Thorpe J, having conducted a detailed analysis of the evidence, concluded ‘that the husband has, in my judgment, so obfuscated his financial position and services that it is quite impossible for this court to be sure as to what he has now in residue.’ Whilst there ‘may well be reality’ and ‘a genuine ingredient’ in aspects of the husband’s case, the approach emphasised in J v J meant that: ‘if (the husband) has conducted his affairs throughout the marriage in such a covert fashion as to relieve him of the ordinary obligations of citizenship to support the State through tax contribution, if he has conducted these proceedings in a vain endeavour to maintain that camouflage, if in consequence the obscurity of my final vision results in an order that is unfair to him it is better that than that I should be drawn into making an order that is unfair to the wife. If at the end of this case he feels that the lump sum that I order is unfair in reflection of his present retrenchment then he should remember that he has brought that consequences upon himself by the fashion in which he has chosen to arrange his affairs over the course of the last decade, coupled with the fashion in which he has chosen to conduct these proceedings.’ and: If it were left to me in a vacuum to decide what to do for this wife in this case, I would find it a difficult decision and one without any apparent signposts’. However, he was ‘content to make the order’ sought by the wife, namely for a lump sum of pounds 150,000, which had not been ‘attacked by (counsel for the husband) as being in any sense excessive’.
Judges:
Thorpe J
Citations:
[1994] 1 FLR 359
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Ben Hashem v Ali Shayif and Another FD 22-Sep-2008
The court was asked to pierce the veil of incorporation of a company in the course of ancillary relief proceedings in a divorce. H had failed to co-operate with the court.
After a comprehensive review of all the authorities, Munby J said: ‘The . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Family, Insolvency
Updated: 07 December 2022; Ref: scu.652150