Aristocrat fights wife’s move to have English courts rule on alimony

AN ARISTOCRAT and his estranged wife have become embroiled in a legal tussle over whether their arguments over money should be heard in Scotland or England.

Three Court of Appeal judges are have been asked to rule on the dispute between Charles and Emma Villiers, who are both in their 50s and lived together in Dumbarton before separating. A judge based in the Family Division of the High Court in London had initially considered the case, ordering Mr Villiers to pay his estranged spouse £2,500 a month maintenance pending a resolution of their money fight.

She had rejected Mr Villiers’s “jurisdictional challenges”, but Mr Villiers, a racehorse owner and publisher, has mounted a challenge in the Court of Appeal which Mrs Villiers is contesting.

He says their marriage is being dissolved in Scotland and wants to know why a fight over money should be staged in England.

Barrister Michael Horton, who is leading Mr Villiers’s legal team, told judges the couple had spent almost all their married life in Scotland after they wed in 1994.

He said Mr Villiers stayed in the family home, Milton House, in Dumbarton, after the couple separated in 2012.

Mrs Villiers “came south to England”, first living near Oxford then in London, and made a cash claim in the High Court in London. Judges were told that final decisions on how assets and cash should be split between Mr and Mrs Villiers had been put on hold pending the outcome of the appeal.

Mr Horton told judges about financial difficulties following the breakdown of the couple’s marriage. He said Barclays had begun possession proceedings and Milton House had been repossessed in early 2015.

Mr Villiers had been made bankrupt in November 2013 then discharged from bankruptcy in November 2014. Mr Horton said his client was seeking answers to a number of questions, most notably why a spouse who moved to England should get better alimony payments than a one who stayed in Scotland and asked a judge in Scotland to make a decision.

He was also seeking to find out if a maintenance order continued to have effect after divorce.

Barrister Timothy Scott, QC, who is representing Mrs Villiers, told appeal judges: “These cases are always about looking for litigation advantage on both sides.”

Couple had spent their married life in Scotland