In a recent ruling on a wife’s application for a financial remedy order, the Family Court accepted that her caring responsibilities for the couple’s son justified a departure from the sharing principle. The Court handed down its judgment as an indication of outcome, being unable to make a financial remedy order because decree nisi had not been pronounced.
The husband and wife, aged 58 and 57, had been married for 12 years before separating in 2019. They had an 18-year-old son who had significant disabilities and was unlikely ever to live independently.
Ruling on the wife’s financial remedies application, the Court noted that the couple were not significantly apart in terms of the outcome of the case. It was agreed that the family home, in which the husband continued to live, could be sold to his son from a previous relationship, and that the wife should receive 70 per cent of the available assets.
The Court rejected the husband’s claims that the wife had retained funds she had inherited from her father, or that she would receive any further inheritance. It also rejected his claims that she was generating additional income from various businesses, finding that they were small businesses run largely from her home and that the reality of her day-to-day life was that she was a carer for their son.
The family home had been owned by the husband’s family for several decades prior to the couple’s marriage, and the husband had bought it from his mother before the couple met. However, it had served as the couple’s home during the marriage and was adapted to meet their son’s needs, and was clearly now a matrimonial asset.
The Court considered that the wife had no significant earning capacity in view of her role as carer for their son. While the husband was not currently working, he had previously worked as a HGV driver, earning £36,500 per year. Given his age, however, he was unlikely to be able to maintain that level of earnings indefinitely.
The Court had no doubt that the wife’s financial needs were significantly greater than the husband’s given her caring responsibilities for their son, and that those needs justified a significant departure from equal sharing of the matrimonial assets. While the couple had both suggested a 70:30 split of the matrimonial assets, each had done so based on different figures, so the Court considered what division would be appropriate. If the husband’s son purchased the family home, there would be £283,593 to be divided after payment of the mortgage and other debts. Taking into account the wife’s costs and the fact that she would likely be living in rented accommodation for the foreseeable future, the Court found that there should be a slight further adjustment in the wife’s favour so that she would receive 73 per cent of the assets and the husband 27 per cent.
Given that it could not make a substantive order absent a decree nisi, the Court ordered that the case be listed for a mention on the first available date after pronouncement of decree nisi.
