D v D (Financial Provision: Lump Sum Order)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 2001 |
| Year | 2001 |
| Date | 2001 |
| Court | Family Division |
Ancillary relief – Adjournment of wife’s application for lump sum – Whether justice could have been done to both parties without adjournment.
The parties had been married for 12.5 years and it was common ground that each party had made a full contribution to the marriage. The husband had had a very successful media career while the wife had been the primary carer for the two children of the marriage in addition to occasionally working part time. The marriage broke down and the wife applied for financial relief. At the time the matter came before the District Judge the assets of the parties exceeded £700,000 and the husband earned £230,000 pa which left a £120,000 surplus of income over expenditure. In addition, as part of his contract of employment the husband was a member of an executive incentive plan, which had the potential of providing him with substantial but unspecified cash sums in April 2001 and again in 2002. The judge ordered that the former matrimonial home be transferred to the wife, that the life endowment policy be transferred to the husband and the husband make periodical payments for the maintenance of the wife and the children. Further, the judge found that the wife had an entitlement to a lump sum but that the exact quantum of that lump sum could not be ascertained at the time of the hearing. As a result the wife’s application was adjourned pending the quantification of the sum payable to the husband by the incentive scheme on the basis that to make a lump sum order then could do the husband an injustice, whilst to dismiss it before knowing what sum the husband would receive would do an injustice to the wife. Subsequently, the payments were received by the husband earlier than expected as he received £115,000 net in the year 2000 and expected to receive a similar sum in April 2001. The husband appealed the decision to adjourn on the basis that there were a number of alternative methods open to the judge which he had not been invited to investigate and that the wife would have had the opportunity to obtain an improved financial order against the husband in the future which would have ensured that she would not have been the victim of injustice had her claim been dismissed. He further argued that the wife had failed to demonstrate any ‘need’ for a lump sum payment and that as the present case was not a ‘big money’ case the principles established by the House of Lords in White v White did not apply.
Held – The adjournment of a lump sum application was appropriate only where there was a real possibility of capital from a specific source becoming available in the near future and an order for an adjournment was the only way that justice
could be done to both parties and where, in the exercise of its discretion, the court concluded that it was fair and reasonable to order the adjournment. As the general policy in law was that an application for a lump sum should be disposed of once and for all it would be unfortunate if it were undermined by a policy of readily granting adjournments. However, in the present case the standard of living enjoyed by the parties, the full contribution of the wife to the welfare of the family and the guidance from the House of Lords in White v White indicated that justice would not have been done to either party through dismissal of the wife’s claim or had the judge ordered a lump sum before the court knew the amount of the bonus that the husband would receive. The circumstances of the present case fell within the definition of ‘big money’ and thus it was unnecessary for the court to decide if the case of White v White was limited to ‘big money’ cases alone. Accordingly the appeal would be dismissed.
Cases referred to in judgmentDavies v Davies [1986] 1 FLR 497, CA.
MT v MT (financial provision: lump sum) [1991] 1 FCR 649, [1992] 1 FLR 362.
Scheeres v Scheeres[1999] 2 FCR 476, [1999] 1 FLR 241, CA.
T v T (financial relief: pensions) [1998] 2 FCR 364, [1998] 1 FLR 1072.
White v White[2000] 3 FCR 555, [2001] 1 All ER 1, [2000] 3 WLR 1571, [2000] 2 FLR 981, HL.
AppealThe husband appealed from part of the order made by District Judge Kenworthy-Brown on 12 June 2000 where, at the conclusion of the hearing of the wife’s application for ancillary relief, he adjourned the wife’s application for a lump sum with liberty to restore. The facts are set out in the judgment.
Christopher Wood (instructed by Barnett Sampson) for the applicant.
Paul Infield (instructed by Rayner De Wolfe) for the respondent.
CONNELL J.This is an appeal by the husband, in effect from part of the order made by District Judge Kenworthy-Brown on 12 June 2000 at the conclusion of the wife’s claims for all forms of ancillary relief. There were three main parts of the district judge’s order. First he ordered that the husband should transfer to the wife the whole of his interest in the former matrimonial home free of mortgage, in exchange for which transfer the wife would transfer to the husband her interest in the Standard Life endowment policy which was collateral to the...
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