UPDATE: Non-Disclosure in Financial Remedy Proceedings

In November 2012, I wrote about Non-Disclosure inFinancial Remedy Proceedings. The question I was posing was whether the family courts were doing enough to discourage parties in financial remedy proceedings from failing to provide financial disclosure. The cases I looked at, which included Young v Young [2013] EWHC 34 (Fam), Petrodel Resources Ltd& Ors v Prest & Ors involved the Courts having to make decisions in contested hearings. Two recent decisions of the Supreme Court look at what the correct approach is when a settlement is reached outside of court and non-disclosure is discovered at a later date.

In my previous post I set out the basis for the obligation to provide full and frank disclosure and set out some of the consequences for those parties who refused to comply:

The duty to provide full and frank disclosure is an inherent part of UK family law and is set out in the pre-action protocol annexed to Practice Direction 9A – Application for a Financial Remedy of the FPR 2010.  If a party fails to provide such disclosure, particularly if they have been specifically ordered to do so by the Court, then in addition to adverse inferences being drawn, that party could also face imprisonment, a fine, a costs order against them, inability to proceed with their application (Hadkinson Orders) or they might even face criminal consequences under the Fraud Act 2006.

The Supreme Court’s decisions in Sharland v Sharland [2015] UKSC 60 and Gohil v Gohil [2015]UKSC 61, confirms that there is a further consequence to non-disclosure. Both cases involved wives who had given up their entitlement to a full hearing of their financial claims and had instead reached an agreement with their respective husbands as to how much they would receive. It later emerged that both husbands had fraudulently withheld information that was relevant to their financial position at the time those agreements were reached and considered by the Court. In both cases the Supreme Court ruled that the original orders should be set aside.

The cases also confirmed that the duty to provide full, frank and honest disclosure is not only central to any agreement being valid but is a duty owed to the Court which cannot be eroded or vitiated by agreement or subsequent events.

In any event, it would seem that the massage from the Supreme Court is clear. Non-disclosure will not be tolerated in financial remedy proceedings!

UPDATE: Hey, where did my divorce go? Supreme Court judgment in Wyatt v Vince

TIMELINE: click on image to enlarge

The Supreme Court has released its decision in the case of Wyatt v Vince [2015] UKSC 14 following the wife's appeal against the decision of the Court of Appeal to strike out her financial remedy claim which was brought 20 years after the parties divorced.

In a previous post on this blog, which sets out the facts of the case and provides a timeline of events, I looked briefly at the Court of Appeal's decision and specifically focused on the issue of retaining client documents in circumstances where there is no limitation period.

Whilst the Supreme Court allowed the appeal, it should be noted that this is in relation to the interpretation and application of the law, specifically Rule 4.4(1)(a) and (b) of the Family Procedure Rules 2010, and not in relation to the merits of the wife's case.

With a case like this with such extreme and unusual facts, and with issues that generate such strong emotions and opinion, there can be a tendency for the media to get carried away. Examples of some of the headline over the last two days are set out below: 

"Former New Age traveller wins right to cash he made 10 years after they divorced" from The Metro 11 March 2015

"Wife wins right to ex-husband's millions - 30 years after they separate" from www.bestdaily.co.uk

"Millionaire tycoon Dale Vince faces having to buy ex-wife a home 23 years after they divorced" from London Evening Standard

What the Supreme Court found:

The Supreme Court found that the Court of Appeal had exercised a power to strike out a financial claim on divorce based on a summary assessment of the merits of the claim when such power does not exist in family proceedings. Such a power does exist in civil proceedings in order to prevent people being able to pursue un-meritorious claims at an early stage. The Court of Appeal judges had reasoned that an equivalent power must also exist in the FPR notwithstanding the fact that it was not explicitly stated. The Supreme Court found that the omission in the FPR was deliberate citing the differing nature of a claim arising from a civil or commercial relationship and that of a claim arising from the breakdown of a marriage which could have financial consequences for an ex-spouse years after the marriage particularly when there are children involved.

What the Supreme Court did not find:

The Supreme Court did not find that Kathleen Wyatt was entitled to a share of Dale Vince's millions but rather that she is entitled to have her claim heard before the Court with due consideration to all the factors set out in section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, of which the considerable delay between the divorce and the claim will be relevant as will the fact that the husband made his money after the parties separated. It may be that, following such an exercise, the High Court may decide that Katheen Wyatt should be entitled to receive something from Dale Vince but that is yet to be seen and is by no means a foregone conclusion.

