Covent Garden is terrible for traffic jams and my taxi was stuck outside the Garrick Club earlier this week. Although the establishment is notorious for not admitting women, it is also famous for its associations with the great and the good of the arts world. Charles Dickens was a member and kept his offices nearby. Looking around, I noticed an Ebenezer Scrooge quotation in a shop window: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year”.
Continue Reading …
Readers of this blog will know that in any financial divorce settlement, the court must ensure that so far as possible, within the context of their finances, both parties’ “reasonable needs” must be met. Basic reasonable needs include provision for housing, furniture, a car and a budget for income requirements. It follows that the greater the parties’ wealth, the greater their needs will be. In meeting the needs of each party, the court will apply the various relevant factors of section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973.
Continue Reading …
Spousal maintenance is the most contentious area in family finance. Ex-husbands bitterly resent paying it and ex-wives fight tooth and nail to keep it. It is a tax-free income that some see as a continuing windfall and others a hard-earned necessity.
Continue Reading …
When a spouse’s wealth has been inherited rather than earned, it cannot be regarded in any sense as truly “matrimonial”. So if the couple divorces, to what extent should one party share in the assets of the other?
Continue Reading …
European law can be a strange thing. There is the often quoted example of the required size and shape of bananas, or the Brussels dictat that a Cornish pasty must be in the traditional ‘D’ shape to be truly considered Cornish. But the case …
Continue Reading …
It was with some personal discomfort that I read the quotation from a recent article of mine in Family Law, as cited by Lord Justice Wilson in the appeal before the Court of Appeal of Jones v Jones.
Continue Reading …
A friend of mine, barrister Ashley Murray of Oriel Chambers in Liverpool, was recently quoted by Lord Justice Wilson in a Court of Appeal judgement in the case of Jones v Jones.
Reading of Ashley’s …
Continue Reading …
Guest blogger Jonathan James of Stowe Family Law writes a salutary reminder in this post about the perils of sustained delay, a complex and highly topical issue that has been brought into relief by recent changes to the way inflation is measured in relation to pensions.
Were the lawyers in the case he mentions blind to the dangers that bankruptcy might cause a divorce? The delay was caused by the …
Continue Reading …
This week I read a fascinating piece in U.S. Marie Claire magazine, by Justine Musk. “I Was a Starter Wife”: Inside America’s Messiest Divorce describes her marriage to the fabulously wealthy entrepreneur Elon Musk. He is the co-founder of Paypal, co-founder of electric car company Tesla Motors and CEO of SpaceX, which manufactures space launch vehicles. His fortune was estimated at $328 …
Continue Reading …
A blog reader, Paul, commented on a recent post about Imerman v Tchenguiz and the Court of Appeal’s decision in that case.
In the post, I touched briefly on the potential to restrain a lawyer who …
Continue Reading …
28 July 2010
As previously noted, many first-time visitors to this blog arrive here after typing their questions about divorce and family law directly into Google and other search engines. I also receive a …
Continue Reading …
I was interested to read in The Times that a barristers’ chambers in London has set up a company that will arrange funding in divorce cases:
“Steve Jones, its business development manager, says: “It’s a way of reducing the balance between …
Continue Reading …
11 June 2010
Suppose that you are going through a very nasty financial case in the course of your divorce.
Suppose that your former spouse is behaving very badly during this process.
Suppose you both know that …
Continue Reading …
One of the saddest realities of family litigation is that a death is not necessarily the end of the arguments. The majority of family litigation concerns a fair division of the property acquired …
Continue Reading …
26 May 2010
Local and national newspapers are filled with page after page of houses that are failing to sell. Those who don’t have to sell simply aren’t – it is a buyer’s market and the price a seller asks for is unlikely to be what they receive. At Stowe Family Law we are witnessing how the recession-hit property market is affecting clients who are separating or divorcing.
Saturday’s Daily …
Continue Reading …
Comments