Financial Remedies Journal - 2023 Issue 1 | Spring

2023 - Issue 1 - Spring

Issue 1 of 2023 was published in March 2023.

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All articles in the Journal are also available individually.

Financial Remedies Journal 2023 Issue 1 Digital

Financial Remedies Journal 2023 Issue 1 Digital.pdf

Chair’s Column (Spring 2023)

After a successful opening year in 2022, the Financial Remedies Journal (FRJ) now enters its second year and continues to provide a wealth of information and debate on the big subjects topical in the financial remedies world and I commend this edition of the journal to you, as well as

HHJ Edward Hess | Chair of the Editorial Board

Omissions, Ambiguities and Deficiencies – Seeking Clarification of a Judge’s Reasoning

‘All judgments are capable of improvement’ observed Peter Jackson LJ in Re O (A Child: Judgment: Adequacy of Reasons) [2021] EWCA Civ 149 at [70]. As a consequence, the appropriate scope of seeking ‘clarification’ of a draft judgment – as opposed to suggesting corrections of a typographical or numerical nature or

An Unwelcome Guest and a ‘lively controversy’ – Guest v Guest on the Essential Aim of Proprietary Estoppel

‘1. “One day my son, all this will be yours”. Spoken by a farmer to his son when in his teens, and repeated for many years thereafter. Relying on that promise of inheritance from his father, the son spends the best part of his working life on the farm, working

Looking Back at Duxbury 30 Years On

Overview The Duxbury formula seeks to ascertain a capital amount which if invested to achieve capital growth and income yield (both at assumed rates and after tax on the yield and required gains) could be drawn down in equal inflation-proofed instalments over a period of time (often the recipient’s

Pensions on Divorce – Lifetime Allowance Tax Issues

A favourite film of one of the authors is Apollo 13. At one point, whilst trying to work out what had to happen to get the ill-fated space craft home, Commander Jim Lovell said: ‘All right, there’s a thousand things that have to happen in order. We are on

Cryptocurrency and the Family Courts – Some International Experiences

Executive summary Millions of people around the globe have funds in cryptocurrencies, with billions of dollars now invested. The nature of these funds is invariably secretive and non-national based. They present distinctive challenges for family courts around the world in ascertaining what are the overall assets in order to produce

Clarke v Clarke – A Brave New (Valuation) World

Introduction Business valuers are often asked to estimate the value of interests in companies that do not represent the entirety of the company’s share capital.[[1]] In those cases, the application of an appropriate valuation discount, which accurately reflects the attributes of a subject shareholding can be both a

Depletion of Business Profits and Assets During Separation and Divorce Proceedings – Would it Have Happened Anyway?

Introduction This article is written from the perspective of the business valuation expert. We often see business profits and assets deplete over the period of separation and during divorce proceedings. The question is to what extent this can/could have been controlled by the business owner (and usually shareholder/director

Reflections on Being a LASPO Reviewer for Advocate

I became a reviewer for Advocate, then the Bar Pro Bono Unit, within days of the advent of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO). Earlier in my career in 2002, Martin Pointer KC and I had launched a full-scale assault on Holman J’s ground-breaking

The Interplay Between Welfare Benefits and Financial Remedy Orders – A Practitioner’s View

It is now 10 years since the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) came into force. Reflecting back, the obvious impact on my firm’s practice has been the reduction in the number of financial remedy cases we deal with where clients have the benefit of

Ten Years on from LASPO – An On-the-Ground Perspective from Support Through Court

We empower litigants in person Every year, thousands of people in the United Kingdom face court alone. Often through no choice of their own, they must represent themselves at a moment that could determine the rest of their life. They may face divorce, eviction from their home or the loss

An Overview of the Benefits System

Lloyd George, determined to ‘lift the shadow of the workhouse from the homes of the poor’, sought to provide a guaranteed income to the old and infirm. All wage-earners contributed to a health scheme, in return for benefits. Sounds simple. But what about those who had never worked? Who or

Fair Shares? Sorting Out Money and Property on Divorce

Introduction For the 100,000 couples who divorce annually in England and Wales, the financial arrangements they make can determine the future standard of living that they and their children will have. Yet, only a third of them use the legal system to reach a financial settlement, with the remaining

Litigation Funding – A Brief Overview

Funding family law litigation is a complex process. It should be seen in the context of most family law proceedings operating on the basis of each party paying their own legal costs, with costs orders rarely being available save for litigation misconduct. The first choice of funding is to use

DR Corner: The Drive for Gender Diversity in Private FDRs

Pressures on court time and the increasing use of remote courts over the COVID-19 pandemic have led to the increasing popularity and success of Private FDRs within (and instead of) financial remedy proceedings within the last 5 years. A Private FDR is a ‘without prejudice’ hearing which can be used

Tech Corner: Choosing Tech that Will Transform the Way You Work

Non-essential office tech that can transform your work. How to sort the tech needs from the tech thneeds.[[1]] Using the right tools can completely transform the way you work or bog you down with a solution that is more cumbersome than what you had before. How do you tack

Money Corner: Did the 2022 Permacrisis Reduce Your Client’s Pension Credit?

2022, a year that we all hoped would usher in a return to normal following the COVID-19 pandemic, turned out to be full of seismic shifts, and it was certainly a stark reminder that the value of investments can go down as well as up. Investors had to face the

Book Review: Quiet Revolutionaries

Quiet Revolutionaries: The Married Women’s Association and Family Law, Sharon Thompson (Hart Publishing, 2022) Family lawyers today often talk of reform. In a relatively short period of time, we have seen fundamental changes to the landscape of family law including comprehensive no-fault divorce and mixed-sex civil partnerships. We are

Financial Remedies Case Round-Up: October to December 2022

A sad tale’s best for winter, so we start with October’s Supreme Court decision in Guest v Guest [2022] UKSC 27. As with other leading estoppel cases, it concerned a farm and a promise of inheritance, in reliance on which the claimant undertook decades of work on the

The Summary of the Summaries (Spring 2023)

We have summarised the following cases on the Financial Remedies Journal website since the last issue went to press, and now present these as a summary of summaries. Visit the ‘Cases’ tab on the website to search a compendious back catalogue of financial remedies cases via their keywords. A v

Interview with Sir Mathew Thorpe

Sir Mathew Thorpe, Barrister from 1961, in silk from 1980, Family Division Judge (1988–95), Lord Justice of Appeal (1995–2013) and Deputy Head of Family Justice and Head of International Family Justice (2005–13). Sir Mathew was interviewed at his Wiltshire home in Autumn 2022. How have you occupied

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