Ranson v Ranson (Ancillary Relief)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 13 December 2001 |
| Neutral Citation | [2001] EWCA Civ 1929 |
| Docket Number | B1/2001/1938 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 13 December 2001 |
[2001] EWCA Civ 1929
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE FAMILY DIVISION
(MR JUSTICE SINGER)
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand,
London, WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Thorpe
Lord Justice Robert Walker and
Sir Martin Nourse
B1/2001/1938
MARTIN POINTER QC, JUSTIN WARSHAW and JONATHAN SMALL (instructed by Messrs Mills & Reeve of Norwich NR2 4TJ) appeared for the appellant
BARRY SINGLETON QC, LEWIS MARKS and JONATHAN SEITLER (instructed by Messrs Manches & Co of London WC2B 4RP) appeared for the respondent
THORPE LJ:
On 30 July 2001 Singer J made three orders intended to terminate ancillary relief proceedings brought by Penelope Ranson against her husband Christopher. A decree nisi had been pronounced on 30 December 1999 but, as at the date of judgment, had not been made absolute. For convenience I will throughout this judgment refer to the parties as husband and wife. For the purposes of this judgment the barest summary of the relevant history will suffice. The husband is 53 and the wife 49. Both had had unsuccessful marriages prior to the commencement of their cohabitation in 1983. The husband was then a property developer and the wife had a fashion business with three retail outlets. They married on 30 August 1985 being then respectively 37 and 33 years of age. Their first child Georgia was born on 15 April 1991 and their second John (known as Joe) on 14 October 1994. At the date of his birth the family was based in New Zealand. It seems that the motive for their emigration was the avoidance of possible tax liabilities. In any event the wife was New Zealand born and had family there. The possible tax liabilities related to two separate receipts. In the 1991/92 financial year the husband had become entitled to a consultancy fee of £840K. A fee of that magnitude was unprecedented and did not recur. The second transaction may have been less influential on the decision since it was not completed until nearly twelve months after the family's removal on 4 April 1993. There was, however the sale for £12.1M of property that the husband had purchased from an alter ego company in 1992 for £7.95M. By 1998, however, the return by stages of the family to the United Kingdom was completed. The husband's liabilities to the Inland Revenue arising out of these and other transactions remain unresolved. Shortly before the family's return the husband paid £0.25M into an accumulation and maintenance trust for each of the children. Thereafter the children's needs have been fully met from the trusts. In July 1998 the husband paid the wife £100K. But the marriage was not secure. By the following spring solicitors were involved and on 1 June 1999 the wife presented a conduct petition. In the following month there was an agreement under which the husband provided £550K to buy and refurbish the property for the wife and children known as Marsh Farm. Sadly protracted and expensive litigation then developed. As well as the wife's application for all forms of ancillary relief the husband applied for residence and contact orders. Within the financial proceedings the wife sought maintenance pending suit and obtained an order at the rate of £69K per annum. On 16 June 2000 the trial was fixed to commence on 18 September with a five day time estimate before Singer J. Sadly the case very significantly overran. It resumed on 6 February and was not concluded until 23 February, the fifteenth day in court. Each side blames the other for this overrun and I am quite unable to apportion responsibility. The bare fact is that the cost to the family of the ancillary relief litigation in the Family Division amounts to £1,026,000 and there is an additional £260,000 for the Children Act proceedings. Singer J did not give judgment, reserving pending the trial of the Children Act proceedings. That trial took place in May, the husband eventually appearing in person and withdrawing before the delivery of judgment. It was not until 24 July that the judge handed down his reserved judgment in the money case. At the hand down he heard a full day of submissions upon consequential orders. He then adjourned to 30 July and in the interim the parties made further submissions in writing. On 30 July he gave his ruling on the form of the order. He then heard further submissions and gave a ruling as to the distribution of income under an order for receivership which he proposed to make. He then heard further submissions and ruled on an application for permission to appeal. He then heard final submissions and ruled on an application for a stay.
The orders to reflect the reserved judgment and the subsequent rulings have been designated as Order 'A', the main ancillary relief order; Order 'B', the order appointing a receiver; and Order 'C', a confidentiality order. By a notice filed on 28 August, just within an extension granted by the trial judge, the husband sought leave to appeal Orders 'A' and 'B', save for the consensual order for child periodical payments to be satisfied out of the children's trusts. On 3 October I heard the application for permission on notice and adjourned the application to be heard by the full court with appeal to follow on 26 October. Since only a day could be found strict time limits were imposed on oral argument prior to the filing of very full and helpful skeletons by both parties on 22 October. On the following day the wife filed a respondent's notice seeking to uphold the orders below on grounds not identified by Singer J.
