Top judge tells couple in £26million divorce battle to stop squabbling like children

 
9 July 2012

A couple in the middle of a multi-million-pound divorce were today compared to children squabbling in a nursery by a leading judge.

Jenifer Evans was awarded a £26 million settlement last year after the split from Mark Evans but returned to court saying it was not enough.

Since then she has sought through the Court of Appeal to block a decree absolute to get a “cast iron guarantee” — while still legally his wife — over shares in their shared IT business, Confluence Corporation.

With the financial dispute now back to square one, Lord Justice Thorpe described the pair as “puerile,” adding: “Somebody has to come into the nursery to make some rules.”

Mr Evans, 47, and Mrs Evans, 46, were “penniless” when they met and married in 1985, but went on to achieve riches through Confluence Corporation. Mrs Evans obtained a decree nisi in April last year.

Mr Evans’s shareholding in Confluence is said to be worth at least £40 million and the couple’s non-business assets are valued at about £12 million.

Mrs Evans’s counsel, Charles Howard, QC, told the court that unless his client had a guarantee that her husband’s shares in Confluence could not be dispersed, there would be “a very considerable risk” that “the great bulk” of the capital built up during the marriage could be denied to her.

The barrister said Mrs Evans, who lives in a £10.6 million flat near Harrods, is concerned that if the divorce is finalised before a judge rules for a second time on how the couple’s assets should be divided, she could be left “sitting on an empty judgment.”

Describing the married life of the couple, Mr Howard said: “The parties lived an opulent lifestyle during the latter years of the marriage, having homes in the UK, the US, and the Turks and Caicos islands. They enjoyed the use of private jets and first class travel and retaining personal assistants and household staff.”

Lord Justice Thorpe said: “It seems to me almost puerile; these very rich people distrusting and disliking each other intensely, so somebody has to come into the nursery to make some rules to dissipate all this nonsense.”

The judge “with great reluctance” granted Mrs Evans permission to argue at a full Appeal Court hearing that the making of the decree absolute should be postponed pending a final ruling on the financial aspects of the divorce.

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