Family

Divorce proceedings - maintenance pending suit - order including provision for legal feesA v A (Maintenance Pending Suit: Provision for Legal Fees): FamD (Holman J): 1 November 2000

The parties were involved in divorce proceedings and, following the making of an order for maintenance pending suit, the wife's legal aid certificate had been discharged.

Since the discharge her unpaid legal costs had amounted to some 40,000 and, having neither income nor capital of her own she applied, among other things, for her monthly maintenance payments to include an amount towards her legal fees.

Jeremy Posnansky QC (instructed by Cooper Whiteman) for the wife; Barry Singleton QC and Christopher Pocock (instructed by Collyer-Bristow) for the husband.

Held, granting the application, that the power under s.22 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 to order such periodical payments of maintenance pending suit as the court thought reasonable was wide enough to cover an order to help fund the payee's costs of legal fees being recurring expenses of an income nature which could come within the category of daily living expenses; and that in the circumstances, as the wife had no other way of making progress with the dominating issue in her life, on her undertaking to pay the sum specified to her solicitors on account of the costs of the proceedings, it would be reasonable to make the order.