Philip Perrins, instructed by Julian Hunt and Jennie Apsey of Dean Wilson LLP, in a case recently released for publication, acted for the applicant wife. The application involved an extremely short marriage that produced one child. The husband was a high earner with property assets worth between £6.5m and £11m, subject to disputed tax issues. The main issue was what award ought to be made to meet the wife’s and the child’s housing and income needs and whether this ought to be on an outright or reversionary basis.

The case was complicated by the husband (in person) acting, according to the judge, in a totally unrestrained and intransigent manner throughout the proceedings. There was also the related issue as to whether the court ought to set-aside, under s.37, a Deed of Assignment and a Deed of Trust in relation to a company in which the husband had held shares and which held liquid resources and unencumbered properties sufficient to meet an award. HHJ Farquhar set-aside the deeds and ordered the husband to pay an outright lump sum to the wife to meet her needs, her costs, and her litigation loan.

In this judgment, HHJ Farquhar, Chair of the FRC sub-group of the Transparency Implementation Group, also considered whether the judgment should be published in anonymised form and the competing arguments following publication of the TIG report.