Sharland and Gohil win Supreme Court battle
Two women who claimed that they should receive more money in their divorce settlements after being misled by their ex-husbands have won their Supreme Court fight.
Alison Sharland and Varsha Gohil each accepted divorce settlements based on false information provided by their ex-husbands and in a three-day hearing, the two ladies asked for their divorce settlements to be set aside on the basis that their husbands had deliberately misled them and the courts during the original hearings.
Ms Sharland agreed what she believed to be a 50/50 split in her divorce settlement after 17 years of marriage, but it later emerged that her ex-husband had deceived her and the courts over the value of his business. Instead of the business being valued at between £31 million and £47 million, it was reported in the financial press as being ready to float at a value of $1 billion (£646 million)
Meanwhile, in 2004, two years after her divorce, Ms Gohil discovered that her husband had not fully disclosed his finances during their divorce, leading her to accept £270,000 and a car as a settlement. He was convicted of fraud offences and jailed in 2010 for ten years. During the course of the criminal trial, further evidence of the extent of his intentional non-disclosure in the original divorce proceedings emerged.
It is believed that the ruling last month could pave the way for more people to renegotiate their divorce settlements.