The starting point for any financial settlement is what we call full disclosure which means not just information about the assets but also documents to support the existence and value of the assets. The idea is to try and get that dealt with voluntarily between the couple, and it includes 12 months’ worth of bank statements for all bank accounts, p60s payslips, business accounts, details about pensions. Once that information is available, you’re perfectly entitled to ask questions on what’s been disclosed and to ask for more information and more documents if you think that something’s missing. If it’s still not forthcoming then you need to make an application to court where it’s an absolute requirement to provide the full disclosure and deadlines are set for it. You might have an idea from being married to your spouse for so long that there are things missing or sometimes just looking at the documents they’ve disclosed such as the bank statements might reveal other bank accounts that we can ask about. You can also make searches of outside agencies, such as the Land Registry, to find out about property ownership and Companies House, which will give details of any directorships that the spouse might have. Once the matters in court if your spouse is still not forthcoming with full disclosure there are various sanctions that the court can impose. Usually the first step is for them to make a court order for the disclosure of that information or documents and to attach something called a penal notice to the order. So the penal notice is really just a warning that if they don’t comply with a court order the court can sanction them with a fine, removal of goods or a term of imprisonment. Usually, just the threat of that is enough to produce the information and documents. If the lack of disclosure has led to a waste of court time or a waste of your legal costs, you might also get an order from the court that they reimburse your costs. In more extreme cases a court can order a third party to provide disclosure of documents that your spouse hasn’t disclosed. They’re reluctant to do that, but if it’s really necessary that might be something you can get a court to do. Even more extreme cases they can actually make what we call search and retrieve orders to actually go to a premises, search it and retrieve any relevant documents. Again, it’s very much a last resort and it’s very rarely an order that a court will make but it is their if it’s really necessary. And one more thing a court could do when they’re considering a settlement is to make what we call adverse inferences and to infer from the fact that your spouse hasn’t disclosed everything, that they must be very wealthy and therefore they will make an order that is perhaps more favorable to you.
