Boss fights to stop ex-wife claiming £3m 10 years on from divorce Former husband appeals case
AFORMER West Midlands teacher who built a £30 million fashion empire including household name Lambretta is fighting to keep his ex-wife’s hands off a £2.7 million slice of his fortune.
Glenn Briers, from Willenhall, started the business in 1988 from his garage with just £81 of his own money while still working full-time as a teacher.
But he has now launched a legal appeal to overturn a ruling that his ex can claim part of his fortune more than a decade after they split.
Mr Briers separated from fellow teacher Nicola Briers in 2002 before divorcing in 2005, after 18 years of marriage and three children.
By 2002, the business, called Lydonford, was turning over £1 million a year. It has since grown into a major fashion chain, incorporating brands Lambretta, Vision Streetwear and Ski & Sport, and turning over up to £30 million a year. It also has outlets nationwide, including in the Bullring, in Birmingham.
When the couple divorced, Mr Briers, 61, gave his 58-year-old wife £150,000 to pay off the mortgage and let her keep their £700,000 family home, a court was told.
She also received a £10,000-a-year salary, plus child maintenance, but he kept the business.
Mr Briers said they made a verbal agreement at the time and the settlement would represent a clean break between them.
But after her relationship with her new partner broke down, Mrs Briers went to the divorce courts demand- ing more, with a judge finding last year that she deserved a £2.7 million slice of Mr Briers’ £10 million fortune.
Mr Briers has now gone to the Court of Appeal to overturn his exwife’s “windfall”, claiming it was unfair on him and left her “in a position which is excessively favourable”.
He said there was an agreement to make a clean break and that divorce judge Mark Rogers was wrong to treat the business as “an undivided matrimonial asset”.
Jonathan Cohen QC, for Mr Briers, told the Court of Appeal that it was unfair for him to have to share the fruits of his hard work now, over a decade after the split from his exwife.
Mr Cohen said: “No family money went into the business at all – the wife’s involvement in the business was negligible.
“Her explanation as to why she eventually did make a claim so many years after the event was she had heard the husband may have had another child before his relationship with the wife; that he had a young girlfriend; her own wages as a teach- er had been cut back and she had parted from her boyfriend, with whom she had been in a relationship since the breakdown of the marriage.”
But Mr Cohen added: “It is not the husband’s role to act as insurer against these events, let alone to do so many years after the separation.”
Justin Warshaw QC, for Mrs Briers, insisted the payout should be allowed to stand and that no legal settlement between the former couple had ever been finalised.
“The husband paid her £150,000 and the matrimonial home was transferred but this was not in satisfaction of a completed agreement... no agreement was ever reached,” he told the court.
The whole process, he claimed, was “not negotiated... but dictated by the husband”. He added: “At no time did the wife accept these proposals which she would not do without full financial disclosure.”
Lady Justice Rafferty, Lord Justice Lindblom and Sir Ernest Ryder reserved their decision on Mr Briers’ appeal and will give their ruling at a later date.
It is not the husband’s role to act as insurer against these events, let alone to do so many years after the separation