Maintenance Pending Suit in UK Law

Payment of periodical payments in the interim is more difficult. There is an element of double counting if maintenance pending suit/periodical payments are contemplated to continue for some time after judgment but at the same time the calculation of the lump sum is made on the basis that it included those payments from the time the judgment is made. On the other hand, hardship may be suffered by the wife if she has no maintenance for her support while she waits for payment of her lump sum.

The evaluation of W's entitlement to continuing provision by way of periodical payments has to be approximate and broadbrush for a number of reasons. The order will be for H to pay W maintenance pending suit until decree absolute and thereafter periodical payments at the annual rate of £120,000 per annum, payable monthly in advance during joint lives until she remarries or further order.

First we must espouse the Regulation and apply it wholeheartedly. We must not take or be seen to take opportunities for usurping the function of the judge in the other member state. Once another jurisdiction is demonstrated to be apparently first seised, this jurisdiction must defer, by holding itself in waiting in case that apparent priority should be disproved or declined. The inevitable comparison should give the specialist practitioners in London pause for thought.

These contests are particularly arid and in my view should be discouraged by permitting a reflection of the differential within the review under section 25(1) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 of 'all the circumstances of the case'. I accept the consequence that the ancillary relief trial in London would be more complex, and more expensive, than it would be in a conventional case between British subjects.

The flaw in the 'power equals property' approach is that it ignores the fundamental principle that the only entity with the power to deal with assets held by it is the company. Those who control its affairs — even if the control is in a single individual — act merely as the company's agents.

Those applications have been, if I may respectfully say so, very properly dismissed in these courts, particularly on the ground that there should be no two bites at the one cherry, and a litigant has no right to go foreign shopping and, having obtained one order in one jurisdiction, to try and obtain an order in another.

In other words, what Hill J was saying was that the non-payment of the sums ordered was, in itself, a contempt and that the question of whether that non-payment was contumelious was relevant to the exercise of the discretion. It was not relevant to the decision whether there was a contempt. If the question had been whether it was contempt for the purposes of, for example, a judgment summons under the Debtors Act then different considerations would apply.