Last updated on August 18th, 2015 at 02:26 pm

We reported last year on a couple of cases which seem to have endorsed this principle: One where a husband was denied more than £5million out of an estate which included the wife’s shares, inherited before marriage and worth £57million; and another where a High Court judge ruled that the usual ‘sharing principle’ doesn’t apply if a couple’s wealth is not a “product of their endeavours” when he denied a woman’s £7 million claim, awarding her around £4million from her husband’s £24 million wealth – derived from his inherited farms, land, shooting estate, investment portfolio and shares in the family company.

However, in a recent case which involves even larger sums, and a very English country lifestyle, a judge decided that the husband’s inherited wealth was to be included in the marital pot in order to enable the wife to continue an acceptable lifestyle.

In this case the husband had inherited an estate from his grandparents the year before he married in 1984.  The estate included a country mansion, cottages and other residential properties, an equestrian centre, a pub, commercial units, and thousands of acres of land.  When the couple divorced 26 years later the estate was valued at around £23million and the husband argued that it should not be included in the divorce assets as it had been in the family since the 1940s and should be inherited in total by his son.  The income from the estate was around £450,000 a year and the husband had around £6.7million of borrowings.  The couple had lived a very privileged lifestyle during their marriage and the court decided that the wife had played her part in looking after the children and being a ‘social asset.  Whilst agreeing that the majority of the assets were from the husband’s inherited wealth, the court decided that the wife’s financial requirements meant that it had to be included in the pot and awarded her around a third of the value of the estate at £8.4million.
A member of Graysons’ family law team says “We have seen a growing trend in the higher courts to treat inherited wealth separately from joint wealth,  but this case shows that divorce settlements are all about the principle of fairness and if a judge decrees that one party’s needs can only be fairly met by invading inherited wealth, then so be it.  It is a complex issue, but it does underline the need to carefully consider assets which may be inherited or brought to the marriage. This might include post or pre nuptial agreements and pre inheritance planning which may help to ensure that inherited assets do not become ‘mixed in’ with marital assets upon divorce if that is the desired outcome.’