A family court judge ruling on a child maintenance application in the case of A v V has labelled the case, which resulted in the two parties clocking up costs of £5.5m, ‘one of the most shameless pieces of litigation he has ever seen’.
Father Made Derisory Offer of Financial Support
An application had been made for financial provision for the former couple’s son, who was seven at the time of the hearing, under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989.
The extremely wealthy father had some time ago offered to make annual payments of £115,000 to the mother for herself and the child. However, by the time the hearing began, he reduced his offer to £12,000 annually. This was based on an agreement that he had required the mother to sign some seven years before the child was born, which provided that she had no claim against him on behalf of any future child, except for €845 a month, increasing in line with inflation. The father later increased his offer to £60,000 during the trial.
Mr Justice Francis noted that the father’s original offer of £115,000 was a ‘thoroughly sensible’ offer. However, he described the later offer of £12,000 as ‘absurd and derisory,’ given he had earned about €82m in the last twenty years. Furthermore, the judge gave no weight to the previously made agreement, arguing that there were no reported cases concerning a child being held to an agreement that was made by their parents some seven or eight years before they were conceived.
Judge Critical of Father’s Decision to Represent Himself
The judge was also deeply critical of the father’s actions in dispensing with his expensive lawyers just before trial and instead representing himself despite the previously high expenditure on legal fees.
Mr Justice Francis noted that while the father may be a man of considerable business acumen and financial success, he had demonstrated a ‘complete absence of emotional intelligence or understanding’ of the issues before the court. The judge was astonished that he had not even read Schedule 1 of the Children Act - the statutory framework on which the claim had been made – until he was advised to do so on the first day of the hearing.
The judge had considered adjourning the case to represent the father. However, he decided to proceed with the case on the basis that he had already given the father the ‘clearest of indications’ at the pre-trial review that he thought he should be represented and due to the case desperately needing to be resolved.
Expenditure in the Case was Catastrophic
The judge ordered the father to make an annual payment of £125,000 for the child’s maintenance as well as a one-off payment of £150,000 intended to cover a series of expenses. In reaching that decision, the judge made it clear that he thought the level of expenditure, in this case, was a ‘catastrophe’ and that it was one of the ‘most shameless pieces of litigation’ that he had experienced during his time as a judge.
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