Women get right to reopen divorce settlements after supreme court ruling

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Two women who said that their ex-husbands misled judges about how much they were worth win right to have settlements re-examined

Plaintiffs ‘relieved and delighted’ after supreme court agrees husbands misled judges

Two ex-wives who say they are entitled to more money after separation have won supreme court claims that will allow disputed divorce settlements to be re-opened.

Alison Sharland, 48, and Varsha Gohil, 50, argued that their ex-husbands misled judges about how much they were worth. Their claims will now go back to high court to be re-assessed.

Dishonesty or fraud involving failure to disclose financial assets are grounds for renegotiating previously resolved disagreements, according to unanimous judgments by a bench of seven justices.

Divorce ruling: Alison Sharland and Varsha Gohil win appeal.

The rulings are likely to tempt some aggrieved ex-spouses to restart legal actions. Both women took their claims to the supreme court in London to establish that non-disclosure in divorce settlements requires a case to be re-examined. Their ex-husbands disagreed.

Delivering judgment in the Sharland case, Lady Hale, deputy president of the supreme court, said: “She had been deprived of her right to a full and fair hearing of her claims.”

Both women posed for photos outside the court, smiling, and with their arms around each other. Gohil said: “I’m absolutely relieved by this judgment. I am relieved by the clarity and decisions by the judges.”

Gohil, who said her children had given her the strength to continue fighting the case, added: “There are absolutely no winners in divorce and more than a thought has to be given to the children of families locked in this type of litigation. The price they pay is a very heavy one. The emotional strain of it is huge on everyone, the drain in financial resources is enormous and none of it serves the family.”

Sharland said: “I am relieved and delighted that the supreme court judges have ruled in our favour. I hope that their decision sends out a message to everyone going through a divorce that they cannot lie in the family courts and get away with it.”

She said proceedings had “dragged on” and at times she had considered whether appealing was the right thing to do, “especially as there has been criticism about my pursuing the appeal because of the amount of the award which I originally received”.

She had wanted to pursue her appeal to ensure that others were “not faced with a situation where their spouse tells lies, which potentially affects the outcome and interferes with achieving a just and fair settlement”.

Sharland, from Wilmslow, Cheshire, had accepted £10.35m in cash and properties from her ex-husband, Charles, in the settlement three years ago, justices were told. It later emerged that shares in his company AppSense were worth considerably more than previously revealed.

One estimate put the firm’s value at $1bn (£656m), although lawyers at the time told the court that it was worth between £31m and £47m.

Charles Sharland was found in an earlier case to have “laid a false trail by his dishonest evidence” and to have hidden the fact that he was considering floating the firm.

In the other divorce settlement case, Bhadresh Gohil was found by the appeal court an “out-and-out rogue involved in financial criminality on an eye-watering scale”.

He was convicted of money laundering following their divorce, justices heard. Gohil and his former wife have three grown-up children who remain financially dependent on their mother. She had accepted £270,000 plus a car from her ex-husband more than a decade ago.

The court of appeal had previously ruled in Bhadresh Gohil’s favour, saying that because the courts were not allowed to use evidence from the husband’s criminal trial, held in open court but not released by the Crown Prosecution Service, they could not prove that he was being dishonest in the original proceedings.

Neither woman has yet said how much they want, but both say their claims should be re-examined and all evidence now available considered.

Graham Coy, a partner at the law firm Mundays, said: “Perseverance wins out. Today’s judgment sets aside the financial agreements which was reached when both of Mrs Sharland and Mrs Gohil’s husbands misled the court about their true financial position. The cases will now be reopened and reconsidered.

“This is a victory for common sense and a defeat for dishonesty – it just goes to show that if you don’t put all your cards on the table when divorcing it might come back to bite you further down the line. Importantly, today’s decision could open the floodgates for more people to try and renegotiate historic divorce settlements.”

Rosie Schumm, a partner in family law at the firm Wedlake Bell, said: “In answer to those that say this case opens the floodgates to claims by wronged wives, the much more powerful point is that it will act as a clear deterrent to those husbands who are tempted to defraud their wives. It warns them that they cannot get away with it.

“The lying husband should not be allowed the keys to the fast car to allow him to drive off into the sunset never to be seen again. This judgment forces him to account for his actions and hammers out the exact consequences of the fraud on the consent orders reached between husbands and wives.”

Tom Farley-Hills, a family law partner at the law firm Harbottle & Lewis, said: “This case shows that the court must dispense with an agreement between divorcing couples regarding their finances, even if the court had previously approved it, if the basis of the agreement is subsequently found to have been reached on a false premise because one of the parties lied to the other about the value, or potential value, of an asset.

“The lie does not have to be a big lie for the court to dispense with the order, but it does need to have been big and material enough for the court to be sure that if the lie had not been told, the basis of the agreement would have been different to the one reached.”