Wife penalised for flouting court orders

“What should the court do where one party deliberately flouts orders, refuses to provide disclosure and breaches a series of penal notices whereby, as a result of that default, the court does not have the full picture?”

So began the judgment of Recorder Chandler KC in a recent financial remedies case at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

The case is both an object lesson in how not to respond to a financial remedies application, and an indication of what the court can do if one party fails to cooperate.

If a party fails to comply with court orders requiring them to provide the court with details of their means then the court has two problems: how to proceed without a full picture of the parties’ finances (the court still has to evaluate the parties’ resources and provide a reasoned explanation of its award), and how to penalise the uncooperative party, in this case the wife.

As to the first problem, where a party has failed to give full and frank disclosure, the court may draw inferences as to their means, provided the inferences are properly drawn and reasonable, as Recorder Chandler pointed out.

Thankfully, however, it was not necessary to draw inferences in this case, as the value of two properties, the parties’ main assets, was known, and the husband was able to provide the court with other information.

Recorder Chandler was therefore able to conclude that the net value of the parties’ assets was £131,180.

As to the second problem, Recorder Chandler was satisfied that the wife had engaged in serious litigation misconduct, including filing an incomplete statement of her finances six months late, failing to provide the required disclosure of her means, breaching court orders, and failing to attend various hearings including this, final, hearing. As a result, the case had taken considerably longer, and the husband had incurred increased legal costs.

And Recorder Chandler decided that that litigation misconduct was a factor that he should take into account when deciding how to divide the assets.

There was also one other factor: that one of the two properties had been acquired by the husband prior to the marriage, and was therefore to some extent not a marital asset.

In the light of these two factors Recorder Chandler decided not to divide the assets equally, as he would otherwise have done, and instead divided them as to £87,305 to the husband and £43,875 to the wife.

You can read the full judgment here.

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