Background:
This case concerned a financial remedies application made by the wife with the key issue relating to the date of her separation from her husband. The husband contends that it was in 2014, while the wife contends that it was in 2021.
The parties are both Italian nationals but have spent significant parts of their adult lives living in England even though they retained property and familial interests in Italy. The parties commenced cohabitation circa. 1978 and were married in 1980.
In or about 2015, the wife’s mother, who lived in Italy, required increasing care. The wife would subsequently relocate to Italy to care for her mother but the parties respectively visited each other in England and Italy over the course of the period of care. The wife’s mother died in the latter part of 2017 and the wife then returned to England and resumed cohabitation in 2018.
Around 2014, the husband, who was a builder, developed back issues. The parties looked into the possibility of providing for their future as they had little pension provision but had capital in the order of about £1.5 million.
In or around 2018/2019, the husband had a relationship with another woman which lasted about 18 months. During this time, he went on a fishing trip to St. Petersburg and was accompanied by the other woman. The parties were speaking on the phone during the trip. The wife challenged him when she heard a woman’s voice but he said it was the television. Later in 2019, he admitted to his wife that he had been in a relationship. If the parties had not been in a relationship since 2014, it seems unlikely that the wife would have been calling the husband when on holiday in 2019, and also challenging him about the sound of a woman’s voice in the background.
Although the family home was placed on the market in around 2015, it only sold in November 2018. At this point, the wife returned to live in the parties’ Italian family home. The husband remained in England and went to live with the parties’ daughter. They had a fallout and he was not welcome to stay with his daughter who seemed to have taken the wife’s side about the husband’s extra-marital affair.
It became clear that the husband’s relationship with the other woman did not stop, despite it being one of the wife’s conditions to give him another chance, and she subsequently filed for divorce. The husband contended that they agreed in 2014 to present as a couple to “keep up appearances” and that the photographs taken after that time were for the purposes of social media.
Decision:
The judgement's facts go into great detail, as the Judge had to decide on the balance of probabilities. For instance, the Judge goes into some detail about how the parties were dressed in a photograph although they could not agree on the date, with the wife stating July and the husband November. The Judge was however not convinced by the husband’s account regarding a Jaguar car. On the balance of probabilities, the Court held that the husband failed to prove that the date of separation was 2014 and that a post-separation accrual had existed. The Court was not convinced that such an agreement existed and, if it did, why it would refer to assets which might have arisen post-2014. Consequently, the disposition to be provided for would be on an equal sharing basis.
Having applied Sections 25(1)–(2) and 25A of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, it was determined that the housing needs should be measured at the value of the Italian family home and, upon that basis, the parties would each have a comfortable amount of free capital with which to live off for the rest of their lives, supplemented by state pensions.
The husband was also asked to partially pay the wife’s English solicitor’s costs of dealing with the Italian proceedings as set out in an N260.
Implications:
For a post-separation accrual to be valid, it needs to be recorded in writing or the recollection must be probable and backed by facts. Without conclusive detail, the courts will not be willing to take the word of one of the parties at face value.