Wells v Wells

In financial-relief proceedings, where the court cannot presently achieve a proper division of an effectively unsaleable shareholding, it may preserve a limited mechanism for a future application. The mechanism should reflect only the unresolved difficulty and should not become a general route to reopen the financial arrangements. The court may clarify the outcome it would have ordered if it had power to divide the asset. Such a mechanism does not prevent sensible future planning, including transfers to the children. The appeal was allowed, with the respondent paying the costs of the appeal.

Rodney Charles Wells appealed to the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) from the High Court of Justice, Family Division, before Mr Justice Wilson. The dispute concerned financial arrangements between the spouses, including the division of readily disposable assets and a shareholding in Soundtracs described as more or less unsaleable. The appeal also concerned the scope of a possible future application where the court could not divide that shareholding immediately. The lower court’s citation and order are not stated in the supplied text.

Appeal allowed. The court had made provision for a possible future application, so that finality was not brought about immediately. Lord Justice Thorpe explained that the mechanism existed because the court could not achieve a proper sharing of both the readily disposable assets and the Soundtracs shareholding, which was then more or less unsaleable.

1. The mechanism was limited to reflecting that inability to divide the shareholding at the date of decision. It was not intended to create a general or routine opportunity for further litigation.
2. The court stated that, had it been able to order a division of the shareholding, it would have increased the wife’s holding to something in the order of 10 per cent of the company. On the evidence then available, the prospect of the shares becoming readily marketable during the remainder of the husband’s working life was exceptionally remote.
3. The surviving right of application did not inhibit the husband’s liberty to make sensible future arrangements by transferring some proportion of his shareholding to the children of the marriage. The parties were encouraged to seek a better solution through negotiation or mediation.

As to costs, the wife retained her costs of the trial but was ordered to pay the costs of the appeal.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Appeal from the High Court of Justice, Family Division, before Mr Justice Wilson. The appeal was allowed.