CA-2024-002730 - [2025] EWCA Civ 1022

As set out in the judgment below:

“The parties to the marriage are cousins by birth and both their families are Mauritian. The husband was born in England [in 1972] but returned to Mauritius as a baby before being brought back to England by his mother when he was about four and he grew up here. The mother was born [in 1979] and grew up in Mauritius. She came to England on a student Visa [in 2000] and the parties met and married on 25 October 2003.”

The parties’ two children were born in England and the family continued to live here until September 2019.

The husband has British and Mauritian nationality. The wife is a Mauritian national. She was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK in November 2005 and obtained British citizenship in March 2018. The wife’s domicile of origin is Mauritius.

The family left England in September 2019 and moved to Mauritius. There was a dispute between the parties as to what their plans were at this time, which I deal with further below. The family were still living in Mauritius when the Covid pandemic started which meant that they could not leave Mauritius.

The marriage broke down and the parties separated in November 2020. They all remained living in Mauritius until 8 October 2022 when the wife travelled to England with the children. She commenced divorce proceedings here on 11 October 2022. The husband commenced proceedings here under the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention on 15 November 2022 and also divorce proceedings in Mauritius on 18 November 2022. The husband’s proceedings under the 1980 Convention were ultimately dismissed in May 2023. The divorce proceedings in Mauritius are continuing.

As referred to above, the wife’s case was that she was domiciled in England and Wales on 11 October 2022. In her Statement dated 7 June 2024 she said:

“I consider England to be my domicile of choice, having lived here all of my adult life, save a short period of time between September 2019 and October 2022. I consider that I acquired a new domicile of choice, being England and Wales, by the combination of residence and my intention of indefinite residence, in the early 2000s.”

In respect of the move to Mauritius in September 2019 she said:

“Christnan has contended that I was not domiciled in England and Wales on the date of my application, I anticipate his position being that my domicile changed from England and Wales to Mauritius. I do not consider that my place of domicile ever changed from England and Wales. When Christnan, the children and I moved to Mauritius in September 2019, the plan was to move to Singapore for a period of time. We were stuck in Mauritius for financial reasons and later the invasion of Ukraine by Russia prevented us moving. I do not consider that, as a family, we ever settled in Mauritius, or had any fixed plans to remain in Mauritius. We moved there, for a limited period of time, for a particular purpose. The basis of our residence there was not indefinite in its future contemplation.”

In summary, the wife’s case was that the family had left England because of their financial circumstances. They planned to stay in Mauritius for a limited period of time to save some money before then moving to Singapore where the prospects for developing the husband’s business were considered to be significantly better. The reason for going to Singapore was again to accumulate sufficient savings to enable them in due course to return to live in England.

The husband’s case, as set out in his Position Statement dated 29 April 2024, was that there was “never any intention that [we] would return to live in England when we left in 2019” and that, if the wife had acquired a domicile of choice in the UK, “it was lost when she returned to live in Mauritius”. In his Statement dated 20 August 2024, the husband said that, when the wife returned to Mauritius in 2019, she intended “to settle permanently in Mauritius”. He also repeated that, when they left England in September 2019, it “was never intended that either of us would move back to the United Kingdom permanently”.

However, in an earlier Statement dated 21 June 2024, the husband had said that “we moved to Mauritius in September 2019, with initial plans to relocate to Singapore”. Further, in his divorce petition in Mauritius the husband had said that: “In or about September 2019, the parties elected travel to Mauritius to spend time with the family pending a decision whether to relocate elsewhere and/or stay in Mauritius”. It is also relevant that he had emailed the older child’s school before the start of the new school year in September 2019 explaining that the child would be taken out of school because the family had organised a move to Singapore “sooner than anticipated” and wanted the older child to begin at school there before the start of term. The husband subsequently accepted the judge’s description of this email as “spin”, given that it did not reflect the true picture because the family were not moving directly to Singapore and was designed, presumably, to avoid incurring school fees.