Finances before / after divorce.

[theredhen]

If a husband and wife get divorced and agree finances between themselves at the time. What happens if several years later the wife finds out that the husband received a lump sum before they were divorced but he failed to declare this at the time of divorce. I presume once the divorce has gone through, the wife has no come back at all. There was a consent order drawn up at the time of the divorce.

Did they have a financial consent order?

Yes they do. Ironically the wife got it to protect her finances from him.

If it's a large enough amount & it can be proved that it was deliberately concealed it may be worth going back to court BUT tbh I can't see a judge overturning a consent order, especially if the money has subsequently been spent. That is why you do your financial disclosure forms.

Doesn't matter if the money has been spent. It should have been disclosed on the statement of information form.

What makes the difference is whether or not the court would have made a different order had it been disclosed, and that depends on the amount received and the circumstances in which it was received. Also depends on the basis of the order made.

If it was a redundancy payment and had to tide him over a period of unemployment, it might not be relevant.

If the wife got the lions share of the capital to meet the need to house the children, it might be that the court let him keep the windfall.

If it could be classed as an asset of the marriage, and all the assets were equally divided, I'd say it would be worth a go provided there is capital there to enforce an order against, and the amount sought is big enough to justify the time and cost.

She'd need to go back to her solicitor and ger an opinion if she wants an accurate answer to her question.

Wife got 60 - 70 percent of what were assets at time of separation. He kept marital home and re mortgaged to buy her and kids out.

All done quite amicably. A couple of years later he gets a 40k lump sum from an out of court settlement involving a family business that was owned by him (and not her) all the time and before they were married.

Divorce took place a year or so after that.

I think she needs to look out the divorce paperwork.

Agree with Collaborate I had a client once who 'forgot' to disclose 10k and the wife found out a few months after the final hearing. she took the case back to court and it cost him a damm sight more than the 10k!

But if he owned the business openly, then he didn't fail to disclose his interest in it. Doesn't sound like material non-disclosure to me, but she still needs to go back to her solicitor, asa this is just my off the cuff response without knowledge of the back story.

He had given up on the business and it was the wife's understanding that he had signed everything over to the other family member. It was never mentioned in the divorce.

Material non disclosure then. Her solicitor should be able to tell her if it affected the outcome. He'll probably be screwed in costs if she takes it back, whatever the outcome.