Legal advice: Shared wealth?
Catherine Taylorof Healys LLP on divorcing without legal advice
With the virtual disappearance of Legal Aid, an increasing number of people are not seeking legal advice and are carrying out their own divorces. This has been encouraged by the Government, in a bid to save the Government money. Indeed, a think tank spent approximately 10 years redesigning the Divorce Petition and other divorce related forms, to make them “user friendly”, with the aim that people would be able to complete the forms without legal assistance.
The danger of people divorcing without legal advice is that, although they may carry out the divorce procedure through to Decree Absolute, they often ignore the finances. This can be to their peril as, even after a Decree Absolute has been granted, a former husband or wife can make a claim over the other party’s finances unless there is a Court Order to say otherwise. This was recently illustrated in a case involving Dale Vince and his former wife Kathleen Wyatt. The parties separated almost 30 years ago and divorced approximately 20 years ago. At that time, the parties were both penniless and Dale was living in an old ambulance and was living the life of a new age traveller, with his main source of income being state benefits.
“A former spouse can make a claim over the other party’s finances”
Whilst Dale was living in his ambulance, he made a wind turbine out of retrieved and recycled materials, to generate his own electricity. He is now the head of Ecotricity Limited, which is the UK’s largest green energy company and he is worth millions. As you can imagine, he no longer resides in his ambulance, but lives in a £3million fort. Dale’s ex-wife Kathleen remains virtually penniless.
Kathleen made an application to the Court for a share of Dale’s wealth and hoped to secure £2million for herself. She was successful in the first instance and Dale had to take the case to the Court of Appeal, where Kathleen’s claim was rejected. The lesson to be learnt from all of this is that if, at the time of divorce, Dale and Kathleen had arranged for a Consent Order to be drawn up, setting out that both parties agreed not to make a claim against each other, now or in the future and that Consent Order had been lodged with the Court and approved by a Judge, Kathleen would have been unable to make this claim. The cost to Dale in having a Consent Order drawn up would, on average, have cost him no more than a couple of hundred pounds, as opposed to the tens of thousands of pounds he must have spent defending his former wife’s claim through the Court of Appeal.
If you are in the process of getting divorced, or even if you are already divorced, but did not finalise the finances at the time of divorce, then please feel free to call or email us to discuss your options on 01273 685888 or by email
Catherine Taylor: catherine.taylor@healys.com
Kathryn Sawyer: kathryn.sawyer@healys.com
