1 KBW on Matrimonial Finance Disputes Involving Trusts seeks to provide practitioners with practical guidance on matrimonial finance disputes involving trusts.
Following the landmark decision of the House of Lords in White v White, courts are now required to test any proposed division of the parties' resources against a yardstick of equality in order to ensure that the outcome of the proceedings is fair to both parties.
There is therefore, a need in almost every case for the court to quantify the resources in the case, in order to assess the fairness of the outcome. Increasingly the courts have been confronted by circumstances in which the parties' resources are not held by them directly, but through corporate or trust structures, or sometimes a combination of the two.
When a matrimonial court is engaged in the process of quantifying the matrimonial assets, the existence of trusts can throw up a variety of issues which this text seeks to highlight and explain their impact.
Key legislation to be covered:-