Cr v Cr
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Bodey |
| Judgment Date | 19 June 2007 |
| Neutral Citation | [2007] EWHC 3334 (Fam) |
| Court | Family Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: FD04D07021 |
| Date | 19 June 2007 |
[2007] EWHC 3334 (Fam)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
Mr Justice Bodey
Case No: FD04D07021
For the Applicant wife: Bruce Blair QC and Howard Shaw
For the Respondent husband: Andrew Moylan QC and Stewart Leech
A. Background.
By notice of Application dated 22 nd March 2005 the Applicant wife seeks all forms of ancillary relief against the Respondent husband. She was born in 1956 and is now 51. He was born in March 1951 and is 56. For convenience, I shall refer to them as respectively “the wife” and “the husband”. They were married in 1985 and separated in 2004.
There are two children of the family, a girl who was born in 1986 and is aged 21; and a boy who was born in January 1989 and is aged 18. She is in her second year of a four year degree course at University. He is in his last year at public school. He will complete his A' Levels this month, June 2007. Thereafter, he expects to get holiday work in London before going on a course abroad until April 2008. All being well, he will go up to University in September 2008. Both children still make their home base with the wife, although they spend parts of their vacations with the husband, and, of course, make their own arrangements with their own friends.
The wife has been represented by Mr Bruce Blair QC and Mr Howard Shaw; the husband by Mr Andrew Moylan QC and Mr Stewart Leech. Both sides have placed before me Chronologies which do not differ significantly. I adopt them for all the historical matters which are not mentioned in the much simplified chronology which now follows.
The husband is South African. The wife is of English origin, but was brought up mainly in South Africa. In 1978, they met in Johannesburg, at about the time when the husband began to be employed in the industry in which he continues to be engaged. For the sake of anonymity, I shall refer to this industry simply as “the Industry”. In 1979, aged 28 and 23 respectively, they commenced co-habitation. Neither brought any significant resources into the relationship, nor later into the marriage. In 1980, the husband was offered and accepted employment in Hong Kong. The wife agreed to go with him, giving up her then job in South Africa as a fashion-buyer. In Hong Kong, the wife set up a small export business; but she closed it in 1981 to go with the husband when he was offered a promotional move to Taipei. He was then aged about 30 and she about 25. It was from about this time that he joined the group of companies, by which he is still employed, now as a very senior executive. I shall refer to this group as “the Group”.
In 1982, the husband's employment saw the parties return from Taipei to Hong Kong, where they were later married in 1985. They continued thereafter to make their lives together in Hong Kong for the next fifteen years, the two children being born there. Once back in Hong Kong in 1982, the wife took up a consultancy position, initially full-time and later part-time; but she gave this up at around the time of the daughter's birth in 1986. In 1989, together with a female friend, she opened a small shop in Hong Kong selling decorative home products. They ran it in partnership until about 1998, by which time the financial climate for their business had become increasingly unfavourable. So they closed it down in 1998 and the wife has not worked in any commercial sense since that time.
Meanwhile, throughout the period which the parties spent in Hong Kong, essentially from 1980 to 2000, the husband's career in the industry went from strength to strength, as it has continued to do since the family's relocation to England in 2000. This has been a result of the husband's wholehearted dedication and commitment to the group, deploying great skill and acumen, working long hours and travelling prodigiously.
This success came at great personal and family cost. It is agreed by the parties that both of them had to make big sacrifices in furtherance of the husband's business career. His international commitments meant that he would be travelling abroad away from Hong Kong and later from England for up to 180 or 200 days per annum. During these times, the wife bore the entire responsibility of caring for the children and managing the domestic infrastructure, enabling the husband to be free to concentrate on his demanding business obligations. This is not to say the husband did not play his part as a husband and father when he was at home; but rather that he had another very absorbing focus in his life by way of his work and career. He was dependant upon the wife's complementary dedication to the smooth running of the parties' home and social life, along with her caring for and bringing up the children.
