Currey v Currey
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 18 October 2006 |
| Date | 18 October 2006 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
COURT OF APPEAL
Before Lord Justice Chadwick, Lord Justice Wilson and Mr Justice Lindsay.
WHERE one former spouse could demonstrate to the court that he required extra legal services, did not qualify for legal aid and had insufficient money of his own, the court had jurisdiction to award a costs allowance as appropriate by way of addition to the periodic payment, before the final clean-break.
The Court of Appeal so stated granting an application by the wife, Henrietta Marry Rosario Currey, permission, but refusing her appeal against the order of Judge Wilcox on March 29, 2006, increasing the periodical payments payable by her to her husband, Charles Alistair Currey, by Pounds 10,000 a month for four months as a costs allowance to procure continued legal advice and representation until the end of the financial dispute resolution appointment.
Mr Valentine Le Grice, QC for Mrs Currey; Mr Nicholas Cusworth for Mr Currey.
LORD JUSTICE WILSON said in the majority of applications for ancillary relief which proceeded in the courts of England and Wales this problem did not arise.
For in relation to applications of normal size and complexity a cohort of admirably dedicated solicitors and barristers still remained prepared upon a publicly funded basis to represent such litigants as they could not afford to pay them out of their own resources and as were entitled to public funding.
In this case it was the wife who was rich and the husband who was relatively impoverished.
It was the jurisdiction of the court of trial to vary an order for periodical payments, rather than the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal set aside an order for ancillary relief pursuant to the principles in Barder v CaluoriELR ((1988) AC 20) which was apt for invocation in the case of any substantial later increase in a party's income.
The founding jurisdiction was, in the case of an initial order for maintenance pending suit, section 22 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and, in the case of variation of an order for maintenance pending suit or, as in this case, of an order for periodical payments, section 31 of that Act.
It had not been suggested that the principles applicable to those separate sources of...
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