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Husband jailed for missing out divorce information
Brian Leivers told a hearing at Nottingham County Court he could not provide any more details about his assets and previous income.
He submitted the form four times but lawyers representing his wife Jayne insisted some information was missing each time.
Judge Joan Butler QC ruled the 44-year-old from Carrington was in contempt of court and ordered him to serve 28 days in prison.
Mr Leivers was released after 12 days – but said the sentence given at the hearing on March 9 was "unjust".
"It is always going to be an incomplete document because there are some things I can't get. After the fourth time I did it I couldn't get any more.
"I answered the questions to the best of my ability."
He added: "Prison was not a nice place. It was a shock to the system."
Mr Leivers, a former director of Leivers Transport, was first ordered to disclose information and documents about his financial situation in July.
But after he failed to provide enough information a further order was made that he should serve 28 days in jail if he failed to comply.
Mrs Leivers' lawyers said Mr Leivers had failed to provide details of "numerous large transactions" made in the past seven years.
They also accused him of not providing details about money owed to him and other financial information.
In a signed affadavit submitted to the court, Mr Leivers said events in his life "conspired to put me under a huge amount of stress and anxiety for what seems like an eternity."
He said: "I apologise to the court, the petitioner's solicitors and the petitioner [Mrs Leivers] if they think I have tried to hamper the court process."
31 March 2009
Divorce Jackpots Have U.K. Bankers Begging for Relief
Bankers and other high earners in the U.K. are asking to reduce their divorce settlements as the financial crisis shrinks their net worth, according to five family-law attorneys, including Julian Lipson of Withers LLP.
Bryan Myerson a former chief executive officer of will learn as soon as tomorrow if a London appeals court will alter the terms of his divorce, according to the court calendar. Myerson is seeking to lower the lump sum of about 11.2 million pounds ($16 million) he agreed to pay his wife last year when they ended their 26-year marriage. The value of his share of the settlement dropped to 1.17 million pounds within 10 months.
“He made a commercial decision to put his money on red, and the spin of the roulette wheel came out black,” said Lipson, “The judges may feel sorry for him, and it was an unfair transaction, but it was a decision he took.”
While Myerson will have a hard time winning, other high net worth individuals are having more luck renegotiating alimony payments out of court, the five family-law attorneys said. Lipson said his firm received three times as many inquiries as it would normally get in a year between November and December.
Record Award
The trend is being fanned by more than 100,000 job cuts in the European finance industry and bonuses dropping 60 percent since the crisis began.
If you are acting for someone who was earning 800,000 pounds and now earns 150,000 pounds, “you have a pretty good case for downward variation, and the lawyer of the wife would advise to negotiate,” said Jane Craig, family partner at Manches LLP in London.
England became one of the most lucrative jurisdictions in the world for high net worth divorces in 2006. Two landmark rulings entitled a spouse to a share of a former partner’s lifetime earnings, and allowed settlements to reflect a spouse’s expectation of a wealthy lifestyle.
Beverly Charman, ex-wife of Bermuda based Alexis Capital Holdings CEO John Charman won a record divorce award of 48 million pounds in 2006. She had argued that she needed 700,000 pounds a year to live in the manner she had become accustomed to over 27 years of marriage.
Changing Times
Lipson said he began noticing an increase in requests to change alimony payments last year. In better times, such appeals were rare because they didn’t justify the legal fees, he said.
“In previous years, husbands tended to make applications because the wife had got a boyfriend, was living with someone or had started working. It was uncommon that they made an application for downward variation because their incomes had fallen off the face of a cliff.”
If successful, the Myerson ruling could open the floodgates for similar appeals, the lawyers said. All five said that he faces an uphill struggle to change a settlement he agreed to.
“Courts are busy as it is without dealing with cases retrospectively, and they are also very concerned about ensuring there is as much finality as possible in each case,”
Negative Equity
When the Myersons divorced in February 2008, Brian Myerson opted to give his ex-wife, Ingrid, 9.5 million pounds and a 1.5 million-pound beach house in South Africa, documents submitted to the Court of Appeals show. He was to keep the shares in his company, a London-based group of investment funds. The deal would have given Myerson 57 percent of the couple’s total wealth of 25.8 million pounds, versus 43 percent for Ingrid Myerson.
Myerson, 50, will be forced into negative equity of 500,000 pounds, while his wife will take 100 percent of the couple’s assets if he pays her all the money she’s due, Myerson’s lawyer, told the Court of Appeals on March 11.
Myerson was ousted last week by Principle shareholders, who also voted to liquidate the fund. Shares of Principle have fallen 76 percent this year. Ingrid Myerson’s lawyers argued in court filings Myerson’s stock portfolio could rise in value. .
Extraordinary Event
Myerson’s case hinges on whether he can prove the financial crisis was an extraordinary event no one saw coming, according to Ison, who isn’t involved in the case. British family law holds that alimony is negotiable, while lump-sum payments, or capital orders, are final except in the event of an unforeseeable circumstance.
