[2025] EWHC 1460 (Fam)

This, primarily, is an application for financial provision for the benefit of a child under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989. I am also concerned with an application under section 423 of the Insolvency Act 1986 for the setting aside of various transactions.

I shall refer to the child as P. He is now aged 7. The applicant is P’s mother. The first respondent is his father. There are two further respondents who were joined as parties pursuant to an order I made on 4 March 2025: P’s paternal grandfather and the trustee of the T Trust, which, as I shall set out below, holds or held substantial wealth mainly generated by the father.

The mother has been represented by Mr Purkis of counsel. The father acted before me in person. His English is fluent, although occasionally he was assisted by an interpreter. Previously he instructed specialist family law solicitors: Family Law in Partnership and then Hughes Fowler Carruthers. The second and third respondents have not played any part in the hearing before me. Each of them submitted short statements to the court stating that they did not wish to be involved. By contrast with the stance he now adopts, the paternal grandfather was represented by direct access counsel at the pre-trial review on 4 March 2025, when he pursued an application to be joined as a party.

The mother’s case is that the father is substantially wealthy with assets measured in tens of millions of pounds. She does not accept the father’s case that he has divested himself of his wealth. She asserts that the T Trust, founded by paternal grandfather and which came to hold assets previously in father’s name, was set up and/or used as a vehicle to shield the father’s assets from her claims. She seeks conventional financial provision for P which includes:

The father’s case is that since he disposed of his assets into the trust, his resources are very modest. He says he cannot afford to meet the mother’s claims. He accuses her of being financially driven and of using P as a means of satisfying her own financial ambitions, claiming that she engineered a move to this jurisdiction to take advantage of the generous approach to financial provision available in the courts of England and Wales.

The father claims that he personally lacks the means to make any financial proposal for capital, but relies upon an open proposal purporting to come from the paternal grandfather (sent, on the father’s case, on behalf of the family collectively). Under the terms of this offer, a property in South West London, currently held in the name of the grandfather, would be sold. After meeting various payments including in respect of the mother’s costs, the balance would be applied to the purchase of a property of the mother’s choosing to be held on trust for the benefit of the child until his eighteenth birthday. The property has not been valued but is said by the father to be worth some £750,000. The sum available for the purchase of a property, on this proposal, is likely to be in the region of £550,000. It is a term of the offer that the mother permits the father to have specified contact with P in the Czech Republic as well as in England. The father offers to pay child maintenance at the rate of £1,000 per month and suggests that P’s school fees, up to a cap, be met from the T Trust provided the mother co-operates in having him added as a beneficiary.

I heard oral evidence from the parents. I have also read a considerable amount of material in the core bundle (742 pages) and a supplemental bundle (1490 pages) provided on behalf of the mother as well as a further bundle provided by the father (although I was careful not to look at without prejudice material which, impermissibly, he had inserted within it). I was also provided with Form ES2, although this has only been completed by the mother’s solicitors (it was not sent to the father in time for him to complete it), and position statements on behalf of both the mother and the father.