Family law

Divorce - ancillary relief - lump sum award - reasonable requirements and financial needs not determinative of award - yardstick of equality between partiesWhite v White: HL (Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, Lord Hoffmann, Lord Cooke of Thorndon, Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Hutton): 26 October 2000

The parties married in 1961 and and divorced in 1995.

Their children were independent adults.

Throughout the marriage they had farmed together in a partnership to which each had contributed equally in cash or in kind.

In 1996 their overall assets were worth 4.6m.

On an application for ancillary relief on a 'clean break' basis the judge assessed that the wife reasonably required 980,000 which was to be met by a payment of 800,000 and by her keeping her sole assets.

The husband was to have the rest of the assets.

The wife appealed.

The Court of Appeal, having regard to the parties' contributions and the overall goal of fairness, increased the wife's award to 1.5m.

The husband appealed seeking restoration of the judge's order and the wife cross-appealed seeking a half share of the assets.

Nicholas Mostyn QC and Lewis Marks (instructed by Clarke Willmott & Clarke, Taunton) for the husband.

James Turner QC and Philip Marshall (instructed by Payne Hicks Beach) for the wife.

Held, dismissing the appeal and the cross-appeal, that before reaching a firm conclusion, a judge exercising his statutory discretion under s.25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 should check his tentative views against the yardstick of equality of division; that as a general guide equality should be departed from only if and to the extent that there was good reason for doing so; that it should be possible to use equality as a form of check without that being treated as a legal presumption of equal division; that a claimant's financial needs or reasonable requirements were not to be regarded as determinative, particularly in a case where the parties' financial resources exceeded their financial need; that since the judge had misdirected himself in treating the parties' reasonable requirements as the determinative factor when making his award, the Court of Appeal was entitled to exercise afresh the statutory discretionary powers; and that there were no grounds for interfering with its exercise of those powers.

(WLR)