Another investor seeking a court-ordered adjustment to his divorce settlement, says he can’t afford to pay his former wife the 4.7 million pounds he owes over the next three years. When the couple reached a deal last year, their total financial assets, based largely on property holdings, were worth 135 million pounds.
“His issue is to due to the fact that she received most of the cash and he received most of the properties,” “It’s not that he doesn’t want to pay it at all, but he wants to have the amount reduced.”
A final ruling is expected in first two weeks of September.
Comment;
If Mr Myerson does not win on appeal I for one will be convinced that our judges really have lost touch with reality. It is high time that the high threshold set down in the old case of Bader was reviewed.
31 March 2009
Trust me...I’m a lawyer
One in four adults trust legal professionals, according to research commissioned by The Bar Standards Board into how much the public trust certain professions. A mere 3% trust journalists, 2% trust bankers, and 1% trust estate agents and accountants polled 14% in the survey. A sizeable 57%, however, trust none of these professions. BSB chair Ruth Deech says: “Lack of public trust in the professions is clearly a substantial issue. While legal professionals don’t fare too badly in this poll, their net trust rating of 24% is at best underwhelming.
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3 April 2009
Pre-nuptial victory for heiress | |||||||||
A court ruling over a divorced couple's pre-nuptial agreement could pave the way for such contracts to become legally binding in England and Wales. Katrin Radmacher, a German heiress, has overturned an earlier court decision to award her ex-husband £5.8m of her £100m fortune despite their agreement. Frenchman Nicolas Granatino had agreed not to make a claim if they divorced. Such contracts are enforceable in Germany, where the couple's was signed, but not in England where they married.
They are also enforceable in Mr Granatino's home country. Miss Radmacher, one of Germany's richest women, won a ruling from the Court of Appeal that such contracts should be taken into account by the courts when they divide assets after a marriage fails. Appeal judge Lord Justice Thorpe said he believed it had become "increasingly unrealistic" for courts to disregard pre-nuptial agreements. "It reflects the laws and morals of earlier generations," he said. "It does not sufficiently recognise the rights of autonomous adults to govern their future financial relationship by agreement in an age when marriage is not generally regarded as a sacrament and divorce is a statistical commonplace." He said a "carefully fashioned contract" should be available as an alternative to the "stress, anxieties and expense" of going through the court. Mr Granatino is expected to seek permission to take the case to the House of Lords. 'Broken promise' Miss Radmacher, 39, said she was "delighted" by the decision. "Ultimately, this case has been about what I regard as a broken promise," she said.
"The agreement was at my father's insistence as he wanted to protect my inheritance - this is perfectly normal in our countries of origin, France and Germany. Like all wealthy parents, he feared gold-diggers. "As an heir himself, Nicolas perfectly understood this. The agreement gave me reassurance that Nicolas was marrying me because he loved me as I loved him... that we were marrying for the right reasons." Her solicitor, Ayesha Vardag, said: "In a landmark judgment, three of the most highly respected judges in the land have ruled that pre-nups can be decisive in determining the financial division on divorce. "The Court of Appeal, in a carefully reasoned, thoroughly modern judgment has enabled English matrimonial law to catch up with the rest of the world. "From today grown-ups can agree in the best of times what will happen in the worst of times." Legal analyst Joshua Rozenberg said it was the first time a senior court had given "a great deal of weight" to a pre-nuptial agreement. He said it would not happen in every case and the issue would remain unclear until Parliament changed the law. Marriage contract The couple's pre-nuptial was signed in Germany before the couple married in London in 1998. The pair's marriage was said to have broken down after Mr Granatino, 37, gave up a lucrative investment banker job in 2003 to become a £30,000-a-year biotechnology researcher at Oxford University. They divorced in 2006 and a High Court ruling last year awarded her ex-husband £5.8m. Miss Radmacher appealed against that decision and her lawyer, Richard Todd QC, told a panel of three Court of Appeal judges the freedom to agree a contract was "at the heart of all modern commercial and legal systems". He said Miss Radmacher had never said her former husband would leave the marriage with nothing. The Court of Appeal judges ruled that Mr Granatino's pay-out of £5.8m should be cut to about £1m as a lump sum in lieu of maintenance. In addition, there will be a fund of £2.5m for a house that will be returned to Miss Radmacher when the younger of their two daughters, who is six, reaches the age of 22. Mr Granatino's debts, of about £700,000, are also to be paid off by the heiress, who had always agreed to this part of the settlement. Comment If this case means that prenuptial agreements are going to be enforced from now on than this is great progress. Extract from the BBC web site 2nd July 2009
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Ultimately, this case has been about what I regard as a broken promise 
A former company director spent 12 days in jail after failing to provide details of his finances to a divorce hearing.