CA-2024-000509 - [2025] EWCA Civ 1071

The judgment on the substantive appeal sets out why the court considers that the Respondent’s deliberate non-disclosure in the circumstances of this case can properly be characterised as fraudulent.

In addition, what cannot in any event be disputed is that the Respondent deliberately failed to disclosure the majority of her assets notwithstanding that she expressly warranted to the Appellant that she had made full disclosure under the terms of the agreement. She also used the copy and paste email to induce the Appellant to accept, on the basis that her disclosure would be full and frank, that he would not be able to receive legal advice from his lawyers as to that disclosure.

Further, and as indicated, the Respondent rejected an offer that she should forego reliance on the pre-nuptial agreement and simply agree to an assessment of the Appellant’s needs by reference to section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. Instead, the Respondent chose to maintain, when challenged at the hearing before the judge, that her deliberate non-disclosure was not dishonest and the agreement should stand. She also advanced a number of self-interested explanations relating to her own and her father’s tax affairs in an attempt to justify why she had chosen to mislead the Appellant.

We do not consider that such conduct can possibly be described as reasonable in relation to the use of a pre-nuptial agreement. Still less can it be regarded as the ordinary and reasonable conduct of proceedings in the Family Division. It was well “out of the norm”. In our judgment, this is an entirely appropriate case in which to order costs, both at first instance and on appeal, to be assessed on an indemnity basis if not agreed.