How far will warring couples go to secure jurisdiction, asks Anna Heenan
In a number of recent divorce cases, couples have incurred huge legal fees arguing about where their case should be heard. A particularly extreme example is Sekhri v Ray [2013] EWHC 2290 (Fam) in which the parties spent a combined total of £860,000 (of total assets of around £4m) purely on the issue of jurisdiction. Mr Justice Holman described this as “financial suicide”. So why is jurisdiction such an important issue, and what do couples have to do to secure the jurisdiction of the English courts?
In Sekhri the husband and wife were both of Indian Hindu descent. They met in London and moved to Singapore shortly afterwards. The wife later issued a divorce petition in London while the parties were living in Singapore. Holman J noted: “The husband acknowledged that the present battleground as to jurisdiction was motivated by his ‘perception as to the pay-out’. Of course, there is an equal perception by the wife that she would receive more financial provision after a divorce here than in India, where the husband
