Divorce Court Deception

[btrobin]

A recent divorce court procedure which was not contested by my Father in Law, 94, has left us all a bit confused. The statement of Information has a section for Savings, my FIL put down honestly what his were, but his now ex wife entered a vastly depleted sum of £25k, we believe she could have as much as £250k squirreled away. He made a point of telling the court as to his suspicions but nothing appears to have been investigated, surely this sort of deception in order to mislead the court should draw some attention.

[btrobin]

I must say I am disappointedly surprised at the lack of response to my enquiry, last time I came on here there was a plethora of "legal eagles", who gave very good advice on this type of question. Perhaps times have changed and like most forums, interest has waned away to other areas.

[RATTER15]

How would you know if it is being investigated or not, they are not obliged to tell you anything. You may see that one day you will see her name in the paper after being prosecuted.

[btrobin]

I would have thought that whoever would have posed some questions to us as to how we are suspicious regarding her assets. Our solicitor posed the question to hers and all we obtained was a reply stating that her financial position, at that moment in time was as stated on the paperwork. It took her some 2 months to complete the initial statement, during which time she could have been moving her money elsewhere, not 3 months previously she was invited to her annual review at HSBC as she is, and has been for years, a Premier customer, that in itself requires a minimum of £50k on deposit. I doubt anything will come of it, just rubber stamped, we won't see anything in the paper as we do not reside in the UK, and she has disappeared of the face of the earth, we have no inkling as to where she is residing at all.

[fiction-factory]

If your solicitor (the one you refer to as 'our solicitor') has already questioned it I suggest you need to go back to your solicior and ask him/her what the current position is and what more can be done.

[btrobin]

We are currently awaiting further paperwork "evidently" from the court. The decree absolute is all done and he is now legally divorced, I have a suspicion that it may be the courts decision on financial matters. In order to make some sense of this, one has to know the thought process of his ex wife, she is what might be described as tight as a ducks ??, and if she felt sure she might be able to squeeze a few quid out of him she would. So it came as somewhat of a surprise, in some ways when she petitioned for what she described as a "clean break", with neither side making any claim on each others finances. FIL at 94 came to the conclusion that he didn't want to fill the coffers of the solicitor and agreed to go forward on that basis, however when all this was explained by the solicitor that he now had savings far in excess of hers and about 3 times her pension, and that the court could award her maintenance payments on the basis of her false declaration, he started to panic. Evidently they do not have to take any notice of this clean break idea if they feel that one party is at a financial disadvantage. In retrospect I suspect that the clean break idea was because at that time she still had large deposits in her married name and now her son, divorced twice in the past 10 years, has given her the benefit of his experience and told her to deplete her savings by moving it elsewhere. She herself can now count this as her third divorce, so between them they certainly know the ropes. It just seems rough justice that she has been able to, as far as we are aware, get away with this devious operation and there is evidently nothing we can do to expose her.

[murraymints]

at 94 ?

[btrobin]

Yes 94 years old dependent on others, she is 75, they have been married 20 years, a couple of years back she was giving him auto suggestions about care home prices, inheritance tax and the like, next thing he has transferred half the property to her. He came to stay with us for a few weeks and she took the opportunity to abandon him, obviously got as much as she could and *** off. We don't even know where she is living.

[btrobin]

Update if anyone is interested? Sadly the old boy passed away in October, yes we all know 95 good innings and all that, but to think that before all this nonsense started up we was really fit and mobile, all this palaver really dragged him down. In the course of letting some of his cronies know of his death, we were informed that they had heard from his ex wife, who enlightened them in to the fact that she had purchased a property just close to Canterbury Kent. with £25K, I think not. Just goes to show that the old adage about honesty is the best policy is a right load of bunkum, lie through your back teeth, fiddle about with your assets and falsely declare them, no one is interested, absolute mockery.