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Anglo-Scottish spousal maintenance: a kingdom very gender disunited
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A decision on 23 March 2016 (
Re V (European Maintenance Regulation) [2016] EWHC 668) by the English High Court (Mrs Justice Parker) has made public what has been known by international family lawyers for many years: the financial treatment of wives as applicant spouses on divorce is incredibly different between England and Scotland. Particularly it affects the conventional 'stay at home' wives who have sacrificed careers and their own work to support their spouse and the family household.
In England such a spouse would anticipate spousal maintenance for life or at least until retirement when a pension share would be received and at a generous standard. In Scotland the spousal maintenance lasts a couple of years after the divorce at most. It has anecdotally led to considerable tactics and manoeuvring for Anglo-Scottish families living between England and Scotland. Although there is a UK law setting out mandatory provisions on where proceedings in the UK should occur there are inevitably ways around it. It was alleged such manoeuvrings had occurred in this case.
This is only a brief overview of
Re V. It covers a few features...
Read the full article here.
