Tavoulareas v Tavoulareas
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE KENNEDY,LORD JUSTICE THORPE |
| Judgment Date | 19 November 1996 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1996] EWCA Civ J1119-1 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | No FAFMI 96/0405/F |
| Date | 19 November 1996 |
[1996] EWCA Civ J1119-1
Lord Justice Kennedy
Lord Justice Thorpe
No FAFMI 96/0405/F
FAFMI 96/0558/F
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM ORDERS OF MR JUSTICE SINGER
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2
MISS J HUGHES QC (Instructed by Messrs Collyer Bristow of London) appeared on behalf of the Appellant.
MR N MOSTYN (Instructed by Messrs Sears Tooth of London) appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
I will ask Lord Justice Thorpe to give the first judgment of the court.
Behind this appeal lie two rich families, the Tavoulareas and the Finlans family. The husband is the second son of his father who was, apparently, chairman of a multi-national oil company. They are basically a Greek family, but resident in New
York, Florida and perhaps London. The husband is a Greek citizen and a citizen of the United States of America. He was educated in the USA and in this country. The wife is the middle of three children of John Finlan who is a successful businessman operating in the North West of England and the Isle of Man. He has homes in Cheshire, Majorca and Barbados. The couple met when they were in their middle 20s, the husband about 26 and the wife about 23. Neither of them had any employment. Both were sustained by their respective families. The husband has an older brother Peter who, at that stage, would have been about 37 years and he, perhaps curiously, provided a lavish standard of living for his younger brother. It may be that as a result of the age difference between them he had paternalistic feelings towards his younger brother, but his generosity enabled the husband at that stage, and thereafter, to maintain an extraordinarily high standard of living. Peter was able to make this provision from the profits of a shipping business that he was running in London. The wife was provided with an income from a family company run by her father and she was provided with a motor car of high standard.
In 1987 a property in Courtney Avenue N6 was purchased for £1.2m and considerable sums were then spent on its improvement. The chosen vehicle for the purchase was a company called Courtney Investment (Liberia) Ltd and all the money came from the Tavoulareas side. The parties were able to move in in January 1988. They married subsequently on 24th September 1988 in America. On 31st October 1991, which was coincidentally her 28th birthday, the wife gave birth to the only child, subsequently christened John William. In the summer of 1992 Peter's shipping business collapsed with huge debts. Thereafter, the husband was supported only by his father. That led to a significant reduction in lifestyle, but nonetheless the standard of living enjoyed by this couple continued to be luxurious.
In January 1994 the wife left the matrimonial home in Courtney Avenue and returned with John William and the nanny to her parents' home in Cheshire. It is a property called Cassia Lodge and it stands in grounds of some 75 acres. There were a flurry of proceedings in which the wife sought a Mareva injunction against her husband's fortune and protection in relation to her primary care of John William. It is unnecessary to record those proceedings in any detail. It is enough to state that the costs of those proceedings on the wife's side amounted to approximately £115,000, of which £17,000 was spent on the Mareva proceedings and the balance of £98,000 on the Children Act proceedings.
These proceedings commenced with a notice of application dated 18th October 1994. The husband filed an affidavit shortly thereafter, not in response to the notice of application but in response to the Mareva application, in which he said quite plainly that he accepted, for the purpose of this litigation, that Courtney Avenue and the proceeds of its sale were to be regarded as his beneficially and were available to meet any orders that the court might make on the wife's notice of application. Despite that important concession, the wife attacked his disclosure contained in a full affidavit of means filed on 29th December 1994 with a questionnaire. Subsequently she said that she was dissatisfied with the answers. She therefore took a summons to a district judge who upheld her application ordering further information and granting her the costs of that application. In consequence, the husband was obliged to furnish further financial information which he did by answer to the questionnaire of 12th September 1995. There had been orders for costs the other way during the ancillary skirmishes, particularly an order that the wife pay half the husband's costs in the Mareva application.
The trial of the wife's applications came before Singer J on Monday 23rd October and he heard the case over the succeeding days of that week. It is noteworthy that Singer J took a firm control of this case. At a relatively early stage, namely on 4th November 1994, he reserved ancillary applications to himself. Accordingly, by the time the case came for final hearing he had a considerable understanding of the issues and of the parties. The judge was very critical of the wife's conduct in the ancillary relief proceedings. He said this of her in his judgment:
"I found the wife to be a generally unsatisfactory witness. She was defensive and evasive."
On the following page he said:
"I am left with the clear conclusion that she has been driven in the ancillary relief proceedings by very mercenary considerations. Her case has been conducted in a way designed to extract the maximum capital from the husband. She has exaggerated her need for housing, and I am satisfied that she has exaggerated her anxieties about the security of future financial support for William. She has minimised the extent of her own ability even to think about or to prepare for the possibility that she might contribute to her own economy, and it is no answer for her to submit as was submitted on her behalf that she should never be expected to work, for the husband has never done so."
The husband was by no means above criticism in the manner in which he had conducted his case. There is no doubt at all that much information that was relevant, and which could have been readily produced in concise form well in advance of the inquiry, was produced belatedly and in a confusing fashion. Furthermore, in some instances it was not produced at all. However, the judge took a very different view of the husband's responsibility for these shortcomings. His introductory paragraph dealing with the husband opens with the sentence:
"The husband is a fundamentally likeable although not very profound individual who has lived and spent easily and has hitherto had few cares."
But in relation to his litigation conduct, the judge made this important point on his behalf:
"Thus the husband is now embittered. He sees himself as the victim of a deliberate plot hatched to cause him maximum expense in this litigation, both in terms of costs along the way and in the ultimate award. He, for his part, has approached the financial litigation with a degree of realistic candour for which he should have some credit, albeit that it may result in part at least from the realism of advice given to him."
Then, having reviewed the various deficiencies of the husband's disclosure in detail, the judge said:
"But in the context of this case those uncertainties need only to be stated for their relative unimportance to be obvious. Thus I am not satisfied that there has been any material non-disclosure on the part of the husband. Indeed in her final submissions Miss Hughes accepted that on behalf of the wife she could not submit that the husband's global wealth has been materially misrepresented."
The judge had recorded at the outset of his judgment that Miss Hughes QC had quantified the wife's claim at between £600,000 and £675,000 and, in addition, her submission that a further sum of approximately £250,000 should be paid in capital form for the future maintenance and education of John William. Thus, for the wife the case was opened with a target of £900,000 or thereabouts.
The husband's case was that the wife's applications should simply be dismissed on the basis that such need as she had could be well met from her own funds or from the wider resources of her family. The husband's concession that he was beneficially entitled to the proceeds of sale in the former matrimonial home meant that there was approximately £2m liquid available in a Jersey account which was the subject of undertakings between solicitors for preservation. In addition, he said that he had other assets, taking his total worth to about £2.75m after, I think, adding back his expenditure on costs.
The wife's position was that she had had an Isle of Man account with approximately £200,000 to its credit. That had been spent during the preceding 24 months, as she said, on the litigation. The total expenditure on costs on each side was in the order of £250,000. She asserted that her solicitors' bills had been paid directly by her father and the money drawn down from her Isle of Man account had gone to him by way of refund. She said that she was in his debt to the extent of £70,000 or £80,000 on the taking of an account between them and that she had pledged her jewellery to meet that debt. The jewellery had a value of just over £50,000, but she had also a CGT liability of about £12,000 arising from her beneficial interest in a settlement. So, on those respective financial positions...
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