A wife whose application for financial orders against her former husband was struck out because she had made the application over twenty years after they separated has succeeded in her appeal to the Supreme Court to have the claim reinstated.
Kathleen Wyatt and Dale Vince
Kathleen Wyatt and Dale Vince married in 1981 and separated around two years later and subsequently divorced. She had a daughter by a previous relationship and she and Mr Vince had a son during their marriage.
During the marriage they lived on benefits and then, following separation and divorce, Mr Vince spent eight years as a new age traveller, living for a while in an old ambulance converted into a camper van and then he drove to Spain for a couple of years in an old fire engine.
One year, in the early 1990s, when Mr Vince was at the Glastonbury Festival, he fixed a windmill to the top of an old pylon, installed batteries at its foot, plugged in four large mobile telephones and offered festival goers a wind powered phone service. From there, his interest in wind generated electricity developed and in 1996 he and a couple of business partners erected a wind turbine on top of a hill in Gloucestershire and began to generate electricity.
Their company prospered beyond any expectation. Mr Vince is now the sole shareholder of Ecotricity Group Limited which generates green electricity to at least 70,000 homes and businesses in the UK and is worth at least £57 million.
Meanwhile Ms Wyatt was dogged with ill health and lived an unsettled life. She had two more children as a result of a later relationship and she and the children finally settled in 1995 in Monmouth in a council property which she subsequently bought. She has however remained dependant on benefits and her house is evidently in a poor state of repair. Mr Vince paid almost no maintenance for his son, mainly because he had no means to do so.
It was not until 2011, that Ms Wyatt made an application to the court for financial orders. By this time the husband was a very rich man. He applied for her claim to be stuck out as an abuse of process on the grounds that the application had been made so long after the separation and divorce. He was unsuccessful at first instance, but the Court of Appeal allowed his appeal and struck out her claim.
The Supreme Court has however reinstated the claim. There is no provision in the Family Procedure Rules for summary judgment. The court has no power to decide on a summary basis that a claim for financial provision arising from a marriage has no real prospect of success. The court has to consider all the factors in Section 25(2) Matrimonial Clauses Act 1973 and must do so in every case, no matter how late in the day an application may be made to the court.
In this case, the court made the point that the wife faced formidable difficulties with her case, not least because of the very long delay in bringing her application. However in this particular case the wife’s contribution in caring for the children with very little support from the husband was an important issue which the court ultimately decides.
The wife asked the court for an award of almost £2 million to enable her to buy a house for herself and her dependents and to have sufficient income for the rest of her life. The court said that an award of that size was out of the question. The case has been sent back to the High Court for further consideration, with Lord Wilson suggesting that an argument that the wife might receive enough from the husband to enable her to purchase a somewhat more comfortable, mortgage free home for herself and her dependants might have “a real prospect of comparatively modest success”. So she is likely to receive only a very small part of Mr Vince’s fortune in the end.
Comment
There has been a lot of media interest in this case because of the highly unusual facts. The decision has largely been about procedural issues of importance to practitioners rather than to the general public. It is however important in that it emphasises that a court must, in every single case where decisions have to be made about financial provision following the breakdown of marriage, consider the matters set out in s25 Matrimonial Clauses Act.
It is also a timely reminder that if financial claims are not dismissed at the time the divorce is completed, the omission can prove costly and may come back to bite many years later.
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