From the comment pages of The Independent, 03/07/09.

No longer the capital of divorce

By Marilyn Stowe

Yesterday, I thought about placing a bet on the outcome of the Radmacher v Granatino case. I would have backed the outside chance that the Court of Appeal would uphold the pre-nuptial agreement, even with all the odds stacked against me.

English law doesn’t automatically recognise such agreements. It is about needs, obligations and distributing assets and income fairly. Yet, I thought, times have changed. We are living in a European country. English law gives the courts discretion to reinterpret the law. Would the same judges who once pooh-poohed pre-nuptial agreements dare to change their minds? They did. Continue reading >

Imagine: depression, hot flushes, osteoporosis - it was a never ending list of possible miseries.

Men don’t know how lucky they are!

Except, when I listen to some of my female clients I can’t help but wonder: is there such a thing as a ‘Man-o-pause?!’ A particular affliction that affects men of a certain age - which can have just as profound effects in a different way?

Today a very charming female client came to see me. She described her husband’s ‘man-o-pausal’ symptoms. Continue reading »

Ivana Trump said, famously: “Don’t get mad. Get everything!” It appears that Julia McFarlane, the former wife of high-flying accountant Kenneth McFarlane, has taken these words to heart.

The judgment in the latest installment of the never-ending divorce saga that is McFarlane  v McFarlane, (2009 EWHC 891) landed on my desk yesterday morning. A judgment from Mr. Justice Charles, it is characteristically lengthy. Thirty-five pages in length, it takes a long time to read . It takes even longer to consider the meaning and impact, this judgment being his Lordship’s interpretation of what the House of Lords may have had in mind (but never expressly stated) by a “deferred clean break”, payable at some stage in the future, by Mr McFarlane to his former wife.

I was in two minds whether to write about the latest twist; after all, what relevance does any of it have to those of us who live relatively modestly in the real world? However, this case has wider implications. It reminds me of a seesaw. On one end: the stay-at-home wife and her children. On the other: the working wife and her children. In the middle, sliding from one end to the other: the husband. Does English family law substantially favour the stay-at-home wife, at the working wife’s expense? Does it curtail a second wife’s freedom to leave her job and become a stay-at-home mum?

Let me explain. Continue reading »

“Il n’ y a en art, ni passé, ni futur. L’art qui n’est pas dans le present ne sera jamais” - Pablo Picasso.

What does Picasso mean? In art, he says, there is no past or future. There is only the present. Art that is not in the present will never be. Picasso lived his life very much in the present. (He married twice, and usually had several mistresses in tow. He certainly lived each day to the full!).

I can understand why Picasso was obsessed with the present. Clients who come into my office often talk about the past. They want to cling on to what they had. But what they had has gone; it is as if it never was. Sure, there is tangible evidence of what was there, but when times change, so do lives. It takes time to accept that the past is in the past, and that you should leave it where it belongs, taking with you the memories of what was good. You can - and should - leave all the rest behind where it was, not where it is, to rest in peace.

Bitter experiences make it hard to face the future. And the future worries all of us at some time or another. We cannot know what will happen. We cannot know if our futures are rosy, or otherwise. The emotional trauma of a broken relationship means the future is even harder to face. It isn’t always possible to predict if and when a relationship will break down. It can happen like a shock, with the fallout a never-ending nightmare. Even the best laid plans often go awry. As John Lennon once said “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.” How ironic that life caught up with him so cruelly. Continue reading »

Earlier this week Sir Paul Coleridge, who sits as a High Court judge in Central London, spoke out about family breakdown. His speech has been widely published: I read about it in the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph. He talked about his sadness and frustration at the volume of family breakdowns, with lawyers warning that the family courts are “overstretched to the point of collapse”. He lamented the plight of children caught up in what he described as a game of “Pass the Partner.” The judge called for wide-ranging investigations and new laws to try and stem the tide. His belief is that that marriage, rather than cohabitation is the “gold standard” of relationships.

This speech has been widely commented upon, and I have noticed that responses from members of the public tend to fall into one of two categories. Either they back his views about marriage, or they simply dismiss what he says because they believe that he has failed to move with the times and fails to understand the new types of family that are in existence today.

My own view is straightforward. Continue reading »

I was recently contacted by a journalist from the Independent on Sunday who had read my previous articles concerning the rise of older people getting divorced. The trend known as ‘silver divorce‘ is affecting couples in their sixties who are maybe newly-retired and realising two to three decades ahead of them with the same partner might not be the retirement dream they’d hoped for.

