Family

Bigamous marriage annulled - ancillary relief claim - not precluded on grounds of public policyRampal v Rampal: CA (Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss P, Thorpe and Robert Walker LJJ): 27 June 2001Following a decree nisi of divorce the husband claimed ancillary relief under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973.

The wife responded by seeking a decree of nullity on the basis that the marriage was void for bigamy; the husband asserted that the wife had known all along that the dissolution of his first marriage in India post-dated the second ceremony.

Despite rejecting the wife's case comprehensively, the judge had held that the husband was precluded, on public policy grounds, from applying for ancillary relief and struck out the application.

The husband appealed.Timothy Scott QC and Christopher Wagstaffe (instructed by Bechelet Bivona Limited) for the husband.

Andrew Moylan QC and Gudrun Fama (instructed by Graham Whitworth & Co) for the wife.Held, allowing the appeal, that there was no universal rule precluding a bigamist from exercising the statutory right of application for ancillary relief; that in respect of statutory claims and applications founded on a criminal act the maxim ex turpi causa non oritur actio was not applied absolutely but in the exercise of a proportionate judgment after careful scrutiny of the nature of the crime and the relevant surrounding circumstances; that here the court had to have regard to all the circumstances before deciding whether an applicant should be debarred from making such application; and that, the husband having established that the wife had known at the time that the marriage was bigamous, the gravity of his offence was not such as to deny him his statutory rights on public policy grounds.

(WLR)