The Practitioner
Permission to appeal against ancillary relief orders (after Barder v Barder (Caluori intervening) [1988] AC 20, [1987] 2 FLR 480, HL) has been in the reports recently; but in two cases which only emphasise that, for such an application to succeed, the circumstances must be exceptional.
In B v B [2007] EWHC 2472 (Fam), [2007] All ER (D) 404 (Oct) a house was sold by H, and to his advantage, for appreciably more than its valuation at the time of the ancillary relief hearing. He had carried out an extensive amount of refurbishment. In those circumstances Sir Mark Potter P held that the increase in price was “by no means inordinate given the value of the works effected by the husband”. He refused W's Barder application.
Barder had concerned a mother who retained the parties' former home under a consent order, then unlawfully killed the two
