Divorce and family lawyers

We successfully acted for the husband to defeat the wife's application for a stay on the basis that Australia was the more appropriate jurisdiction. The Court of Appeal considered the factors the court should bear in mind when dealing with such challenges. At the time, it was a landmark case and is regularly quoted to this day on the topic of forum non conveniens.

Miller v Miller is a seminal House of Lords decision that shaped the current law in relation to financial provision on divorce. This case established the three strands which should be considered in all future claims: needs, compensation and sharing. We represented Melissa Miller throughout these proceedings, and successfully defended her former husband's appeal, so that our client retained her £5 million settlement following their very short marriage.

We acted for the mother and child in Hong Kong under the Guardianship of Minors Ordinance, achieving for our client the highest award for such child maintenance to date.

We acted on a landmark Court of Appeal case concerning the removal of children and which reviewed the law on habitual residence under the Hague Convention: LCYP v JEK. The case dealt with the importance of the children's wishes and removed the previous test in respect of the parent's agreement and intention.

Our team led a case which reached the Hong Kong Court of Appeal concerning the issue of the removal of a child from Hong Kong to the US. This case was interesting because the orders in respect of the children had been made by the courts in Singapore where the children were born and where the father continued to reside. However, the mother and children had lived in Hong Kong for a number of years and therefore we sought an order through the courts there. The court reluctantly refused jurisdiction on the basis that it would not be in the children's best interest if there were multiple jurisdictions involved.

As our client approached retirement, following a long and distinguished career as a barrister, he applied to terminate the maintenance payments he had been ordered to pay to his first wife for life. His former wife sought a lump sum payment of £560,000 in lieu of ongoing maintenance. The case went to the Court of Appeal, who established that the potential claims of a second wife cannot take priority over the first wife's claims and ordered a payment of £215,000 (less than half the amount she initially sought).

Our client, who shared the care of his two children with his former wife, opposed her application to relocate to Canada permanently with them. We represented him in the Court of Appeal and successfully overturned the initial decision, so his former wife did not have permission to leave with the children. The decision marked an influential development in the court's approach to applications to relocate abroad with children. 

We acted for the husband in a high value divorce, which involved a conflict in jurisdiction between Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China. The matter reached The Court of Final Appeal and led to a change in Hong Kong law, introducing new legislation to allow a party who had a divorce in another jurisdiction to seek a financial remedy in Hong Kong where applicable. This is an important measure protecting those who would be unfairly prejudiced by an overseas divorce.

We acted for the mother in her application for permission to relocate to Russia with the two children. This decision re-iterated what the Court of Appeal had said in MK v CK, that the only principle to apply is the welfare principle, but in this case the Court decided that our client should be given permission to relocate.

A property developer's business suffered huge losses when the financial crisis hit, and we acted for him in his divorce negotiations with his wife, heiress of a business empire. Our team helped the husband defend the allocation of an equal split of the couple's finances, plus an extra £5 million lump sum payment to the husband to cover half of his property losses.

We acted for the wife in OS v DS. Her husband had failed to make proper disclosure of his financial resources. We assisted in establishing an innovative court procedure so that the judge could carry out a 'preliminary/oral discovery' hearing. We were then able to settle the case resulting in a positive outcome for our client. This procedure has since been used in many other cases and is now known as an 'OS v DS hearing'.

We delivered a comprehensive result for the wife in X v X [2016]. We successfully argued that her husband’s interest in a trust should be considered a resource of his and included in the marital assets available for division. The case also involved complex issues of assessing the contributions made by the husband and the wife during the marriage, the valuation of shares in a listed company, and the extent of non-matrimonial assets.

We represented Lisa Tchenguiz in a lengthy, complex, high profile divorce which resulted in a change in the law on disclosure and confidentiality of documents in divorce proceedings; and also produced additional decisions in relation to the joinder of trust beneficiaries to financial proceedings on divorce. The Court of Appeal ruled that unauthorized access to a former spouse's personal documents breached a duty of confidentiality. The judgment has been described by some as a cheat's charter and an obstacle to transparency.

A cross border team acted for an ultra high net worth client in an exceptionally complex divorce, involving company structures and multiple third parties, offshore trusts and multi million dollar assets in a number of jurisdictions. We obtained the highest ever award for interim maintenance in Hong Kong.

The child of a wealthy Canadian family moved to the United States and married. We advised the family on protecting their assets and created trust structures sufficiently flexible to grow with the child and the child's emergent new family needs, while avoiding inclusion in the child's US estate and minimizing a potential divorce settlement payout. This included optimizing various in-bound real estate investments as the family purchased, exchanged and extensively renovated properties.

We acted for Sir Chris Hohn in what was then the highest value divorce case. He had generated his wealth through huge success in investment management, and had also established a charitable foundation which achieved international recognition in its field. We successfully argued that the marital assets should not be equally divided, in part due to his 'special contribution' to their generation. Mrs Cooper-Hohn was awarded 36% of the total.

We acted for advertising and marketing giant WPP's CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell, in his divorce case, which is one of the very few in which the judges accepted the argument that his 'exceptional contribution' to the marriage's finances was sufficient to justify an unequal division of the couple's assets. Sir Martin was awarded 60% of the assets, with no ongoing maintenance payments.

John Charman is a leading figure in the international insurance industry, and we represented him in his divorce. During their 27 year marriage the Charmans had accumulated assets of c£131 million. The family fortune was held directly and via a Bermuda-based trust. The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court decision that Mr Charman's exceptional success in business should result in a 63/37% split in his favor.

In Kan Lai Kwan v Poon Lok To Otto, the law in relation to trusts was clarified and the principles in the English case of Charman were confirmed to be an appropriate precedent in Hong Kong. The court found that the trusts could be subject to division as, should the settlor request the trustees to make an advancement to him, they would be likely to do so.

A landmark divorce case in Hong Kong involved German pre and postnuptial agreements. The case confirmed that the principles set out in the English Supreme Court case of Radmacher, in respect of prenuptial agreements, would be an appropriate precedent for the Hong Kong courts, and that, if the parties fully understood the implications, they would most likely be bound to their agreements.

When he became engaged to a Swiss citizen, the son of a high-profile UK businessman asked us to help him obtain a British Passport and expatriate from the US. We were also asked to draft a prenuptial agreement. Timing was of the essence but as a global, full-service firm we created a team of immigration, family and private client lawyers to meet tight deadlines.