The result of the husband's efforts, fully supported by the wife, was that the family came to enjoy an increasingly good standard of living. For much of the marriage they had three homes, two of them being holiday homes. The property which they owned in Hong Kong from 1991 to 2000 was a large and impressive residence, with splendid gardens and a private swimming pool. Concurrently (in fact from 1986 to 2001) they owned an apartment in Cape Town, South Africa. Further, from 1983 to 2006, they owned a holiday home in, Idaho, USA. For the earlier part of this period, this US holiday home was a condominium; but in 1990 they sold that and purchased instead a fine lakeside property in McCall which cost in excess of $4,200,000, including the cost of works. When it was sold in 2006, it made $9,200,000 gross, $7,600,000 net, or about £4,000,000 net.
In June 2000 the family relocated from Hong Kong to England, a move dictated by the exigencies of the husband's employment. They sold their home in Hong Kong, and replaced it in November 2000 with what was to be their final matrimonial home (“the matrimonial home”) in Holland Park, London W11, a property then and now vested in the wife's sole name. The purchase price of the matrimonial home was some £2,350,000. On top of that, substantial works of renovation and improvement were carried out (overseen by the wife and an architect) bringing the total investment in the property to some £3,300,000. The works took a considerable time to complete, during which the family lived in rented accommodation. It was not until the summer of 2003 that they finally moved in. By that time however, both parties had come to recognise that their marriage had broken down. They agreed to go to mediation with a specialist financial mediator, which continued without success until the spring of 2004.
On 1 March 2004, the parties finally separated. That date is agreed, although the details are controversial. Factually, it was the wife who vacated along with the children, then aged 17 and 15 respectively. She had by then met and flirted with another man (“L”) although upon the parties' separation, she did not go to live with him. There has been some investigation at this hearing as to when precisely her relationship with L first became intimate. I accept her evidence that this did not occur until just after the final separation on 1 st March 2004. The wife remains in a relationship with L, although they continue to live separately. The husband too has a new partner. Apart from these proceedings, therefore, both parties have moved on in their lives.
Shortly after the wife and children had vacated the matrimonial home, the husband relocated his base back to Hong Kong, where he rented (and continues to rent) a serviced apartment. This left the matrimonial home mostly empty, except for the parties' housekeeper. Therefore the wife, who was by now renting in SW10, pressed to move back into the matrimonial home. This was eventually agreed and in October 2006 she moved back. She still resides there and wants to continue to do so. Belatedly during this hearing the husband has agreed that it shall remain her asset, and not be sold, as part of the outcome of these proceedings.
Since the separation, or at least in more recent times, the husband has been paying the wife £100,000 per annum for her own support, together with £10,000 per annum for each of the children. For the year or so that the wife lived in SW10 (from about October 2005 to October 2006) he also paid the rent on that property at the rate of about £90,000 per annum.
B. The present assets.
Both sides have placed Schedules of assets before me. However, the one more used in final speeches was that headed up “Husband's schedule of assets (final)”. In all but one particular, (see sub-paragraph 15 below) it is an agreed document. Leaving aside certain smaller items, it comprises the following:-
(1) The matrimonial home (in the wife's sole name): £3.75 million gross; but after deduction of costs of sale and the £400,000 mortgage: £3.23 million.
(2) A property in Cape Town South Africa in the parties' joint names occupied by the husband's parents: £60,000.
(3) The joint proceeds of sale of the Idaho property (above) – net of US tax: £4.080 million.
(4) Joint bank accounts: £11,000.
(5) The wife's bank accounts (being an account containing £106,000 less a loan account for her costs of these proceedings in the sum of £366,000): (£260,000).
(6) The wife's Option to purchase a plot of land in Idaho USA: £384,000, but offset by a bank loan of a similar amount: £00.00.
(7) The husband's bank accounts: £285,677.
(8) A two-bed apartment in Cape Town, effectively in the husband's sole name, having been bought by him out of income in March 2005 (post-separation) and nominally held through a property holding company owned by him: £488,000 net.
(9) A...
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