Iqbal v Iqbal

Judgment

Sir Ernest Ryder, Senior President:

On 13 December 2010 District Judge Roberts made an interim financial remedy order in divorce proceedings between Mr Jawal Iqbal and Mrs Marie Iqbal who for the purposes of this judgment I shall refer to as husband and wife. She ordered the husband to pay to the wife periodical payments in the sum of £10,000 per calendar month.

On 25 March 2015 His Honour Judge Brasse made a final financial remedy order between the parties whereby the husband was ordered to pay to the wife a lump sum of £3,220,000 by 1 May 2015, arrears of periodical payments of £530,000 by the same date and future periodical payments in the sum of £10,000 per calendar month in advance by standing order.

The parties are now in their early 40s. They met as university students in the United States. They were married in a religious ceremony in 1993 and in a civil ceremony in New York in 1996. There are three children of the marriage, one of whom is under 18. The youngest child lives with his mother and the elder two children are at university in the USA.

The parties lived with the husband’s wealthy extended family in Pakistan until the summer of 2007 when they moved to New York. They were supported while living in Pakistan by the husband’s family to the extent that the husband described that part of their life as a ‘grace and favour existence’. In 2009 the couple moved to London. It is common ground that by the time of the move to New York, the husband and wife were estranged from the extended family in Pakistan and from their financial support. The marriage came to an end in 2009 and the wife filed her petition for divorce on 17 March 2010 and her Form A on 26 July 2010. Decree absolute was pronounced on 12 August 2010.

From the time of the move to New York the parties lived on borrowed funds. There was apparently no evidence before the court of the husband’s access to the wealth of the extended family in Pakistan after July 2011 save that the husband’s mother allowed him to live in her flat in London. The husband returned to Pakistan in 2011. He has not attended any hearings of the courts in England and Wales since the hearing before King J on 25 July 2011. The extent to which the husband is participating in rather than actively or passively avoiding the proceedings in this jurisdiction is an issue in the proceedings.

The chronology of relevant orders for the purposes of this appeal is as follows:

Interim periodical payments order made by