Stocker v Stocker
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Blake |
| Judgment Date | 24 March 2015 |
| Neutral Citation | [2015] EWCA Civ 628 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 24 March 2015 |
| Docket Number | Case No: B6/2014/2076 |
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM
HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE PRINCIPAL REGISTRY (FAMILY DIVISION)
(HIS HONOUR JUDGE O'DWYER)
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Blake
Case No: B6/2014/2076
The applicant appeared in person
The respondent did not attend
This is a renewed application for permission to appeal out of time from a judgment of His Honour Judge O'Dwyer sitting in the Principal Registry of the Family Division that was handed down on 3 December 2013.
The judgment was concerned with financial relief following divorce of the parties (who I will refer to in this judgment as husband and wife, despite, of course, the fact that they no longer have that status). Judge O'Dwyer made a final order in those proceedings. Financial settlement was complicated by the fact that a number of the assets of the husband were held in a company in which the wife had been employed and over which she held a debenture and she had placed the company in liquidation. Amongst the many headaches that the judge had to deal with were the debts of the company, the value of properties in the United Kingdom and Spain, the disputed value of a boat and matters of that sort, and offsetting of debts and costs before a final conclusion could be reached.
It appears from the judgment that a final hearing of the financial remedy issue was due to be heard on 4 March 2013. At that stage, both parties were legally represented by advocates experienced in financial remedy cases in family proceedings. The advocates had identified a division of assets that was agreed in substance, but the husband's team requested some further time to finalise the drafting of an agreed order and an attempt was made to resolve two fairly minor outstanding issues. However, after 4 March 2013 matters began to unravel. The husband withdrew instructions from his legal representatives and acted for himself. He has informed me today that this was because he ran out of funds and there were collateral disputes (it seems) between him and his former legal advisers. He then raised a number of allegations against his former wife in emails; a great many of which were sent directly to the court. It is unclear from the papers before me whether formal witness statements were filed by the husband dealing with these issues, but in any event, there were numerous hearings when the case was mentioned and applications for an adjournment were made by one party and the other (it seems) on the 4 th, 5 th, 12 th and 18 th of March, the 25 th of April, the 15 th of May, the 3 rd of June and the 19 th of July. In substance, the wife was submitting, through her representatives, that the husband should show cause why the agreement for division reached by his former representatives should not be implemented. He in turn was making various assertions why the proposed division would be unfair and disproportionate; those included the contention that the wife was taking money out of the company that she was not entitled to and that the division would be unfair as it would leave him without a substantial home. It should be noted that this was a case in...
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