In the recently reported case of AAZ v BBZ [2016] EWHC, the wife is 44 and the husband is 61. The couple married and moved to London in 1993 when the wife was pregnant with the elder son. In 1996 the second son was born. Throughout the couple\u2019s 20 year marriage the wife had been a \u2018hands on\u2019 mother and housewife. The husband is an oil and gas trader who sold shares in a Russian company for $1.375 billion dollars. The husband was unrepresented in court and failed to attend hearings in breach of multiple orders.<\/p>\n
The wife contended that the total net martial wealth in the case was \u00a31.092 billion and that the entire wealth was matrimonial in nature. In giving judgment, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave agreed that the parties\u2019 wealth had been built up over the course of the marriage through \u2018equal contributions to the welfare of the family, and should be subject to the sharing principle\u2019. A split approaching 50:50 was therefore appropriate. <\/p>\n
The wife had originally sought \u00a3350million, however as the parties had not agreed a settlement she claimed a further \u00a393million, comprising chattels at their English home valued at \u00a32.5million, an Aston Martin car valued at \u00a3350,000 and the parties\u2019 modern art collection valued at $112million dollars. The wife\u2019s claim was 41.5% of the total marital assets and Mr Justice Haddon-Cave found that the figure of \u00a3453,576,152 was justified considering all the circumstances of the case. <\/p>\n
Since the judgment in AAZ v BBZ, the husband has commented that the High Court ruling is unreasonable and unfounded and has described his wife\u2019s actions as an outrageous abuse of the British legal system. The husband claims that the couple divorced in Russia more than 17 years ago due to the wife\u2019s adultery. In light of these comments, the husband may seek to appeal the High Court judgment.<\/p>\n
In 2014, Jamie Cooper-Hohn, wife of financier Sir Chris Hohn was awarded \u00a3337million and this was thought to be one of the biggest financial settlements in the UK. The settlement figure of \u00a3453,576,152 in AAZ v BBZ may not even be the \u2018largest ever\u2019 divorce award in the UK given that an increasing number of high-net-worth couples are electing for private divorce and arbitration whereby the details of the final settlement are kept entirely confidential. <\/p>\n
The recent cases of AAZ v BBZ and Cooper-Hohn do however reinforce the view that the English Courts, and in particular London, tend to show an unparalleled generosity towards the financially weaker spouse. This generosity is based on the principle that \u2018breadwinners\u2019 and \u2018homemakers\u2019 contributions to a marriage are of equal importance. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the recently reported case of AAZ v BBZ [2016] EWHC, the wife is 44 and the husband is 61. The couple married and moved to London in 1993 when the wife was pregnant with the elder son. In 1996 the second son was born. Throughout the couple\u2019s 20 year marriage the wife had been… Read More »Ex-wife awarded \u00a3453 million in what is thought to be one of the largest divorce awards in the UK<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[83,170,126,86,175],"tags":[3,12,13,49,9,19],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-divorce","category-divorce-law","category-divorce-rate","category-divorce-settlements","category-lund-bennett","tag-divorce-law","tag-divorce-laws","tag-divorce-lawyer","tag-divorce-solicitors","tag-lund-bennett","tag-lund-bennett-law"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lundbennett.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lundbennett.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lundbennett.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lundbennett.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lundbennett.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lundbennett.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":567,"href":"https:\/\/lundbennett.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions\/567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lundbennett.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lundbennett.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lundbennett.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}