Caroline Jill Crowther v Paul Anthony Crowther
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Peel |
| Judgment Date | 27 October 2021 |
| Neutral Citation | [2021] EWFC 88 |
| Docket Number | Case No: ZZ19D88433 and BV19D24031 |
| Court | Family Court |
[2021] EWFC 88
Mr Justice Peel
Case No: ZZ19D88433 and BV19D24031
IN THE FAMILY COURT
SITTING IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Charles Howard QC and Alex Tatton-Bennett (instructed by Hughes Fowler Carruthers) for the Applicant
Justin Warshaw QC and Justin Kitson (instructed by TSPMH Law) for the First Respondent
Hearing dates: 15, 19, 20, 21 and 22 October 2021
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
Introductory comments
When starting my reading into this financial remedy case, I noted with dismay that W's s25 statement is her 15 th statement in the proceedings and H's is his 26 th. There have been no fewer than 34 court hearings. The bundles (4 of them; a core bundle, a library bundle and two supplemental bundles) exceed 6,000 pages. The parties have argued before me about almost every imaginable issue, no matter how trivial. Unsurprisingly, the legal costs are enormous:
i) W's costs (excluding divorce, children, and occupation order proceedings, but including the costs of Admiralty proceedings and a preliminary issue referable to financial remedies) are £1,427,606;
ii) H's costs (on a like for like basis) are £920,316.
The total costs are therefore about £2.3m. Given that at the start of the hearing I was presented with a composite asset schedule on which W asserted the net assets to be £1,374,266 and H asserted the net assets to be £386,547, it can be seen that, subject to any finding of hidden resources, the costs are utterly disproportionate. My task is far more difficult than it should be precisely because the visible assets are now so limited. In the end, I have largely had to concentrate on how to divide the debts fairly.
I was startled to discover in early September 2021 that the parties' respective petitions, which had been lodged in September 2019, over 2 years ago, had not reached decree nisi. I was told that there had been inordinate delay by the court processing the suits. I gave directions in respect of W's petition, but at the start of trial neither petition had made much progress, and neither party was close to obtaining a certificate of entitlement to a decree. The consequence is that at this hearing I can deliver a judgment, but I cannot make an order until the pronouncement of decree nisi; Rezai-Namaghi v Atapour [2020] EWHC 3729 (Fam). Given the level of bitterness between the parties, and inability to resolve any issues, I cannot say with any confidence that, even though both parties agree the marriage is over and they must be divorced, decree nisi will be obtained any time soon.
The lack of cooperation between the parties and their lawyers was very apparent. The mercifully limited exposure I have had to the inter-solicitor correspondence was sufficient for me to see that there appears to have been an almost complete breakdown of constructive communication. At the trial itself, there were over thirty issues on the composite asset schedule presented to me, some of trifling amounts; by the end of the trial, only minimal attempts had been made to resolve the many smaller items, despite encouragement from me to do so.
At the time of the Pre-Trial Review before me on 30 July 2021, it was expected (certainly on W's side) that W would receive on 1 October 2021 a sum of £670,000 from the 2 nd to 6 th respondents in this case pursuant to a settlement agreement in December 2020 to which I shall return. H sought to freeze the said monies. I was told that W had entered into an agreement with her lawyers that unless they received all outstanding fees, and their costs to the end of the trial, from the said £670,000, they would cease to act for her. I refused H's injunctive application. In the event, the £670,000 was not paid.
Accordingly, on 4 October 2021, W applied to me for, inter alia, an order for release of £500,000 from the net proceeds of sale of the FMH, such sum being required to cover her unpaid costs, and costs until the end of trial. I was told that unless W's solicitors received that sum, they would cease to act. Given that W's solicitors had already received from W in total (divorce, non-molestation, children, and financial remedy proceedings) costs exceeding £1m, and given that more than £1.8m remained in the joint account holding the proceeds of sale which would be available for distribution at trial, it might be thought rather unattractive for W's solicitors to adopt this position. In the event, I ordered a release of £300,000 and, happily, W's solicitors continued to act, notwithstanding their earlier protestations which indicated that W might be left to contest these proceedings in person.
