Multi-millionaire does not have to pay housing & lifetime maintenance 20 years after divorce
An ex-wife’s claim for housing and lifetime maintenance more than 20 years after her divorce should be struck out as an abuse of process, the Court of Appeal has held.
The case, Wyatt v Vince [2013] EWCA Civ 495, is the first reported use of r 4.4 of the Family Procedure Rules 2010.
When Kathleen Wyatt married Dale Vince in 1981, they lived on benefits. They had a child in 1983, separated in 1984 and divorced in 1992. Vince became a New Age traveller and sold wind-powered telephones at Glastonbury before setting up a green energy company, Ecotricity, which is now worth £90m. Wyatt has fared less well financially, and currently lives on benefits.
Last year, Wyatt brought a claim against Vince, seeking a lump sum for a new home and capitalised lifelong maintenance. The High Court declined Vince’s r 4.4 application to strike out the claim, and granted Wyatt’s application for an interim maintenance order against Vince to fund her £125,000 legal fees.
However, Lords Justice Thorpe, Jackson and Tomlinson held that the judge had been wrong not to take into account the inherent weaknesses of Wyatt’s claim, and that the order to fund Wyatt’s legal costs should not have been made because Vince would then be unable to recover his legal costs if he won.
Giving judgment, LJ Jackson said the family courts should adopt the same broad approach as in civil proceedings, and not allow claims brought many years after the divorce and with no real prospect of success.
“It must be an abuse of the court’s process to bring such proceedings...The present case is a classic example of such abuse,” he said.
Davina Hay, partner at Schillings, who acted for Vince, says: “My client was placed in an extremely unenviable position during these proceedings: either give in to his ex-wife’s demands or face the Kafka-esque prospect of a trial in which he was funding her lawyers as well as his own and yet had no prospect of recovering his own legal costs from her even if he won.”
There is no statute of limitations for a party to a marriage to bring a claim for a financial order. They must not have re-married but they can still claim if their former spouse has re-married.
