Conran v Conran
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 27 June 1997 |
| Date | 27 June 1997 |
| Court | Family Division |
Family Division
Before Mr Justice Wilson
Matrimonial law - divorce settlement - assessing wife's financial needs
In determining ancillary relief applications the court had a wide discretion to assess a wife's reasonable requirements and then to adjust for the contribution, not necessarily financial, that she had made to the welfare of the family during the marriage by taking into account, in particular, any special talents she might have.
Mr Justice Wilson so stated in the Family Division in a reserved judgment handed down in chambers and reported with leave, in the light of the consent of both parties, on the wife's application for a lump sum payment under section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973.
Mr Gordon Murdoch, QC and Miss Gillian Brasse for the wife; Mr Paul Coleridge, QC and Mr Andrew Moylan for the husband.
MR JUSTICE WILSON said that there were two possible ways in which to approach the quantification of reasonable requirements and contribution.
The one suggested in Dart v DartFLR ([1996] 2 FLR 286) was to recognise that an objective appraisal of requirements should take into account all the criteria in section 25 of the 1973 Act, including not only available assets and standard of living, but also contribution to the marriage.
However, on the wording of that section it was difficult to fit an allowance for contribution into an analysis of a spouse's needs; and the view that contributions were outside the compass of the phrase "reasonable requirements" was supported by Preston v PrestonELR ([1982] Fam 17).
Perhaps the less strained approach, not that it would affect the result, would be to survey the wife's reasonable requirements and then to place her contribution, taking into account the nexus between that and the creation of the resources, into the balance.
The wife's reasonable requirements would be set at £8,400,000. The question of any adjustment for her contribution remained.
It was fair to say that the wife, who at the time of the marriage 30 years previously was a successful journalist in her own right, had made a formidable contribution as a mother to a total of five children and stepchildren, as a housewife with exceptional talents as a cook and hostess, and as a significant...
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