Divorce solicitors have welcimed a recent decision of the Court of Appeal clarifying the position of wealthy women facing court orders in relation to the division of finances on the breakdown of marriage.  

In this case the wife had inherited considerable assets prior to meeting the husband.   At the time of their meeting the husband, a foreigner working in a coffee bar, was virtually penniless.  

After several years of marriage the wife claimed that she had expended about four-fifths of her inheritance, not only on the day to day living expenses of the couple, but also in giving financial assistance to several different members of the husband’s family. 

The court found that during about five years of the 12 year marriage neither had taken up regular employment.   The wife had purchased the matrimonial home and, eventually, she paid to set the husband up in a business which turned out to be lucrative.  After that, however, the marriage ran into difficulties and the couple decided to divorce.  

Their case was first heard by  a District Judge who took the view that the assets should be equally divided between husband and wife, despite the major contributions made by the wife.

Her first appeal, to a single Circuit Judge, met with failure.   The judge held that the facts of the case did not merit any departure from ‘the yardstick of equality’.  Undeterred by this, the wife decided to take her case to the Court of Appeal, where the judges took rather a different view.

They decided that, taking into account the history of the wife’s financial contributions, it would be manifestly unfair to approach the division of the assets on the basis of equal shares.  So the wife’s appeal succeeded - but only after considerable expenditure on the legal fees connected with the two appeals.

What this case demonstrates is that the alleged ‘yardstick of equality’ is far from being a rule which applies in every set of circumstances. It doesn’t make it any easier, though, for lawyers to predict the outcome of financial hearings with any confidence.  

 It has taken years, and cost a great deal of money, to arrive at a result which most people would think only fair.

It underlines the absolute necessity for divorcing couples to explore every possibility of trying to reach agreement about finances, rather than wasting money on expensive court hearings.