[2025] EWHC 2997 (Fam)

The wife issued this application in Form A in August 2022. She was slow to file her Form E such that the First Appointment was not heard until much later, the 20 June 2023. In October 2023 (which was to have been an FDR) the parties agreed further directions and provision was made for a private FDR. That was missed because of delay in filing Mr Dodge’s report. There was a further directions appointment in February 2024, but the case appeared to fall out of the court’s listing regime for a period of time thereafter. Following a hearing before DJ Mulkis in December 2024 it was allocated to be heard by a High Court judge.

Complaint is made by Mr Boydell of the repeated failure on the wife’s part to comply with court orders made for the efficient conduct of these proceedings. The wife tells me that she did not have the funds to meet her costs.

The matter came before me on the 28 March 2025, and, by consent Mr Strickland was instructed. There was an FDR in June 2025 which did not settle the case. It then came before me for a PTR on the 30 September 2025. Controversially in her section 25 statement the wife made, for the first time, an allegation of non-disclosure against the husband, and potentially an allegation of conduct. There was in place a consensual direction recording that she was not going to rely on conduct. I made a further direction in the terms of the consensual direction preventing the wife running an allegation of conduct. While noting that the non-disclosure allegation was made late in the proceedings, and that there had been in place a direction to require the point to be clearly set out if it were to be taken prior to the FDR, I declined to strike out the paragraph in which she made the allegation of non-disclosure.

There is no reference to a non-disclosure case in the terms of the wife’s allegation in her section 25 statement in Mr Lewis’s position statement for this hearing. He did however point out that he has discovered (while preparing the position statement) that a subsidiary of Company B (which is a subsidiary of Company A), Company C, has been recently sold. The sale had happened on the 1 October 2025, but had been expected (I subsequently heard) from May 2025 when heads of agreement had been signed. It is clearly a matter, as was accepted by Mr Boydell, that should have been drawn to the wife’s attention, the court’s attention, and the forensic accountants’ attention much earlier.

I note that Mr Lewis tells me that in the Children Act proceedings findings were made that the relationship between the parties was ‘characterised by coercive control by the father and his family’.

There have been a number of interim maintenance and legal service payment orders. The most recent maintenance pending suit order (of the 28 March 2025) was by consent and provided for the wife to be paid her rent (£5000pm), most utilities, and £4000 pm, as well as school fees and a one-off £6000 for a holiday to Australia.