VXM v VXN

Facts

The husband, a managing director and deputy chairman of a listed automobile company, and the wife, a part-time finance manager in her family's investment business, married on 4 June 2011 and have two young daughters. The husband filed for divorce in 2020 and interim judgment was granted on 19 March 2021. Issues about the children had already been resolved, leaving the division of matrimonial assets and maintenance for the wife and children in Divorce Transferred No 3863 of 2020.

Much of the pool was agreed, but many items were disputed: a 1 kg gold bar given by the wife's parents at the wedding; the value of the husband's Porsches and many luxury watches; his inherited quarter share in a property where the couple had lived; director's fees and a bonus paid after interim judgment; sums he spent or that were unaccounted for; the wife's Goodwood Residence flat, which she said was a gift from her parents; an alleged 25% share in a US property; her luxury items; and sums she spent while proceedings were pending. The wife sought maintenance for herself and for the children, including up to $650,000 a year for the children's travel; the husband said she needed no maintenance.

Issues

1. Whether the disputed items, including the Goodwood flat, the gold bar and the husband's post-judgment receipts, formed part of the matrimonial pool and at what values
2. What ratio of direct and indirect contributions applied and whether an adverse inference should be drawn against either party
3. Whether the wife should receive maintenance and what maintenance the children should receive

Holding

The court ordered the matrimonial assets to be divided 52:48 between the husband and the wife, giving her $5,549,371.93, after adjusting the contributions ratio for an adverse inference against the husband. It made no maintenance order for the wife. It ordered the husband to pay agreed children's expenses such as school fees and medical costs directly, plus $10,000 a month for the children, shared 80:20 between the husband and the wife and backdated to March 2022. Each party bore its own costs.

Reasoning

The gold bar, inscribed with the wife's name, was a gift to her alone. The court relied on market data for the cars and largely on Chrono24 listings for the watches, accepting the wife's figures where the watches were Tiffany & Co limited editions. The husband's quarter share in his mother's property was not a matrimonial asset, since the couple had only stayed there at her invitation. Director's fees on cheques dated before interim judgment and a bonus for pre-judgment performance were included, as were unexplained withdrawals from one account, though older ordinary spending was not added back. The parents' payments towards the Goodwood flat were gifts, but the flat itself was the wife's and its rental income during the marriage was matrimonial, so its equity net of those gifts and the mortgage was included. The husband failed to prove the US property share. Gifts from third parties were excluded, but the husband's gifts of luxury items to the wife stayed in the pool, absent a clear intention to divest them.

Direct contributions were 82.1:17.9 for the husband and indirect contributions 70:30 for the wife, who was the primary caregiver and homemaker, giving 56:44. The court rejected the husband's adverse inference arguments, but drew one against him because deposits he described as work reimbursements did not match his employer's records, and it adjusted the ratio to 52:48.

Maintenance supplements division. The wife would receive a large share, had about $2m of equity in the flat outside the pool, her family company shares, rental income and an earning capacity above her salary, so no order was made. The claim for $650,000 a year in travel was clearly excessive, and rent was not justified when she owned a let property.

From the judgment