Wood v Wood

Judgment

Lord Justice Ward:

This is a renewed application for permission to appeal the order made by HHJ Vincent sitting in the Truro County Court on 29 January 2009, permission having been refused on paper by Wall LJ.

Let me spell out the background first. At the ripe old age of 98 and 97, Mr and Mrs Bertie Woods divorced. I wish them long life and a happy future. They had claims for ancillary relief against each other and those claims came before District Judge Mitchell, also sitting in the Truro County Court. In the ensuing ancillary relief proceedings they were eventually able to agree a clean break, but the disputed issue which the district judge had to decide was one joined between Mrs Woods’ daughter, Pauline Rowe, and Pauline’s former husband, Mr William Baker, the applicant before us today. Each of them intervened in the ancillary relief proceedings to claim that he or she was the sole beneficial owner of the matrimonial home in which Mr and Mrs Woods had lived and in which everyone agreed Mr Woods would continue to live. The district judge held that the property was owned beneficially by Mrs Rowe and not by Mr Baker.

There then followed a discussion about the effect of the changed rules on the costs orders that should follow. One aspect of this which comes as a surprise to me, and which we have not investigated in detail, is that there has been some change effected to the Legal Services Regulations of 2000, the effect of which is that Mr Baker, although legally aided for the purpose of his intervention and his claim to a beneficial interest in the property, nonetheless lost the protection that a legal aid litigant used, in my time, to enjoy, namely that a costs order would not be made against him ordinarily, or certainly not to be enforced without leave, the so-called the football pools orders: that seems no longer to apply. The second change to the rules that is particularly relevant is the change to the Family Proceeding Rules, and the new rule 2.71 of the Family Proceedings costs rules provides:

“ (1) CPR rule 44.3(1) to (5) shall not apply to ancillary relief proceedings.

(2) CPR rule 44.3(6) to (9) apply to an order made under this rule as they apply to an order made under CPR rule 44.3.

(3) In this rule “costs” has the same meaning as in CPR rule 43.2(1)(a) and includes the costs payable by a client to his solicitor.

(4)(a) The general rule in ancillary relief proceedings is that the court will not make an order requiring one party