Fears of England becoming ‘maintenance capital’ in divorce cases exaggerated

Jane Mair

The legal dispute between publishing baron Charles Villiers, 54 and Emma Villiers, 58, has led to fears of “divorce tourism” - with claimants looking to take advantage of England’s divorce regime.

Judges in London have ruled that Mrs Villiers can claim maintenance there, even though their divorce is still ongoing in Scotland, Lady Justice King said in the Court of Appeal.

The pair married in 1994, settling in Milton House in Dunbartonshire, an 18th century country manor.

They lived for all but one year of their married life in the property and separated in 2012, at which point Mrs Villiers moved to Notting Hill in west London with their daughter, Clarissa, 23.

Mr Villiers said England would become “the maintenance capital of the United Kingdom” if Mrs Villiers succeeded.

But writing in today’s Herald, Professor Jane Mair, of Glasgow University, said that this claim is “a wee bit of spin”.

She writes: “As far as I know we do not have the evidence to show that any award in England is always going to be more generous than in Scotland.

“This case raises the issue of forum shopping in relation to divorce cases, and the fear of it is raised quite a lot but there seems to be fairly few reported cases where it happens.

“It is often said in Scotland that the wife would only get at most three years’ maintenance. That’s because Scotland has a completely different system where the starting point is you share the matrimonial property and if you share that fairly, hopefully you can get a clean break and you would not need to have the ongoing maintenance payments.”

Professor Mair adds: “In England there is not the same approach. In practice, in many cases you do not get maintenance either, but in the high-value cases that hit the headlines there is certainly a greater chance of ongoing maintenance.”