly, the couple married in 2016 and appear to have separated towards the end of 2018. Before they married, they had been together for 4 or 5 years.

A relationship of 7 years or so is quite substantially less than the average length of a marriage in this country which is between 11 and 12 years. That might be a reason why an equal division would not be fair.

Perhaps the most important reason why an equal division would not be fair is because of the enormous success which Adele has had, very largely through her own efforts.

She may well be able to successfully suggest that she has made such a special or “stellar” contribution building up a substantial wealth in a very short period of time through her own talent and ability that an equal division would simply not be fair.

Finally, the situation in which Adele and her husband now find themselves could quite easily have been avoided if they had entered into a prenuptial agreement. Such an agreement could have been drafted so it was binding no matter where the couple lived during the marriage and no matter where they might choose to get divorced.

It would set out clearly what they each wished to happen in the event of a separation and divorce.

Prenuptial agreements have a growing status under English law, although judges are not automatically bound to enforce them. They do carry an enormous amount of weight. Apart from setting out what the couple would like to happen regarding their finances and the arrangements for any children they may have.

Graham Coy, London Chancery Lane, [email protected]

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