Ngwu v Ngwu

Lord Justice Thorpe:

I will refer to the parties to this appeal as husband and wife despite the fact that they have been divorced for some time. The appeal concerns the separation of their financial affairs following their divorce, and it is a terrible warning to others who might be travelling this road as to how not to settle finances following divorce. There was a four-day hearing before the District Judge estimated, but it over-ran. I think in the end the District Judge heard six days of evidence; reserved and then, on 24 April, delivered her considered judgment. That judgment was then reflected in an order made on the date of judgment, but amended on 14 June.

The District Judge took a robust view of the parties and their respective contributions to a case which the District Judge described as chaotic. The District Judge was firmly of the view that the responsibility for that chaos and want of full, frank and clear disclosure was the applicant wife’s. Anyway the bare end result was that the wife was to keep the most valuable of the three properties in play, worth about £320,000 gross, with a mortgage of £140,000, and in compensation the husband should receive a lump sum of £40,000. She condemned the wife in the costs from 24 November 2004, the date upon which the Calderbank offer had been advanced by the husband’s solicitors, an offer that closely matched the result imposed by the judge.

Now the wife was dissatisfied with that outcome and exercised her right of appeal to the circuit judge. Because there is no circuit judge with an ancillary relief ticket in Leicester it had to go across to Birmingham, where the appeal was taken by HHJ Hindley QC, who delivered her reasoned judgment on 23 December 2008.

The husband and the wife are both doctors. The wife is a consultant and the husband is a general practitioner, so not surprisingly they were both represented by counsel at the hearing before the District Judge. The wife was similarly represented on the appeal to HHJ Hindley, but by then the husband went in person. HHJ Hindley described the appeal as having “a very unfortunate and prolix history which has worked to the disadvantage of the parties…by virtue of the escalation in costs” which had made “enormous inroads into the modest matrimonial assets”.

HHJ Hindley delivered a full and careful judgment extending to some 51 paragraphs, in which she considered one by one the various grounds of appeal advanced on the wife’s behalf. Her final order was cle