Windfall once separated

[Ibetthatyoulookgoodon]

Can you help me with this please -

Married couple, with children (school age) are separated (no longer living together) and have been for a few years.
No agreement reached on financials.
One person's financial situation has changed significantly (for the better) and has received a windfall (not inheritance, something that would normally be considered a marital asset).
Presumably the conversations to reach a financial settlement now take into account the individual's improved position, despite it happing after the separation?

You'll need to be more specific?

Morally I would say this was wrong regardless of the legal implications

If it’s something like a gift of a house deposit from someone living then can it be delayed until
finances are signed off?

I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.

About 6 months after dsis separated from her husband, but whilst they were still married, he came into a large sum of money. The courts decided it was not a marital asset and she did not receive a penny of it.

If there is no agreed financial settlement, in theory yes!

Legally, I would suggest possibly it’s an asset although I would bow to actual legal advice here.

Morally, I wouldn’t want to be the sort of person who after splitting up went after money that wasn’t part of the joint family unit. Not if I wanted to maintain the relationship for co parenting. If it was offered that would be different.

A lot of people speculating again here. Among other things we don't know what the windfall is; what the assets of the marriage there are; what the standard of living of the marriage was; what each person earns or can earn; whether there are children, how many or their ages; who the financially weaker party was before and is after the windfall etc etc.

Without that no one can say what difference it makes. All they can do is create unhelpful traffic and noise.

Thanks everyone and sorry to be vague. It’s not about me, it’s a friend. I think in many ways it’s a moot point because I suspect the other party (the one who didn’t receive the windfall) will not ‘go after’ a share of the windfall, I just wondered if it might get messy.

its the financially weaker party who has received the windfall so I had suspected that even if a share in the windfall is not sought, it might affect their position in terms of commanding a greater split of the assets.

It would absolutely impact on the ability to claim needs to more of the marital assets.

Why would it 'get messy' just because they no longer need a greater percentage of the marital assets?

IANAL

But my understanding is that, when splitting the assets, courts take into consideration the ability of each party to support themselves. So if your friend earns £30k vs STBEXH's £70k, she might get a greater than 50% share of the house equity to enable her to pay a deposit on a flat, say. However, if she just won £1m on the lottery, it would clearly be inequitable to STBEXH if that made no difference to the house equity split.

In very, very general terms that probably reduces their needs and might mean things like not needing spousal maintenance in the unlikely event it was on the cards and a move away from 50/50 in their favour being improbable. That's a huge generalisation though.

Critchell vs Critchell. Different facts but will give you a general idea.