Family

Ancillary relief - short childless marriage where both parties working - no special principles governing court's exercise of discretion

Foster v Foster; CA (Lords Justice Peter Gibson, Chadwick and Hale); 16 April 2003

The parties were married in 1997, separated in 2000 and divorced in 2001.

There were no children of the marriage, and both parties worked.

They owned five properties, two of them as matrimonial homes.

On an application by the wife for ancillary relief, the district judge made an order retuning to each party what they had brought to the marriage and what had been contributed to the outgoings on the second matrimonial property at separation, but divided the profits made during the marriage equally.

The distribution left the wife with 61% and the husband 39% of the total assets.

On appeal by the wife a circuit judge varied the order so as to give her 70% and the husband 30%.

The husband sought permission to appeal.

The husband in person; Kerstin Boyd (instructed by Scannell Dimdore, Shenfield) for the wife.

Held, granting permission and allowing the appeal, that the case raised the important issue of the proper approach, in the light of White v White [2001] 1 AC 596 and later decisions of the Court of Appeal, to the parties' respective contributions in a short childless marriage where both were working; that the court had a wide discretion under section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and there were no special principles applicable to assessing contributions made by parties in such circumstances; that where the court looked at financial contributions it was not limited to considering merely the amounts contributed but it could take into account such factors as the part each party played in acquiring and realising assets in the name of one or other of the parties and the fact that each party contributed what he or she could from his or her financial resources; that since the district judge had sought to give the parties back what they had brought into the marriage at the value it held at that date, it could not be argued that his approach was unfair to the wife, nor was it seriously unfair to the husband; that, accordingly, the judge had been wrong to interfere with what the district judge had decided.