Case No. EWFC-75

. Counsel for the wife said as follows in his opening:It is W’s case that H in respect to the properties and business mentioned at (a) to (c) below (i) has beneficial interest and/or other equitable entitlement (ii) has shares or equitable interests and/or financial or proprietary entitlement from companies and business (iii) and will continue to have financial benefits from such properties, company business now and in the future. The properties and business are identified as follows:(a) 50-52 High Street, Burnham -on-sea TA8 1PD where the business known as The New Chandni Restaurant is operated from (commercial property)(b) Bluebird Restaurant Limited trading as The New Chandni Restaurant, situated at 50-52 High Street, Burnham -on-sea TA8 1PD.(c) 4 Moreland Road, Highbridge, TA9 3ET (residential property)21.Although that is how the wife’s case was put, in fact she does not pursue a suggestion that the husband has a beneficial entitlement in the company, Bluebird Restaurant Ltd, or the shares in it; after a day of submissions on 12th April 2022 that was the wife’s conceded position in relation to the company. She asserts that the husband controls the business and its finances. Further, she asserts that the husband has undisclosed financial benefits from the company, part of which were concealed behind a sham loan agreement with the Fourth Respondent, Mr Haque. 22.Therefore, the disputed trust claims (and size of the interests that W alleges H to have) relate to 50-52 High Street, Burnham (50%) and 4 Morland Rd, where R7 and R8 live (100%) – see C10 for the wife’s statement to that effect. The Respondents involved in each claim, including the husband, deny the wife’s assertions and contend that the husband has no beneficial or financial interest in any of them. 23.In his skeleton argument for this hearing, counsel for the husband has submitted: •‘H denies the assertions which are tantamount to allegations involving a large number of parties engaging in a wide scale conspiracy even prior to separation all colluding to defeat the W’s financial remedy claim and on properties which even historically H had no interest in. The W did not seek to join the Respondents (R’s’) as intervenors within those existing proceedings to determine the extent of any beneficial interest in property but chose to issue proceedings separately under the TOLATA with accompanying Particulars of Claim (‘PoC’) [A3-A6]…The PoC signed by retained counsel for the W does not set out the legal basis for the claims. It is not known how the claimed percentages [in relation to the two properties and R3] are calculated.’•‘The burden of proof is on the W to prove her case and H (as with all the R’s) has been forced to provide fishing and disproportionately intrusive disclosure far over and above that required and relied on by the W through extensive and costly specific disclosure enquiries brought by the W. H, as with the co R’s, has made full and frank disclosure and the W does not suggest that the specific disclosure she has obtained has not been complied with. H provided a detailed statement in response to the allegations [D1-D13] as have the rest of the R’s and witnesses [D20-D29 and G1-G36 and G50-G73]. There is a general duty on the W to prove her case and she has failed to discharge her duty. It would be wrong to draw inferences adverse to the H upon inadequate facts unsupported and with insufficient proof of the standard necessary to meet the seriousness of the allegations made against him and the rest of the R’s.’24.In this judgment I will show why, in relation to the trust claims, I say:i)The procedure that has been followed in this case is misguided. In 2018, H issued his Form A in the divorce proceedings. In August 2019 the wife issued the trust proceedings by way of separate claim form. Thereafter the trust proceedings were treated as the dominant proceedings and pleadings and statements were filed within them. The case was transferred to the Business and Property Court and then to the County Court. Only in November 2021 was it transferred to the Family Court. It was then that I became involved.ii)It is as a result of the procedure that has been adopted and the entrenched conflict between these parties that disproportionate costs have been incurred. Further, basic procedural requirements of financial remedy proceedings have been ignored. The wife has never filed a Form A. As I have described, the husband did not make an open offer at all until I required one. The wife’s open offer was absurd. There is no statement from the wife’s current husband and there was no evidence about his circumstances at all until I required him to attend to give oral evidence. There is no documentation at all in support of the evidence that he gave. No mention at all has been made during this hearing about alternative accommodation for either party, even though evidence has been filed about it [J1-63]. The Forms E of neither party gave full or frank disclosure. The case has been in and out of court due to procedural infighting. In relation to the trust claims the wife has never set out in any meaningful sense how it is that she seeks to justify the claims or the shares that she seeks in the two relevant properties (High St and 4 Morland Rd); for instance, the case of Laskar v Laskar [2008] EWCA Civ 347 (to which I refer later) has simply been ignored by her. iii)The trust claims are hopeless. It is simply not necessary to descend into any form of lengthy analysis of the equitable principles of resulting and constructive trusts. In relation to both properties in issue (50-52 High St and 4 Morland Rd) there is no evidence that the husband made any direct financial contribution to the purchase of either property or to mortgage payments. There is no evidence of a common intention (express, implied or imputed) that he would have a share in them – quite the reverse, since it was the very clear intention that the legal title holders would be the beneficial owners of the two properties. From the start, the trust claims as presented bore the evidential difficulty of the wife (an outsider) seeking to establish that the holders of the legal title and the husband shared beneficial interests in properties that both title holders and the husband denied; that evidential reality has not been reflected in anything that I have heard on her behalf. 25.