At the outset we granted permission to appeal, conducted the oral argument within the set time limits and reserved our judgment. Before turning to counsel's submissions and to a consideration of the judgments below it is necessary to record the crucial feature of the case, which I have so far omitted from the history. The husband's acquisition from his alter ego company in July 1992 included the benefit of a development contract for a consideration of £1.8M. The contract related to a site which throughout the judgment below is referred to as Site 'B' and which was the subject of Order 'C', the confidentiality order. For the purposes of this appeal we have extended the confidentiality provision and accordingly throughout argument and judgment Site 'B' is to remain unidentified. Site 'B' is overwhelmingly the most significant asset. The valuers were agreed that with good title it was worth approximately £11.4M. Although the husband had not initially suggested in his evidence that there were title defects, a conveyancing solicitor who had acted for the husband at the most relevant stages did raise serious question marks over the title in late 1999. The origin of those defects is complicated, as is any assessment of their present impact, and I will offer only the barest summary. The site was acquired by a housing trust in 1882. The conveyance was subject to restrictive covenants, a pre-emption right and what has been described as a penalty clause should the housing trust ever use the site other than for artisan's dwellings. The conveyance had been executed pursuant to powers conferred by section 9 of the Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875, a statute subsequently repealed in the 1890s. One hundred years later the trust desired to redevelop the site and entered into an agreement for that purpose with the husband's company. Planning permission was obtained, but only on appeal, in 1987. The trust issued a summons to determine whether the restrictions in the 1882 conveyance still ran for the benefit of the vendor's successor in title, the London Residuary Body. On 17 July 1987 the Vice Chancellor held that the restrictions were valid and subsisting. Consequentially on 25 October 1988 the trust and the London Residuary Body entered into a deed whereby in consideration for a payment of £100K the Body released the trust from the restrictions and permitted redevelopment for up to 2,700 square metres of office space. This deed however provided for the redevelopment by the husband's company, but, before the development was completed, the husband's company ran into difficulties resulting in the husband taking on huge borrowings to enable him to purchase first the largely developed site and second the development contract for Site 'B' and also to fund the remaining works at both sites. Thus in the event the redevelopment of Site 'B' was completed by the husband and not his company and it was to the husband that the commercial site was transferred on completion. Seemingly those involved overlooked the fact that the releases achieved by the 1988 deed protected the defunct company and not the husband. The problem emerged in 1998 when the husband attempted to realise the fruits of his shrewd dealings by selling Site 'B'. A marketing exercise identified a considerable number of interested buyers but only one meaning to exchange. However that purchaser's investigation of title resulted in their withdrawal from the intended purchase. They noted that the 1988 deed limited any erection on the site to 2,700 square metres. They said that the pre-emption right had not been released because there had never been a conveyance to the husband's company. They said the option to re-purchase in the event of breach of restrictive covenant had not been released in respect of anyone other than the housing trust. Finally they said that any breach of the restrictive covenants in respect of an adjacent corner of the site that the husband was not offering for sale would jeopardise the whole. As the ancillary relief case developed the wife relied...
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Tcwf v Lkks
...open to the judge to order that payment should be made immediately. In support of this submission, Mr Pointer relied on Ranson v Ranson [2002] 1 FCR 261. For the wife, Mr Howard submitted that the judge in effect had given the husband 10 months to pay, since on his reading of the order of 6......
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Tcwf v Lkks
...open to the judge to order that payment should be made immediately. In support of this submission, Mr Pointer relied on Ranson v Ranson [2002] 1 FCR 261. For the wife, Mr Howard submitted that the judge in effect had given the husband 10 months to pay, since on his reading of the order of 6......
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Tcwf v Lkks
...open to the judge to order that payment should be made immediately. In support of this submission, Mr Pointer relied on Ranson v Ranson [2002] 1 FCR 261. For the wife, Mr Howard submitted that the judge in effect had given the husband 10 months to pay, since on his reading of the order of 6......
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Tcwf v Lkks
...open to the judge to order that payment should be made immediately. In support of this submission, Mr Pointer relied on Ranson v Ranson [2002] 1 FCR 261. For the wife, Mr Howard submitted that the judge in effect had given the husband 10 months to pay, since on his reading of the order of 6......