The Supreme Court has upheld a £5 million lump-sum divorce provision for an anonymised wife but reduced her share of specified pension benefits from 55% to 51%.
D.T. and C.T. married in March 1980 and had three dependent children. He was a solicitor and she was a medical doctor. The husband left the family home in August 1994, and the High Court granted a decree of divorce on December 6, 2001.
The High Court ordered the husband to pay his wife £5 million over three instalments. She also received a right to occupy the family home for life and 55% of benefits accrued under specified policies.
The husband appealed the financial orders. He argued, among other things, that the High Court had overstated his net worth, placed insufficient weight on assets acquired after separation and made an excessive lump-sum award.
Ms Justice Denham held that the High Court's figure of £20 million for his net worth was unsupported by the evidence. She assessed his estate at approximately £14.5 million, with the wife's estate at just over £1 million.
That correction did not undermine the £5 million provision. Denham J held that assets should generally be assessed at the date of trial and that post-separation property could be considered where relevant to proper provision. In this case, the husband's later property wealth was linked to resources generated by his solicitors' practice, which the wife had helped establish directly and indirectly while also caring for the family.
The court stressed that divorce law requires proper provision, not an automatic division of property. It also recognised the economic value of work in the home and the effect of family responsibilities on a spouse's earning capacity.
However, the Supreme Court found that the High Court had wrongly treated the husband's relationship outside the marriage as misconduct warranting a pension penalty. The pension division was therefore adjusted from 45% to the husband and 55% to the wife, to 49% and 51% respectively.