Case No. EWFC-75

, Highbridge, which is now held in the sole name of the Seventh Respondent, Sume Begum. The business is the New Chandni Restaurant which operates from 50-52 High Street, Burnham-on-Sea. The company that operates the restaurant, nominally, is the Third Respondent, Bluebird Restaurant Ltd, of which the Fourth Respondent, Mohammed Haque, is the sole shareholder; during the hearing it was revealed that another company (‘Chandni Catering Ltd’) has taken over Bluebird Restaurant Ltd.’s position in relation to the restaurant business, at least on a ‘trial’ basis. If the husband does not have an interest in the two properties (50-52 High St and 4 Morland Rd), the wife contends that he will benefit from them by way of arrangement with the property owners. The issues in the case were narrowed during a pre-trial hearing before me on 12th April 2022 and therefore some of the civil pleading that is contained in the bundle is now otiose.3.This case, therefore, involves a husband, a wife, 5 children of the marriage, a restaurant (The New Chandni Restaurant), the company that is said to have run the restaurant (Bluebird Restaurant Ltd, the Third Respondent), the sole shareholder and director of Bluebird Restaurant Ltd (a Mr Haque, the Fourth Respondent), and the people in whom the property at 4 Morland Rd was vested at the outset of the proceedings (i.e. Ms Sume Begum, the Seventh Respondent and, formerly, Mr Shakir Jumon, the Eighth Respondent). I have put a list of the parties in a header at the top of each page of this judgment to assist anyone reading it. 4.In this judgment, where I refer to documents in which the titles of the parties from the civil proceedings have been used (e.g. ‘Claimant’, ‘C’, D1 etc), I have changed them to the abbreviations that I have referred to above and which are more suitable to proceedings that take place in the primary context of the financial remedy issues between divorced parties. 5.The trust and business issues are relevant to determining the issues under section 25(2)(a) of The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 – see Tebbutt v Haynes [1981] 2 All ER 238. As Mr Justice Mostyn said in TL v ML (Ancillary Relief: Claim against Assets of Extended Family) [2006] 1 FLR 1263: ‘A dispute with a third party must be approached on exactly the same legal basis as if it was being determined in the Chancery Division’ or, I add, in any other court of civil jurisdiction. That, however, does not mean that the trust claims should ever have been allowed to dominate the litigation and procedure in the way that has happened in this case.6.Because of the number of parties and representatives, I have colour coded a table, that I set out below, to give a brief description of each of the parties and their legal representatives. I have also created a table, which I attach as an appendix, of some of the many other people whose names arise in these proceedings; I have given a brief description of each such person and placed their names in alphabetical order. In this judgment, I abbreviate the Applicant wife by referring to her as ‘the wife’ or, simply ‘W’. I abbreviate the First Respondent Husband by referring to him as ‘the husband’ or, simply, ‘H’. I abbreviate the town of Burnham-on-Sea, sometimes, by referring to it as ‘Burnham’ or, simply ‘B-O-S’. I refer to other parties by their names or by their Respondent number (R2, R3, etc). On 12th April 2022, I struck out the wife’s claims against the Fifth and Sixth Respondents and show the entries relating to them in the table below with the typing struck through; I have not changed the numbering of the Respondents, however, since this would merely cause even more confusion.7.Overview - Before descending into the mass of detail in this case, I want to give an overview. Apart from the trust claims (which, as I explain, are meritless and misconceived), this case should have been simple. The husband and wife own two properties between them, First, there is the former matrimonial home, where the wife and all five children live. It is held in the husband’s sole name. It is 37 St Michael’s Avenue, Clevedon. It is worth about £500,000 net, if it were to be sold after repayment of a mortgage of £10k. Second, the mortgage-free previous family home (a former council house, held in the wife’s sole name), 36 Beaconsfield Rd, Clevedon. Mr Miah, who has conducted the husband’s case with eminent professionalism, is right to say that Capital Gains Tax would arise on a sale of 36 Beaconsfield Rd and so a net sale figure of about £230,000 is used for it in this judgment. 8.The husband works and has a secure income in the restaurant business that, as I explain in this judgment, he and his brother, Almas Uddin, control. His portrayal of himself in these proceedings as a mere employee of the business indebted to the owner, Mr Haque, has been dishonest. I find that he has a net income of at least £42,500 p.a. and can remain living rent and utility bill free above the restaurant. There was no examination of any alternative housing that he might wish to seek for himself, even though there are property particulars in the bundle. He did not give evidence of any intentions to buy a property or suggest that he had looked at any properties. The reality, I find, is that he will remain living and working at 50-52 High Street but has the use of accommodation elsewhere through his strong and united family and friendship circle. 