The resulting article, published in yesterday’s paper, offers some interesting points and highlights how the resulting raid on dwindled assets - particularly pensions and the marital home - can lead to a significant impact on the final payout.

For the full article click here - I’ve highlighted the main points below: Continue reading »

Much has been written by Marilyn Stowe about cohabiting couples and their rights (or lack thereof). I recently helped a client whose problems are so complicated, they could form the basis of an exam question on cohabitation.

This man was given a substantial sum of money by his parents when he was just 21. He decided to invest it. He bought four properties with the money and spent the remaining £50,000 refurbishing one of them. He has nothing left.

He took his girlfriend to a solicitors’ office; because they were in love and he intended to marry her, the properties were actually purchased in their joint names. His solicitor did not ask him to consider what would happen if the relationship broke down. So nothing was agreed and no protection was obtained for all the money he had put into those properties.

The couple lived together in the most expensive property. Her relations moved into two of the others and his sister moved into the remaining property, on a rent-free basis.

Then the girlfriend became pregnant and a baby. My client has evidence that another man is the father, although the girlfriend denies this. She refuses to move out of the house and “wants her share.” She is suggesting that he sees the baby once a fortnight. To the client’s disbelief he has now also heard from CMEC (formerly the CSA), who require him to maintain the child. Continue reading »

I am writing this post from Porto Ercole on the Tuscan coast in Italy. The coastline is rugged and dangerous. The sea is crashing in high waves onto those rocks. The almost vertical mountains along the coast helped deter invaders in Etruscan times. Today Porto Ercole is a luxurious haven for Romans escaping the hustle and bustle of their great city. But for me, Porto Ercole is the place where one of the greatest artists the world has ever known met his death. 

Caravaggio, died on the beach here in 1610, after an ironic period of unlawful imprisonment - given that he had escaped prison before for murder. He died alone suffering from malaria as he rambled senselessly towards the sea. He had known in his short life every type of person: from the poorest to the richest, paupers and princes, he mixed with them all: villains, vagabonds and thieves. He was himself a murderer. Yet, by virtue of his genius, he was capable of depicting intense spirituality in paintings that are at once hauntingly beautiful and terrifying and shocking in their brutality. His severed head of Goliath is a self portrait painted at a time when he was wracked with guilt following the murder. If anyone knew every type of human condition, if anyone felt every type of emotion, and had the gift to show his feelings so nakedly to the world, it was Caravaggio. 

Fast forward to the 21st century and last week in the High Court we saw the human condition, once again at its absolute worst.  Continue reading »

Saturday, which came hot on the heels of a hectic week, was worth waiting for. The sky was blue and the sunshine was glorious. We were back at York Races, for the annual Stowe Family Law LLP Grand Cup. I always enjoy supporting race days in Yorkshire. I’m a Yorkshire lass and it makes me proud that we can put on some cracking races and show that we’re just as good as the posh people at Ascot!

Continue reading »

 You may remember that I recently looked at the case of a Mr and Mrs Bokor-Ingram. I examined the Mesher order to which the wife had agreed; at the time, she did not know that Mr Bokor-Ingram’s finances were a lot healthier than she had been led to believe. After discovering that her husband had been negotiating a better-paid job at the time of the split, Mrs Bokor-Ingram took her husband back to court. She argued that if she had known the truth, she would never have agreed to the Mesher arrangement in relation to the couple’s former marital home. The case went as far as the Court of Appeal; Mrs Bokor-Ingram finally settled out of court, with the BBC reporting that the ownership of the house would be transferred to her in full.

Although that case is now closed, there has now been a further development. It’s an interesting one and, since my post about Mesher and Martin orders has become one of this blog’s most popular pages, I’d like to share it with you and find out what you think.

When I first wrote about this case, I focused upon the Mesher order because I was not happy that the husband had, in effect, been allowed to get away with his non-disclosure. When the case was heard in the High Court the judge, Mr Justice Charles, found that its outcome was not prejudiced by the husband’s failure to disclose that he had a lucrative employment contract in the offing. He appears to have concluded that because the proposed contract was unsigned, it should not have been disclosed.

The Court of Appeal has now taken the unusual step of giving Mr Justice Charles’ judgment a red light, even though this case had settled before they heard it. This public judgment was published on 26 May. I view it as a robust and salutary reminder to practitioners and clients, that full and frank disclosure must always be made. Read it, and you will see that they make no bones about this. Continue reading »