WOMEN who wish to take advantage of a Supreme Court ruling and seek more money from their divorced husbands would have to go down a different route in Scotland, a lawyer has said.
Divorcees Alison Sharland, 48, and Varsha Gohil, 50, accused their ex-husbands of lying about their true wealth and won their Supreme Court battle for the right to seek more money from them on Wednesday.
In a landmark ruling which lawyers said could open the floodgates for similar claims, the UK's highest court said that the women could re-open proceedings against their former spouses and seek a greater share of their wealth.
But lawyers have said that matters would be different north of the border where the Scottish legal system holds sway.
Gillian Crandles, a Partner at leading Scottish divorce firm, Turcan Connell, said that women would have to effectively sue their former husbands rather than just re-open the case otherwise the court would have to regard the couple as still married.
She said: “The case in Scotland would be quite different, but I would hope the result would be largely the same.
"In England there is a two stage divorce process: you have Decree Nisi and then you have Decree Absolute which is usually when the financial orders are dealt with.
"In Scotland, we only have one stage, so you have the decree of divorce granted at the end of the case when the financial provision orders are made. In England, there would be no requirement to overturn the Decree Absolute in order to challenge the financial orders."
The lawyer added: “Here, we would be required to overturn the decree of divorce and the courts would be reluctant to do so because that would put the parties back into the position of being married.
"Instead you could have a new court action on the basis that you reached the divorce agreement on a fraudulent basis and you now need to reopen that and make claims against your former husband or wife. So, you are effectively suing for the money after the divorce has been granted.”
Both MrsGohil and Mrs Sharland had had reached agreements with their ex-husbands after beginning litigation, but both subsequently thought that they had been misled.
Mrs Sharland had accepted more than £10 million in cash and properties from her ex-husband Charles, 54, three years ago.
Mrs Gohil had accepted £270,000 plus a car from her ex-husband Bhadresh, 50, more than a decade ago.
The court heard that Mrs Sharland claimed she was misled over the value of a business. Lawyers said she had thought the business was valued at between £31 million and £47 million but reports in the financial press put the value at £1 billion.
Mrs Gohil's husband had been convicted of money laundering following their divorce.
Neither woman has yet said how much they now want.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel