What’s the Hurry?

Linda Lee — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:14:54 -0400

Sometimes it pays not to be in a hurry, or at least that’s what a woman’s lawyers are saying in a lawsuit in England. Here’s the backstory. Carol Williams moved out of the family farmhouse in Chesham, after 22 years of marriage and four children.

In November, 2000, she won a divorce from her husband, John Williams, who owned Jencon’s Scientific, the largest supplier of laboratory equipment in the UK.

She said in the divorce papers that she wanted to end a difficult marriage and that her husband was “controlling and overbearing." Her attorneys say she was eager to get on with things, and “make a clean break.”

And clean it was, with a settlement of $2.4 million.

So why is demanding another $2.8 million?

The surprise is that it’s not from her husband. That bird has flown.

She’s demanding it from her lawyers, Thompson Leatherdale of Reading, UK, and Nicholas Francis, Queen’s Counsel, for negligence, for not informing her that the customs of allotting alimony or spousal support were about to change, big time, especially for high net worth couples.

What she said she didn’t know was that a case called White v. White was decided on in the House of Lords in October of 2000. And that case laid down a new philosophy that changed support in the wife’s favor.

Before White v. White, a husband in the UK was expected, after many years of marriage, to pay a reasonable amount for his ex-wife’s upkeep.

Any money he had beyond that was his to keep.

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What’s the Hurry?