In this two-part blog, we look at the case of Mr and Mrs Villiers who are going through a complicated, cross-border divorce.
An affluent publishing professional, Charles Alastair Hyde Villiers, has described the actions of his wife, Emma Mary Jane Villiers, as “divorce tourism”. The accusations came after Mrs Villiers left their estate in Scotland and filed for maintenance in an English court.
Mr Villiers claims his wife is using to her advantage the legal system in England, which he claims is more generous than the one north of the border. Mr Villiers believes she is doing so to gain access to a proportion of his family fortune, estimated to be around £5 million.
He claims that should his wife win the case it would set a worrying precedent, warning that London would become the “maintenance capital of the United Kingdom” with a rise in the number of divorcees from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In March 2016, Mrs Justice Parker sitting in London’s High Court ruled that Mrs Villiers was “habitually resident” in England. This decision meant that Mr Villiers was required to pay his wife an interim monthly maintenance payment of £5,500, until the outcome of the divorce was finalised. Mrs Justice Parker said she could think of no reason why “divorce should not proceed in one jurisdiction and maintenance in another”.
Mr Villiers has successfully won the right to challenge Mrs Justice Parker’s ruling at the Court of Appeal. His appeal is on the grounds that an English judge does not have any right to interfere with a divorce that is taking place in Scotland. He has put it forward that his wife must return to Scotland to fight her case. His reasoning for asking for her return is that, in Scotland, inherited wealth is not considered when assets are divided between spouses. This is contrary to the law in England.
Mr and Mrs Villiers were married in 1994 and moved into an eight-bedroomed 18th century mansion. The country manor, with its own loch, is located in Dunbartonshire. After 17 years of marriage, the couple split in 2012. It was at this point that Mrs Villiers moved to the Notting Hill area of West London to live with the couple’s daughter.
Mr Villiers, who is a racehorse owner as well as a member of one of the oldest families in England, applied for a divorce in Scotland in 2014. On the back of this, three months later Mrs Villiers applied for financial maintenance in an English court.
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