Courts Rule in Matrimonial Matter that wife should get a job
Christopher Webb | Head of Dispute Resolution & Senior Advocate | Originally posted 05 August 2015
Media attention in the UK has recently been focused on a decision of the UK Court of Appeal where the judge ordered that the wife was not entitled to maintenance for the whole of her life and was told that she would have to get a job.
The case concerned an appeal by the spouse in respect of what the media called the “get a job ruling”.
The couple who had two children were married for 11 years.
The husband was a well-known equine vet, and the spouse had worked prior to the marriage but had given up work to look after their two children.
The spouse initially received maintenance of £75,000.00 per year which included child support and school fees plus additional payments of about £450,000.00.
The Husband sought to have the original order varied on the basis that his financial circumstances had changed for the worse and that the wife had not obtained work to contribute to her household.
The Judge found that it was appropriate to vary the order to the effect that the wife’s maintenance would be scaled down over the following six years to enable her to improve her earning capacity by obtaining employment.
The Court of Appeal Judge Lord Justice Pitchford told the wife to go out to work and support herself, saying that a divorcee with children aged over 7 should work for a living be it part time or re-train and further criticized the wife for operating on the basis that she assumed she would be supported for life.
Whilst this Judgment was not a surprise to family lawyers and it has become established law in recent years that the financial needs and available resources will be the beginning and end of most peoples’ entitlements to maintenance, the case did throw up a number of interesting points:
- The Courts are increasingly fixing the period of time in which maintenance will be paid and while it may have been assumed that maintenance may have been paid until the youngest child finished schooling the courts will look at each case on their merits and it would appear that maintenance could now stop a lot earlier.
- The husband who was 59 argued that he will be stuck with unaffordable maintenance to pay after retirement at 65 if the original order had been allowed to continue and the Courts having considered this argument were prepared to in effect taper off the payments and bring them to an end before he got to retirement age.
- The expectation for ex-wives or for that matter ex-husbands to do their best to maximize their earnings now clearly applies not only in short marriage case but potentially to all marriages.
- Whilst each family case is decided on its own individual facts it is anticipated that family lawyers representing potential payers will in terms of their advice now have to give careful consideration to the decision of the English Court of Appeal and in turn those representing the party who may well be in receipt of any payment will have to ensure that they have made their clients aware of the implications to them in terms of what they may well believe is an entitlement to support for the rest of their lives.
- In addition in considering what order to make the Court will consider that spousal maintenance is more likely now to cease on a given date and that the receiving party will be obliged to support themselves once any children that they have been looking after begin school or in the case before the Court of Appeal the children reached the age of seven.
- Obviously, any decision is fact sensitive and anyone needing advice should contact an Advocate.
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