[2025] EWHC 2997 (Fam)

The wife is 37 and the husband is 47. They married in Country A in May 2011. The wife followed the husband to this country, where he lived, in January 2012 upon approval of her visa. They have three children: X (11), Y (9) and Z (8).

When they started to cohabit they lived in the husband’s mother’s house (his father having died before they married.) That remained their home until 2016. They then lived in rental properties. They bought a large property Property A in September 2018 (for £1.9 million) with the intention of renovating it and then living in it. That did not happen. Indeed the refurbishments had not started by the time they separated. Shortly before separation they lived abroad, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

The parties separated in 2019. It has therefore been 6 years since separation, and it was a marriage of a few months more than 8 years. They have lived in different rental properties since then. The husband is currently living back in his mother’s home. The wife and children have been living in Hounslow. X has started secondary school at PL College, near Area A. It is a private religious school, with relatively modest fees. As a consequence of the journey the mother makes with X to that school, I am told, the younger children have been unable to get to what had been their schools and have been instead attending school on-line. Again, a private religious school. The wife wants on the conclusion of these proceedings to buy a property in the Ealing area to enable her to get all the children to school.

The wife has just finished a psychology degree at university. She will graduate in January 2026 but, subject to an appeal from her, she will not get an honours degree because she has not completed her dissertation. She tells me in her written evidence that she wants to take a part-time teacher training course in 2026 before becoming a primary school teaching assistant in 2028. Her earning capacity is one of the issues in this case and I will consider it further below. I do note here that it would be odd to have done a teacher training course only to become a teaching assistant rather than a teacher. She tells me her English is not good.

The husband works with his brothers – AE and AF - in a number of business ventures, under the umbrella of Company A, to do with Product A. This will need to be explored more fully. In short, AF holds a licence agreement (arising because the central business was his idea) which enables him to take a large part of the profits from one of the subsidiary businesses (save he has not been able to actually withdraw the money while there has been a Covid loan to the business). Mr Lewis sets out in his opening note that ‘one of the main focusses at trial is the degree to which AF has or will keep not only Company A afloat, but H personally.’

The husband suffered a serious injury in September 2020 (after the parties separated) . He has broadly recovered from the injury now, but it added complication and delay to the parties’ separation. It is his case that his long-term health will be affected by what has happened.