Whilst there may be some concern about people bringing un-meritorious claims against their former spouses years after they have untied the knot, surely it is of equal importance to consider dealing with a couple's financial claims sooner rather than later so that such issue can be avoided in the future? After all, it was open to Dale Vince to ask the Courts to determine his ex-wife's claim at any time over the last three decades but he did not do so.

It remains the case that there is no limitation period on financial claims on divorce. If the claims are not addressed and dismissed they will remain open. That is the position in law which the Supreme Court has made clear this week.

Please make any comments below.

Shooting Tigers in a Barrell: Or what not to do with a draft judgment?

Mr Justice Coleridge has ruled on a preliminary issue in financial remedy proceedings which involves a trust set up to protect tigers in China. The case is Quan v Bray [2014] EWHC 3340 (Fam) and the judgment can be found here. Chinese Tigers South Africa Trust was set up in 2002 through the efforts of wife, Li Quan, and husband, William Bray, working together with the Chinese government and various other parties. The couple were initially devoted to the plight of tigers in China and poured most of their matrimonial funds into the project. The relationship broke down and divorce and financial proceedings were issued by the wife. The wife then claimed that the purpose of the trust was not only to save tigers but also to support the couple financially. She argued that the trust, which held nearly £25m of funds, was effectively a post nuptial settlement which could be taken into account in the financial remedy proceedings.

The husband objected, as did the trust and the other interested parties. No doubt the tigers would have had something to say about this as well! Mr Justice Coleridge’s judgment provides guidance on the treatment of post nuptial settlements and in particular settlements that might not have been nuptial in nature when they were set up but which have become nuptial due to the intentions of the parties and actual use of funds from the trust. After hearing the parties in December 2012 and again in June/July 2013 in what totalled over three weeks of Court time, Coleridge found against the wife and concluded that the trust was not nuptial in nature and that there had been no intention for the parties to benefit from the trust.

As is not uncommon, Coleridge J provided his judgment to the parties in draft form on 24 July 2014 and gave the parties until 05 September 2014 to come back to him with any minor or typing amendments before the judgment was to be formally handed down. This gave the wife 5 weeks review the judgment and rather than just looking for spelling mistakes the wife used this time to prepare a 43 page “Barrell” application attacking all of Coleridge J’s findings and conclusions and asking for the judgment to be re-written.

What is a Barrell Application?

The term Barrell Application derives from the case of Re Barrell Enterprises [1972] 3 All ER 631 in which it was established that, whilst there was jurisdiction to alter a judgment prior to the judgment being sealed, it should only be done in exceptional circumstances. This test was considered and developed by the Supreme Court in L and B (Children) [2013] UKSC 8 (20 February 2013) which involved another family case where the judge changed her judgment of her own volition after it had been communicated to the parties but before it was sealed (as opposed to being asked to do so by the parties). The Supreme Court indicated that in exercising discretion when faced with such an application the Court should be guided by the overriding objective to deal with the case justly and consider the specific circumstances of each case. Barrell applications are not common and successful Barrell applications are ever rarer. Even in Barrell the judge did alter the wording of his judgment but not the overall decision. 

As Coleridge J puts it in the postscript to his judgment in Quan v Bray a Barrell application should only be used “where some particular fact or evidence has obviously been omitted, overlooked or has changed since the hearing”. He went on to clarify that it “does not afford a party the right to invite the court to start again from scratch and "have another go" at finding for them based on an entire re-arguing of the case.”

So was the wife right to try proceed with the Barrell application and in doing so exploring all options to have her case considered, or did she cross a line and misuse the legal application? Coleridge J was certainly not convinced and in fact found that the additional submissions, which totalled 99 pages once the other parties had had the opportunity to respond, only fortified his original findings and conclusions. It would seem that the appropriate avenue for the wife would be either to accept Coleridge’s conclusions or appeal.

