Hayley Trim's Analysis: Short and sweet

I was very pleased to see J v J [2009] EWHC 2654 (Fam) overturned by the Court of Appeal (Jones v Jones [2011] EWCA Civ 41). Shortly before I left practice I volunteered to read and report back to my colleagues on Charles J's judgment and when the printer ran out of paper for the second time I began to regret my offer. Further the judgment could not just be skim read but (for me at least) required significant concentration and re-reading. I was therefore relieved and reassured by Wilson LJ's comments that he felt "driven to describe it as far too long too discursive and too unwieldy " and he had "devoted days to trying to understand it." In the event the Court of Appeal increased the Wife's award from £5.4m to £8m because the judge had in effect capitalised the husband's earning capacity at the date of the marriage and excluded this arbitrary sum from division. In this regard it...

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