English aristocrat using Scots law to cut ex-wife’s payout
‘The maintenance capital of the UK’
Charles Alastair Hyde Villiers, 54, claims his wife Emma Mary Jane is ‘trying it on’ in the English courts as a cross-border divorce tourist.
The racehorse owner is challenging a High Court ruling on financial maintenance he was ordered to pay, insisting that an English judge has no right to intervene in a Scottish divorce.
The couple married in 1994 and lived in a manor in Scotland for most of their married life before separating in 2012. Mrs Villiers, 58, then moved with the couple’s daughter Clarissa, 22, to Notting Hill, West London, the Appeal Court in London heard.
Her husband filed for divorce in Scotland in 2014, but three months later Mrs Villiers applied to the English courts for financial maintenance.
Mrs Justice Parker ruled last year that the English High Court could oversee the case because she was now ‘habitually resident’ in England. She ordered Mr Villiers to pay £ 5,500 a month to cover interim maintenance, pending finalisation of the divorce, and her legal bills.
Mr Villiers is appealing against the ruling, claiming his wife has been ‘ rewarded for moving from Scotland to England’ because maintenance to ex- spouses is less generous north of the border. If his wife wins, his lawyers claim, London will become ‘the maintenance capital of the UK’.
Mr Villiers, who is related to Camilla through his mother Elizabeth Keppel and the duchess’s maternal grandmother Sonia Rosemary Keppel, faced financial troubles and was declared bankrupt in 2013.
His assets were seized and, although he was discharged from bankruptcy in 2014, his eight-bedroom Georgian mansion, set in ten acres with its own loch, was repossessed in 2015. His wife’s lawyers say he has a half share in a £3.5million trust fund inherited from his grandmother, plus another £600,000 from his mother. The total value of his inherited wealth ‘may be much more’ if a London flat held by a familycontrolled company is added to the pot, they claim. Mrs Villiers says she and her daughter need £ 10,000 a month to live on and that her husband has the means to provide that from the inherited wealth.
But he says she must fight her case in Scotland, where inherited wealth is not taken into account when dividing assets. In Scottish law, maintenance payouts are generally limited to three years after a divorce; in England, she could secure financial support for the rest of her life.
In her ruling last year, Mrs Justice Parker accepted that the couple had spent all but one year of their married life living in Scotland but said Mrs Villiers was now living in England. Her husband said he had no direct access to the family trust, which is controlled by trustees, and had already provided generously for his daughter. His barrister, Michael Horton, protested at Mrs Villiers’ ‘attempt to use the English legal system to oust and interfere with the prior commenced Scottish legal process’.
But the judge said Mr Villiers had ‘access to substantial funds’ from his inheritance and ordered him to pay the maintenance.
Yesterday Mr Horton challenged the ruling before the Court of Appeal. Lady Justice Black said there was ‘mileage’ in his case and granted him permission to appeal.