XW v XH [2019] EWCA Civ 2262
Citation:XW v XH [2019] EWCA Civ 2262
Rule of thumb: If there has been a very short marriage, is there still an automatic 50/50 split on assets? Not necessarily, it is more complex than that - there is the exempt & non-exempt assets rules which can mean that certain parts of the assets never became part of the marriage.
Judgment:
This case raised the principle of ‘exempt’ and ‘non-exempt’ assets when deciding how much money each party is entitled to after a divorce has been formally granted by the Court. The Court held that the starting point generally is that all of the estate is deemed to be both marital property. However the party can argue that part of the estate was non-marital property because it was completely detached from the marriage. In this case the combined assets of the spouses were £520 million, and one spouse was awarded £150 million, increased to around £180 million on appeal, with it being successful argued that many assets were not part of the marriage. The Court held that equal sharing should be departed from when the following 4 factors listed hereafter were present, which there were in this case, and only 35-40% of the assets were awarded to one of the spouses (the exact figures and percentages in this case were not exactly clear), ‘"to a very substantial extent kept their financial affairs completely separate during the marriage", "created through the husband's business activity", "latent potential... a not inconsiderable extent, the later success was built on these earlier foundations", "growth in the value of his business assets during the marriage comes within the concept of special contribution", Baker J
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