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Question:

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I have been very interested in the recent cases of Gohill and Sharman as I understand that the wives in both cases have been able to ask the Court to revisit the final agreements or orders they came to on divorce because their husbands had not disclosed details of their financial circumstances honestly.

 

My former husband was in business with a partner, or so I thought, at the time of our divorce.  My former husband told me that he had a 50% interest in the business and that his partner was entitled to a 50% share.

 

A month or so ago I bumped into my former husband’s partner and asked how the business was going, only to be told that this man had no interest in the business and had not had any genuine interest in the business for some years.  Apparently he had faced financial difficulty and my husband had bought out his interest in the business for a very small sum of money.  Apparently all of this was agreed at the time of the divorce, but did not finalise until immediately after the order had been made by the divorce court.

 

The upshot of all of this appears to be that my former husband has now bought a very valuable interest in his business for a song and is therefore much wealthier than he led me, or the Court, to believe at the time of the divorce and clearly he knew that this was going to happen.

 

Is there anything I can do?

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Answer:

 

Yes.  I think that the cases of Sharman and Gohill do significantly help you.  You will need to be able to show to a Court that there has been on-disclosure, but interestingly, as a result of the Judge’s decision and analysis in Sharman and Gohill it will now be up to your former husband to prove that the non-disclosure alleged is immaterial to the divorce.

 

You do not mention any figures, but if your former husband was able to take advantage of his partner’s difficulties in such a way as to enrich himself very considerably and knew that he was about to do this just prior to the divorce settlement, then I think he will be in some difficulty in persuading Court that his significantly improved financial position is immaterial to the divorce.

 

If I were you, I would immediately seek legal advice with a view to investigating all of this a little further.

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Barbara Jordan