9th April 2010

The divorce settlement variation of Philippa Vaughan and her ex-husband of more than 25 years has been ruled upon by the Court of Appeal, with Lord Justice Wilson awarding maintenance payments totalling around £250,000.

The original divorce settlement ruling made in 1985 left Mr Vaughan paying annual maintenance of £27,000 to his ex-wife.

However, when Mrs Vaughan took the case back to court in 2009, stating that the payments were not enough and requesting a lump sum payment of £560,000, the ruling High Court Judge, Richard Anelay QC, dismissed the application and further cancelled the original order for maintenance.

Mr Vaughan's divorce lawyers had argued that Mrs Vaughan was seeking to make a claim on the pension fund he had set up after the divorce and this would effectively mean that his second wife "would be chipping in to the maintenance of the first wife".

In his appeal ruling, Lord Justice Wilson gave his view that judge Anelay's ruling wrongly gave priority to the second wife's claims.

In awarding the divorce settlement variation, amounting to a lump sum payment of £215,000 with periodical payments of £14,000 a year backdated to November 2009, Lord Justice Wilson said that it had been "plainly wrong" to have concluded that the cancellation of Mrs Vaughan's maintenance payments would not cause her undue hardship.