A senior family judge has derided the financial claim shenanigans of a wealthy couple as “nonsense” after a Court of Appeal hearing was held to allow the prolonging of the divorce process.
Judges heard how Mr Mark Evans (47) and his estranged wife Jenifer (46) married in 1985 with next to no wealth, but, during the course of their marriage, they built up a successful Pittsburgh-based company called Confluence – a specialist computer software firm.
By the time the couple separated in 2010, they had two teenage daughters and multi-million pound assets.
Mrs Evans was granted a decree nisi in April 2011 but is now attempting to block the granting of the decree absolute as she is fearful that her ex-husband would disperse assets so as to deny her their jointly-earned wealth.
Family lawyers in London are now arguing the couple’s respective cases and Mr Justice Thorpe has spoken up to say that he feels it is “almost puerile” of such wealthy people, who distrust and dislike each other, to argue so interminably in the courts, so much so that “somebody has to come into the nursery to make some rules to dissipate all this nonsense”.
He added that he failed to understand how divorcing couples can “litigate with such profligate extravagance”.
However, despite his opinion that the decree absolute was “long overdue” he granted permission for Mrs Evans to argue her divorce settlement case in court and that the full divorce should be postponed until the claim was finalised.
