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The UK’s Supreme Court has ruled that the wife of UBS’s former chief financial officer was not entitled to half the £78mn he gave her because he had made the money before their marriage, setting a precedent for how divorcing couples divide up their assets.
Clive Standish transferred investments worth £78mn to his wife, Anna Standish, in 2017. The couple married in 2005 and initiated divorce proceedings in 2020.
The original judge in the case had awarded Anna Standish £45mn, which was reduced by the Court of Appeal to £25mn. The Supreme Court has now upheld the £25mn figure.
The main issue of contention in the case has been whether the assets remained the husband’s property, because he had made most of that money before their marriage, or whether they had been “matrimonialised”, and therefore belonged equally to the couple. In that case, Anna Standish’s lawyers argued, they should be divided more evenly on divorce.
The Supreme Court said that because Clive Standish had given the assets to his wife to avoid inheritance tax, and for the benefit of their children, the couple had never truly shared the assets. This meant the assets were “non-matrimonial property” and therefore should not be divided from an equal starting point, unlike “matrimonial property” — assets earned or gained during and because of the marriage.
In English divorce law, judges have a significant amount of discretion in determining financial settlements, but the case will provide greater clarity on how assets should be split, including in cases of less wealthy couples. Non-matrimonial property can still be split depending on the financially weaker party’s needs.
Sam Longworth, a partner at law firm Stewarts who was representing Clive Standish, said the judgment would make it easier for lawyers “to quite quickly identify the assets that are off-bounds or out of reach” for their clients.
He cautioned that exactly when an asset became “matrimonialised” was still an open question in many cases. But courts would now look at the intention of the partner sharing the asset and how the couple used it in their life together.
Anna Standish was represented in the case by Baroness Fiona Shackleton, a partner at Payne Hicks Beach, who has previously handled divorces for Paul McCartney, Prince Andrew and Prince Charles, now Charles III, in his divorce from Diana, Princess of Wales. Payne Hicks Beach declined to comment.
Anna Standish’s lawyers had asked the Supreme Court to consider the broader issue of whether “matrimonial property should normally, or presumptively, be shared equally” between spouses. They said there was such “uncertainty” about the division of assets that “judges with vast experience in the field reached such different conclusions”.
Emily Brand, head of the family department at law firm Boodle Hatfield, called the decision “a victory for pragmatism” because it clarified the rules and would help with couples’ prenuptial agreements and tax planning.
But she cautioned that the Supreme Court had left significant room for uncertainty in more complicated cases, which would have to be argued on the basis of their particular facts.
There is frustration among lawyers that successive governments have not tackled reform of family law, instead leaving it to the courts to advance it piecemeal. A Law Commission scoping report in December 2024 recommended potentially large-scale changes to the laws governing finances on divorce and the ending of a civil partnership.
The commission said at the time: “The law does not provide a cohesive framework in which parties to a divorce or dissolution can expect fair and sufficiently certain outcomes.”
