Carving up a $35.5m Pie!

This family law battle involved assets of approximately $35.5 million. How does one divide such assets following separation . The matter involved a 58 year old wife and 54 year old husband who had been married for about 18 years. At the time they commenced living together the husband was a geologist and the wife a registered nurse and neither had any significant assets at the time of the marriage.

Throughout the marriage the husband moved up the corporate ladder and demonstrated great entrepreneurial skills which largely was the reason the parties had accumulated wealth in the order of $35.5 million at the time separation.

In the first instance the trial judge ordered a division of the assets effectively representing a 65 percent distribution to the husband and 35 percent distribution to the wife.

Well, neither the husband nor the wife were happy with this result. The husband argued the result was too generous to his wife and produced an unjust result. The wife argued the opposite in that she believed the result was far too generous to her husband. This resulted in an appeal to the Full Court. The result ? The husband was right, the court reducing the wife’s claim to 27.5 percent. It may only have represented a small 7.5 percent change in the husbands favor, but on my math’s, that represents an improvement of almost $2.7 million!

Whilst the amount of money in dispute in this case was significant, the principles governing determination of what is a fair and equitable result in such large matters are not dissimilar to those applicable in most family law disputes. Whilst the primary income earner will argue that the accumulation of the assets is a result of their specific and unique talent in the business world, this will need to be balanced with the spouses role and contribution in the household and parenting role, particularly where a spouse has forgone career opportunities to concentrate on the household and children . How much “balancing” needs to be allowed for will vary in each any individual case ! As this case demonstrates, even a small difference in percentage terms can make a substantial difference to the end result. Too often lawyers seem to take a general approach, but in ignoring the finer detail of each individual case they do their clients a disservice.

*(published in Inner western Courier)