Is there no limitation period in divorce?

Many couples who had been divorced would probably feel rather miffed if their ex-spouse having failed to make a financial claim at the time of their divorce then came back several years later to claim a financial settlement.

How many people would feel it is somehow morally wrong so many years later to try to take a share of their former spouses’ savings?

What if the financial fortunes of the couple (or one of them in particular) has changed very significantly since their divorce? 

Is it fair for a former spouse to lie in wait for years and then pounce with a financial application?

Is it fair for the financially weaker party to make a claim on the monies the financially stronger party has built up since their divorce? 

What if the weaker financial party had spent years bringing up the parties’ children in hardship and poverty while the stronger financial party devoted their time and energy to building up a business or concentrating on their career?

These questions and many more like them have been the subject of debate in the Supreme Court this week in the long running case of Vince v Wyatt [2013] EWCA Civ 495.

The Supreme Court has refused the Husband’s appeal to strike out his ex-wife’s financial remedies claim which had been made over 18 years after their decree absolute.

The facts in brief are that the parties married in 1981 and separated in 1984. The parties had one child, born in 1981, and had also treated the wife’s child from an earlier relationship, born in 1979, as a child of the family. During the relationship the parties “chose the New Age or Traveller creed and lifestyle” and had no assets of significance.  At “some stage” in the early 1990s there were both divorce and Children Act proceedings in the County Court. The only surviving document from those proceedings was the decree absolute of divorce, made on 26th October 1992. The husband claimed that the wife made an application for ancillary relief which was dismissed, but there was no evidence of this. The wife entered into a new relationship in 1995 and had two further children by her new partner. In 1995 the husband began a wind power business which became very successful and grew into a company worth “many millions”. The husband remarried in 2006. The wife then applied, on 19th May 2011, for financial remedies from the husband.  The husband applied to “strike out” the wife’s claims but in December 2012 a deputy High Court judge dismissed Mr Vince’s strike-out application.

Mr Vince appealed, successfully, to the Court of Appeal to have the deputy judge’s orders set aside. The Court of Appeal struck out Ms Wyatt’s application for financial provision and she appealed to the Supreme Court.

This week five Supreme Court justices have unanimously ruled Ms Wyatt’s case should go before the family court and her claims should be assessed by a judge.  Delivering the ruling, Lord Wilson said the court must have regard “to the contribution of each party to the welfare of the family, including by looking after the home or caring for the family”.

Lord Wilson said Ms Wyatt had raised her son through “sixteen years of real hardship”.  Her claim was “legally recognisable” and not an “abuse of process”.

Ms Wyatt had made a claim for £1.9m and the judges of the Supreme Court were at pains to point out that “an award approaching that size is out of the question”.

But what will the family court decide is appropriate and fair…? The case continues….

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