The Family Court has ruled on an application for financial remedies in a case which involved a range of assets and was characterised by animosity and dispute.
The husband and wife had married in Cyprus in 2008 and subsequently lived in London. They separated in June 2022 and divorce proceedings were commenced the following month. The husband had worked in IT until about 2018, since when he had been involved in a family-owned hotel. The wife’s father, who died in 2021, had had significant wealth.
In the Court’s view, both the husband and the wife had inflated views of the other’s family wealth. The Court observed that it treated the evidence of both parties with some caution and looked for corroborating evidence where possible.
The Court found that a rental property the husband had been given by his mother was non-matrimonial. However, a mortgage had been taken out on it and the funds had been used to meet matrimonial outgoings. The mortgage and the extent of the property that secured it were thus matrimonial, with the balance remaining non-matrimonial.
The husband’s parents had sold the hotel to him and his sister. Although the purchase had largely been paid for using money his parents had lent to him and his sister, it had also been funded via commercial loans, which had been reduced by his work for the business during the marriage. His interest in the business was therefore partly matrimonial. The loans from his parents were unlikely to be repaid and should be excluded from his liabilities in the schedule of assets. However, loans from a friend of his and two other family members would be expected to be repaid when the hotel business was sold.
The Court was satisfied that a debt to a company owned the wife’s father had been paid in full and was no longer a liability of the husband and wife. There was in any case little prospect of the company pursuing the debt as it had been dissolved following the death of the wife’s father.
In the Court’s view, the wife’s disclosure in respect of her inheritance from her father had been ‘wholly inadequate’, despite it being non-matrimonial and only relevant to considering her needs. Although a direction had been made for the full extent of her father’s estate to be set out, no such report was ever produced. What had emerged was ‘piecemeal disclosure’ of assets in various jurisdictions.
Valuing the matrimonial assets at £1.47 million, the husband’s assets at £756,000 and the wife’s assets at £955,000, the Court ruled that the matrimonial assets should be divided equally and each party should retain their non-matrimonial assets. Combined with their capacity to earn an income, this would be sufficient to meet their needs. The equity in the former matrimonial home would be divided 63:37 per cent in the wife’s favour to compensate for the fact that the husband would, in practice, retain his interest in the hotel business.