At the PTR, I directed that counsels' skeleton arguments be limited to 20 pages, in accordance with the Statement of Efficient Conduct of Financial Remedy Hearings allocated to a High Court Judge which makes plain that the 20-page limit includes appendices. That was ignored by H's counsel who filed a 20-page skeleton and a further supplemental, highly detailed, 15 pages of appendices. This disregard of the Efficient Conduct Statement should not happen again.
There have been two previous reported judgments in this matter; (i) in the Court of Appeal relating to a freezing injunction ( [2020] EWCA Civ 762) and (ii) a judgment of Lieven J ( [2020] EWHC 3555 (Fam)) concerning the settlement of a set of preliminary issues. Each judgment gives a clear sense of the hotly contested issues which have beset this couple.
Each party thinks the other is, to use their own words, “out to destroy” them. These proceedings have been intensely acrimonious. They, and their lawyers, have adopted a bitterly fought adversarial approach. I asked myself on a number of occasions whether the aggressive approach adopted by each side has achieved anything; it seems to me that it has led to vast costs and reduced scope for settlement. The toll on each party is incalculable (W was visibly distressed during the hearing) and, from what I have heard, the impact on the children has been highly detrimental.
The background facts
H and W married on 28th September 1996, after a year and a half of cohabitation. W is 51, H is 55. They have 3 children aged 22, 20 and 15. H has two older children from a previous relationship. Although there is nominally a shared care arrangement in respect of the youngest child, I am satisfied that he spends more time with W when not at boarding school; it is notable that during the pandemic he lived primarily with her, and was home schooled by her. During the marriage, the parties operated a maritime business (which was H's background, skill, and inclination) and in addition bought a series of properties which they lived in as their marital homes, renovated, and then sold on for a profit, of which the largest project by some distance was the most recent FMH at Landhurst. They also owned a serviced office centre from which the marine business operated called Maritime House, which was bought in 1998 and sold in 2018. H was largely responsible for the maritime work, although W assisted on some financial and administrative matters. W told me, and I accept, that the project management for the various properties was carried out by them both. In total, they bought and sold 7 homes (including one in France). According to H, the total profit generated over the years from the purchase and sales of marital homes was £8m, whereas according to W it was £3m. The reason for the disparity between their presentations was that they adopted different assumptions such as whether to include purchase and selling costs, how to allow for mortgages, and the precise quantum of renovations cost. I do not consider it necessary to make a finding on this, nor was I referred to primary evidence to enable me to do so; suffice to say that a great deal of effort, coupled with rising property prices, enabled them to generate capital which (together with business income) allowed them to sustain an affluent lifestyle. I have the real sense that they were a partnership in the truest sense, working together and doing all they could for the benefit of their family. It is a matter of great sadness that all their hard work has ended in this highly acrimonious litigation.
In 2003 they moved to France for a few years; H says this was because of a sharp decline in the marine side of the business whereas W described it to me as a lifestyle move. I suspect it was a bit of both. In France, H branched out into yacht broking, aircraft management and aircraft chartering, none of which seem to have been particularly successful. Back in the UK, in 2010 they started a business, which operated vessels providing services in the construction of offshore wind farms and oil and gas subsea operations.
Until 2012 the vessels (5 in all bought over time) were ultimately owned by H and W through subsidiaries of a company called Med Marine Charters Limited, while a limited partnership, Atlantic Marine & Aviation LLP (“AMA”), owned by H and W, dealt with the operation and management of the vessels.
The businesses, and property developments, were sufficiently successful to enable H and W to enjoy a very high standard of living. They lived in a luxurious house in Sussex, bought in 2014 and sold in late 2020 for £4.5 million, owned a house in France worth more than £3 million, employed a housekeeper and fulltime gardener, educated their three children privately, owned horses (for which purpose they employed a groom), a collection of...
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