9.The wife does not work and has a long-term responsibility to the five children, one of whom has a number of disabilities. She needs a large house to accommodate them and her husband has very limited capital (about £11,700). She needs to stay in the former matrimonial home whilst they are dependent upon her and they will not fly the nest when the clock strikes midnight on their 18th birthdays. Many of the issues that the wife has raised in these proceedings are speculative (at best), insufficiently analysed or are simply devoid of any evidential support at all. Since the wife has remarried, there are no issues in relation to periodical payments. She has no earning capacity, due to her commitment to the children and is not going to acquire one. The extreme divisions within this family, widened by this unnecessarily conflicted litigation, mean that the wife bears the major part of the parental responsibilities for the children, and will continue to do so. Because of the way that the husband has structured his income (taking a low wage from the business and drawing additional sums through a fictional loan arrangement) his child maintenance support of this family is very modest and is likely to remain so. She is going to bear the main financial burden in relation to them. In addition to the wife’s overall potential costs liabilities, there would be the CGT payable by her on the sale of Beaconsfield Rd (estimated by Mr Miah, roughly, at about £25,000) and she has credit card debts of about £24,000. 10.Beyond the wife’s credit card debts, both parties have debts which, as I explain, are all, very soft. One alleged debt (of the husband to Mr Haque, the fourth Respondent), is fictional – I find that it is not owed at all and represented money that was being taken by the husband out of the business, using Mr Haque as a conduit for the money. Therefore, this is a case where there is a matrimonial pot of about £730,000, there are five children living with their mother who has no earning capacity but who has remarried and there is a husband who has a secure income and accommodation.11.It is the costs, a significant proportion of which have been driven by the wife’s dogmatic pursuit of the speculative and unprincipled trust claims and by the husband’s dishonest portrayal of his position within the business, that make the discretionary decision under section 25 complex. There are inevitable applications that will be made by the 2nd, 7th, and 8th Respondents (at least) against the wife for costs in relation to the trust claims. The costs, subject to any assessment and rounded to the nearest £500, are said to total £203,500 and, by party, to be as follows:i)Wife – total costs £70,500 of which £49,000 has been paid, leaving £21,500 owed.ii)Husband – £65,000 of which £50,000 has been paid, leaving £15,000 owed.iii)Respondents 2,3,4,7 and 8 - £53,000 of which £42,500 has been paid, leaving £10.5k.iv)Respondents 5 and 6: £15,000 ordered by me against the wife already on the strike out order on 12th April 2022. 12.Therefore the wife has an outstanding costs liability of £21,500 (her own costs) and £15,000 for the 5th and 6th Respondent. In addition to that £36,500, there will be costs applications from the Respondents and, without deciding the issue at this stage, I foresee that she may well have a total cost liability, including her own outstanding costs, of over £75,000 (by way of example only, if she should be ordered to pay about £40k to the other Respondents). At present and based on what I say in this judgment, I cannot see how she can avoid paying the costs of Rupia Begum, Sume Begum and Shakir Jumon, subject to assessment.13.I wish to emphasise that I have given repeated warnings, both during this hearing and in the pre-trial review in April that the pursuit of the trust claims could leave at least one party ‘wiped out’ by the costs. Further, because of the arguments that were advanced at the hearing in April, that hearing should have given the wife cause to reflect very carefully about the trust case that she was arguing. The arguments that I have heard at this hearing, even in the closing speech on her behalf, showed that no heed had been taken to my warnings or to the obvious weaknesses in her trust case. Since that hearing, she has continued to invest heavily in costs, including £19,000 that has been borrowed to fund counsel for this hearing, I was told. The way that she has pursued this litigation is reminiscent of the reports of bad litigation in the 1970’s before the understanding of ‘ancillary relief’ proceedings had developed following the introduction of the legislation in section 5 of The Matrimonial Proceedings and Property Act 1970.14.Open offers - The wife’s open offer in the financial remedy proceedings was as lacking in merit as her pursuit of the trust claims; she sought the two properties outright (37 St Michael’s Avenue and 36 Beaconsfield), a lump sum to discharge the small mortgage of £10k on 37 St Michael’s Avenue and two properties in Bangladesh about which there is