Court reports of the kind of financial remedy cases we handle are littered with instances of one spouse attempting to hide assets from the other. This is done with one thing in mind: to reduce the financial settlement.
But it should always be understood that couples getting divorced have an obligation to make full and frank disclosure of their assets and liabilities. Any failure to do so undermines the court order or agreed settlement. It leaves them open to future challenge. In serious cases of non-disclosure, an offending spouse can face criminal liability.Courts can impose negative costs orders and draw negative inferences when a spouse appears less than forthcoming. They also have significant powers at their disposal to uncover hidden assets as well as the flexibility to untangle legal structures that have been created as a way to defeat or reduce one spouse’s financial claim.
Here we look at a case from September 2026 where the Financial Remedies Court had to deal with a trust set up by a husband. The wife said the creation of the trust was an attempt to avoid paying a six-figure court-ordered sum for child maintenance. As we’ll see, the court did not hesitate to look beyond the trust vehicle to find a way to ensure the child maintenance was paid. The case is also notable because of the extraordinary amount of explicit evidence produced to show the husband’s clear intention to defeat the wife’s efforts to secure child maintenance.
F and EE (2026) – The Facts
The wife sought to secure child maintenance payments for her children following her divorce from her husband. The husband’s behaviour and the wife’s success in her application are a useful illustration of how family courts deal with attempts to hide assets or put them out of reach of the courts in any type of family proceedings, including child maintenance cases.
Divorce financial proceedings were completed in January 2023. Almost immediately the husband left the UK (where he had lived and worked for most of his life). He refused to pay child maintenance and the wife applied to court for payment.
Unusually, she asked the court to make a lump sum order for child maintenance to cover the entire period up until all 3 children reached 18. (Child maintenance is almost always made periodically). This was in April 2025.
Shortly after the initial hearing the husband wrote to the judge. He asked if, because of his work commitments, the next hearing (where he anticipated an order would be made) could be postponed until September 2025.
In June 2025 the wife discovered the husband was attempting to sell his remaining property in the UK. This was the property she hoped would fund any lump sum child maintenance order. She urged the court to deal with the issue promptly, and in July a hearing was held and a lump sum order of £135,000 was made.
It transpired however, that 4 days before this order was made the husband had transferred his beneficial interest in the property to his sister by way of a trust.
The Evidence
In the husband’s view he had successfully placed all of his assets out of the wife’s reach. The court disagreed, however.
It found that from the moment he became aware of the wife’s intention to seek a lump sum maintenance order, he had embarked on a scheme to make sure that he divested himself of all his UK based assets before any final judgment. That way he hoped any order made would be frustrated.
It was not difficult for the court to reach this decision. It was helped enormously by explicit evidence of the husband’s attempt to defeat the wife’s claim. This consisted of multiple emails between the husband and his solicitors. A month before the lump sum order, for example, he had emailed his solicitor, urging that the trust be signed as a matter of urgency. He wrote:
‘it is critical that I have the trust documentation finalised and in hand by the end of August in order to legally safeguard the equity of the property. It is necessary to protect it from any potential legal claims arising from the family court proceedings initiated by my ex regarding unjustified maintenance demands..’
The Decision
Commenting on the emails produced to the court the judge indicated that it would be hard to see any intention or purpose on the husband’s part other than to defeat the claims a judge was considering at the very time the emails were sent.
In light of this the courts used its powers to effectively put the clock back to before the trust was enacted. While making clear that it could ultimately unravel the trust, the court felt it was more practical to give the husband a short period to find the funds to discharge the child maintenance order through other means. If he failed to do so the court indicated in no uncertain terms that the trust would be set aside.
Comment
While this case focused on an application for child maintenance the same principles apply to financial remedy proceedings generally when a spouse attempts to move marital assets beyond the reach of the courts using trusts or other entities.
The court’s task here was made much easier by clear email and other evidence of the husband’s intentions in creating the trust to defeat his wife’s claim. But even where no such evidence is available, courts retain powerful investigatory and other powers to unearth hidden assets in appropriate cases.