Manchanda v Manchanda
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 17 May 1995 |
| Date | 17 May 1995 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
Court of Appeal
Before Lord Justice Leggatt and Mr Justice Thorpe
Matrimonial law - divorce - time provisions - decree absolute a nullity
A husband's decree absolute of divorce was a nullity, not merely voidable, because the court purporting to grant it had lacked jurisdiction to make the order as it was made in contravention of the time provisions laid down in section 9(2) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973.
The Court of Appeal so held in a reserved judgment allowing an appeal by Donna Manchanda against the refusal of Judge Hague, QC, at Brentford County Court on October 7, 1994 to set aside the decree absolute purportedly granted to her husband, Keith Manchanda.
Mr Timothy Scott, QC, for the wife; Mr Paul McCormick for the husband.
LORD JUSTICE LEGGATT said that a decree nisi of divorce had been granted to the wife on July 27, 1994. On September 16, 1994 her husband had applied for a decree absolute and on September 20, 1994 the decree had been made absolute.
The wife had applied to set aside the decree absolute on the ground that the necessary period of time under section 9(2) of the 1973 Act had not elapsed before the application was made and that no notice of it had been given to her.
There were contested ancillary relief proceedings and the financial arrangements for the wife might be affected by the decree absolute if the husband died before they had been resolved. It was not suggested that the husband had been fraudulent.
On September 29, 1994 he had gone through a ceremony of marriage with another woman.
The judge had inferred from McPherson v McPhersonELR ((1936) AC 177) that because a decree absolute was a judgment in rem affecting third parties, such a decree was voidable, not void. That had emboldened him to the view that Woolfenden v WoolfendenELR ((1948) P 27) was fundamentally flawed because Mr Justice Barnard had paid insufficient regard to that principle.
In Woolfenden, as in the present case, the party against whom the decree nisi was obtained had applied for it to be made absolute and without notice to his wife. Mr Justice Barnard had said: "In view of the fact that the husband has not complied with the statute … I cannot treat the making of this decree absolute as a mere irregularity and I must treat it as a nullity."
That case was indistinguishable from the present case. But Judge Hague, considering himself to be exercising coordinate jurisdiction, had refused...
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Dennis v Dennis (Queen's Proctor intervening)
...on 13 October 1998 to be set aside, the judge concluded that he was bound by the Court of Appeal decision in Manchanda v Manchanda[1996] 1 FCR 733, where a decree absolute obtained in breach of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and the Family Proceedings Rules 1991 was found to be void, and w......
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M v P (Queen's Proctor intervening)
...different from those in play both in Butler v Butler, The Queen’s Proctor Intervening [1990] FCR 336 and in Manchanda v Manchanda [1995] 2 FLR 590. The court should lean against holding the decrees void unless driven to that conclusion by the language and context of the relevant statute, he......
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Masroor Ahmed Syed Otherwise Syed Masroor Ahmed V. Samrana Ahmed
...v. Lawrence [1985] Fam. 106, Rampal v. Rampal [2000] 2 F.L.R. 763, Callaghan v. Hanson-Fox [1992] Fam. 1 and Manchanda v. Manchanda [1995] 2 F.L.R. 590. The distinction between reduction on the merits and reduction on the grounds of nullity was well recognised (McLaren - Court of Session Pr......
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Baron v Baron
...very comfortably within the jurisprudence and, in particular, accord with the distinction drawn by Leggatt LJ in Manchanda v Manchanda [1995] 2 FLR 590 in the passage (at page 595) which I quoted in M v P, para 79. iii) Thirdly, and as I noted in M v P, para 79, “although Leggatt LJ express......