Hey, where did my divorce go? Some alternative thoughts on Vince v Wyatt

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Word count: 694

Time to read: 4 minutes 

The case of Vince v Wyatt [2013] EWCA Civ 495 was heard at the Court of Appeal in May 2013 and related to an application for a financial remedy which was brought by the Wife 27 years after the parties separated and 19 years after decree absolute was granted. At the end of their relatively short relationship neither party had any assets or significant income to speak of, and the Court noted that both had embraced a “New Age” lifestyle.  Over the course of the next three decades the parties’ financial lives had little to do with the other save for a couple of child maintenance applications by the Wife.  Both parties started new relationships, the children of the family grew up and reached maturity and the Husband launched a business recycling discarded materials into wind turbines.  That business, to everyone’s surprise, went on to be worth millions.

Given this timeline, it is difficult not to look at the Wife’s application with a degree of cynicism particularly when she also issued an A v A application to the tune of £125,000 for the Husband to pay her legal fees so that she could pay her lawyers to bring the claim against him. The Husband, perhaps understandably, issued an application to have the Wife’s claim struck out under the seldom used Family Procedure Rule 4.4(1). Whilst he was not successful initially the Court of Appeal allowed his appeal on the basis that the first instance judge had construed the rule too narrowly.  The Wife’s claim made it no further.

The analysis of Rule 4.4(1), and its relationship with its counterpart in the Civil Procedure Rules 3.4(2), is undoubtedly the most valuable point which practitioners can take away from this case and will be of particular use when analysing claims which involve a significant delay between separation/divorce and the application for a financial remedy, despite the extremely unusual circumstances of this case.  Among those unusual circumstances was the fact that there remained only one piece of documentation relating to the original divorce proceedings, the decree absolute, which the court was required by law to keep a copy of.

At the time of the divorce, both parties had instructed solicitors (the Wife actually consulted with solicitors on no less than 5 different occasions between 1984 and 2011) but none had retained their files.  It was therefore not possible to know for sure whether the Wife was even entitled to bring a financial claim or whether any such claim had been dealt with and dismissed, although the trial judge did acknowledge that this scenario was unlikely given the standard practice to include such an application in the petition and the lack of financial assets at the time of the divorce.

Whether a firm retains the client’s files and for how long will depend on the agreement made with the client (who is the legal owner of the files) which is usually made at the point of engagement.  If no agreement is made the SRA’s guidance on the retention of client files suggests that firm keep in mind any statutory limitation period which may arise out of the files when deciding how long to keep them.  Given that there is no limitation period for a claim for a financial remedy under the Matrimonial Cases Act 1973, how long should firms who practice family law keep their client’s files for?  After all, file storage is not cheap and even digital data will degrade over time.  The court certainly cannot be expected to keep a complete file for every divorce, they have enough trouble keeping track of the active cases let alone managing decades of historical files (plus who would meet the cost?)  Another solution, which would have solved this issue in the Vince v Wyatt case, would be to record the status of any financial claim on the Decree Absolute. Surely there is space for an extra sentence or two setting out whether any financial claims had been issued and/or dismissed? Any other suggestions?

A copy of the judgement for Vince v Wyatt can be found here and an analysis of the application of Rule 4.4(1) can be found here.

UPDATE: Supreme Court Hands Down Judgment in Prest

Supreme Court Unanimously Decides in Wife's Favour

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has today delivered its decision in the case of Prest v Petrodel Ltd & Others, finding that, for the purposes of section 24(1)(a) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, the husband was indeed "entitled" to various properties which are held within a corporate structure and which had formed part of the wife's award at first instance. It is a huge decision, particularly for big money divorce cases, and one which many people may be surprised at following the judgement of Lord Justice Rimer at the Court of Appeal.  The judgement and summary press release can be found here and previous discussions on this topic, including on the husbands failure to provide adequate disclosure can be found here and on Chambers Women in Law Blog here.

No doubt this is a decision which will generate a huge amount of debate and is arguably as significant a family law decision as Jones v Kernott (cohabitation) and Radmacher v Granatino (pre-nuptial agreements).

UPDATE: Supreme Court Decision in Prest

Decision due in Big Money Divorce

The family law world is anxiously waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision in Petrodel Ltd & Or v Prest which could mean a significant change to the way big money divorce cases are dealt with in this country, particularly when there are international assets and/or poor financial disclosure.  For some further thoughts and details of the case, please see my guest post on Chambers Women’s in Law Blog at http://womeninlaw.chambersandpartners.com/?p=2230.