Alan Miller—who last year was ordered by the House of Lords to hand over £5m to his childless wife of three years—is taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
Miller’s lawyers will argue that the level of discretion available to the courts has meant the law has become so confused and unpredictable that the payout to his ex- wife breached his right to property under Art 1 of the First Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights.
However, James Freeman, solicitor with Speechly Bircham, says the ECtHR may not be receptive to this argument.
“If the ECtHR is to entertain Alan Miller’s claim, one conjectures that the arguments put to it will have to be along the lines that the current English divorce law is either so swingeing or so unpredictable that it amounts in its essence to a breach of his right to peaceable enjoyment of his possessions,” he says.
He adds that the English courts have not proved receptive to such line of reasoning in the past: only last month John Charman tried and failed
