Lawyers argue dishonesty in
legal proceedings should not be tolerated.
Varsha Gohil has won a legal battle to take her case to the highest court in the
land to prove that her husband lied about his wealth during their divorce and
seek a new fairer settlement.
Varsha Gohil will join Alison Sharland, another woman who is challenging the law to stop one spouse from being
able to deliberately mislead the court to hide the value of their assets during
a divorce.
Ros Bever, the specialist divorce lawyer at Irwin Mitchell
representing both women, says that ‘dishonesty should not be tolerated’ by the
courts.
In 2006, two years after their divorce
settlement was finalised, Varsha Gohil, was given leave to have the consent
order for their original divorce settlement overturned because it had become
clear that her husband Bhadresh Gohil had not given the court accurate
information about his finances.
However, the progress of her
application had to be postponed pending investigation of Mr Gohil’s criminal
activity. In 2010 the husband was tried and jailed for fraud and money
laundering to the value of around £37m. During the course of the husband’s very
public criminal trial, further evidence of the extent of his intentional
non-disclosure in the original financial matrimonial proceedings
emerged.
In June 2012 Moylan J sitting in the
High Court ruled that her husband had failed to properly disclose his financial
circumstances and agreed to scrap the settlement. However her husband’s lawyers
then took the case to the Court of Appeal which ruled in his favour saying that
because the courts were not allowed to use evidence from the husband’s criminal
trial, held in open court but not released by the crown prosecution service,
they couldn’t therefore prove that he was being dishonest in the original
proceedings.
Mrs Gohil, 50, based in London, and
her specialist divorce lawyers at Irwin Mitchell have now been granted
permission for the case to be heard in June 2015 alongside that of
Alison Sharland who is also seeking to re-open her case because it later emerged her husband had deliberately mislead both her and the court about the value of his company – which was worth millions more than he had claimed.
Ros Bever, Partner in the Family and
Divorce Law team at Irwin Mitchell representing both Mrs Gohil and Mrs Sharland,
said:
'This is yet another case in which an unfair settlement has been agreed
because of one party being dishonest and not sharing all the details of their
wealth to the courts.
We are pleased that the Supreme Court
has agreed to hear this case alongside Alison Sharland’s. Both cases raise
serious issues about how the courts should handle cases where information shared
with the court and used to agree a divorce settlement is later found to be false
or incomplete.
We believe the situation that both
women find themselves in is unfair and that is why we applied for permission to
take their cases to the Supreme Court.
In this case the Court of Appeal
judges admitted having sympathy with Mrs Gohil’s situation. In our view if
family law judges, who are given broad discretion to ensure fairness in
proceedings, are having to acknowledge this then something in the letter of the
law has stopped that fairness from prevailing.
Dishonesty in any legal proceedings
should not be tolerated; the family court should not be an exception. There are
numerous legal arguments to be heard by the Supreme Court but we hope that
ultimately justice will be done and will be seen to be done.'
