Case No. FD19F00071

Introduction1.I have been dealing with an application pursuant to Part III Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984 by AG (“the wife – W”) for financial relief following the breakdown of her marriage to VD (“the husband – H”) and a divorce in Russia. 2.The summary facts can be quickly set out. W is aged 51 and has a daughter S who is aged 17. H is aged 56 and has four children by previous relationships. Both parties have had previous marriages. 3.They met in 2008 and co-habited from 2009, marrying in Russia in 2010. Until then they had only lived in Russia. 4.Their marriage was to a significant extent spent apart because in 2010, as I find at H’s instigation, the family moved to England but H’s business interests mainly kept him in Russia. For tax purposes he had to spend no more than 90 days a year in England and not less than 180 days a year in Russia, but his business commitments meant he was often in England much less than that. 5.On H’s case the marriage came to an end, apart from an attempted reconciliation in 2016, on 1 April 2014. On W’s case the marriage came to an end in 2017. 6.It is common ground that H was a wealthy man when they met. It is H’s case that in 2011 he placed the vast majority of his assets in a Curacao Foundation (“the Foundation”) and that since then he has owned very little himself. It is W’s case that during the marriage H became financially even more successful. Thus it is that the parties have set the stage for a titanic battle about the ownership of assets and marital accrual. W has sought to make a sharing claim whilst H argues that the court in Russia, in which country they were divorced and where financial proceedings first took place, made a fair and reasonable award and that W is entitled to nothing more. 7.A quick glance at the asset schedules shows graphically how far the parties are apart. W claims that the marital assets are £29m (throughout this judgment I shall use round figures) of which H owns £26.5m and W £2.5m (being broadly her half interest in the matrimonial home). H claims that after repayment of the sums that he has borrowed from the Foundation he is worth -£6m and before repayment the total assets are only £7.6m of which he possesses £2.9m and W £4.6m. 8.The parties have lost all perspective of what this case is really about. They have each made arguments which I regard as unsustainable. They have sought to argue every point available to them and have thus between them expended some £2.1m on costs and have deluged the court with material far in excess of what is permitted either by rules for good practice or orders of the court. On the other hand, the requirements for an agreed chronology and schedule of assets have been ignored. The way that the case has been run has added to the difficulty of the judicial exercise.