A multimillionaire husband has ‘got away with blue murder’ after failing to disclose the full extent of his wealth during a recent divorce ruling, according to a former High Court judge.
The ‘conservative’ award granted to the wife, and the court’s decision to anonymise the judgment, were criticised by Sir Nicholas Mostyn, who spent his career in the family division.
In a LinkedIn post on Sunday, Sir Nicholas said: ‘The case is a depressing example of non-disclosure paying off… I cannot help thinking in this case that the husband has got away with blue murder.’
His comments relate to MK v SK [2026] EWFC 28, in which the husband claimed to have ‘almost nil’ in assets, while the wife alleged he held millions of pounds. Faced with sharply conflicting accounts, the court was required to investigate allegations of undisclosed wealth.
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High Court judge Sir Robert Peel told the court: ‘Doing the best I can, and balancing the problems facing the Group with my findings about H’s undisclosed wealth, I have reached the conclusion that H’s wealth measures a few million pounds rather than running into the tens of millions.’
Later in the hearing, the wife was awarded a personal budget of £150,000 per year, calculated on the basis of what she would require to maintain her standard of living, rather than through an equal division of assets.
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The image painted by the court of the husband’s wealth was not crystalline, in Sir Nicholas’ view.
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Citing Sir Robert Peel’s judgment, Sir Nicholas said: ‘So incomplete was the picture that “application of the so-called sharing principle is not straightforward here”.’
Cases in which one party fails to disclose the full extent of their assets are becoming both more common and increasingly sophisticated, according to Elspeth Kinder, co-head of the family team at JMW Solicitors.
‘I think the case is sadly reflective of what we are typically seeing in a lot of family proceedings, to varying degrees,’ she tells Spear’s.
She adds: ‘I recently flagged with all my partners that I am concerned that there is a growing increase in terms of doctoring and manipulating evidence, which is becoming more and more sophisticated and hence more difficult for lawyers to detect, especially due to the growing prevalence of AI.’
Alistair Myles, founding partner and divorce lawyer at Ribet Myles, agreed that the ruling reflects a broader reality in UK family courts regarding non-disclosure.
‘It’s always difficult for a court to put a figure on someone’s non-disclosure,’ he says.
He adds: ‘[The 150,000 a year settlement] could be depressingly low, depending on what the true extent of this chap’s resources are.’
[See also: Is freezing assets in a divorce worth the heat?]
As high net worth individuals increasingly hold complex and international asset structures, Myles suggests this can make it easier to obscure wealth during divorce proceedings.
‘HNW people might try to use trusts in foreign jurisdictions to reduce their tax exposure, which also could benefit them in a divorce scenario, as they could get away with non-disclosure,’ he notes.
In his LinkedIn post, Sir Nicholas Mostyn also questioned the court’s decision to anonymise the ruling, calling it ‘completely ridiculous’.
‘I would strongly argue that this judgment is given in the name of the people and that the people are entitled to know for whom Justice has been dispensed on their behalf,’ he said. ‘It is an insult to the people for this judgment to be issued in such a way that it is almost completely unreadable by virtue of the alphabet soup into which the reader is plunged.’
Luke Scarratt, a family lawyer at Payne Hicks Beach, expressed concern over the use of anonymity in this case, while noting the limits of commenting without having attended the trial.
‘With the caveat that the Court will have a far greater understanding of the dynamics and personalities involved in the case, I am unsettled by the use of anonymisation in this clear case of non-disclosure,’ he said.
‘The process of anonymisation strips a great degree of meaning from the judgment, to the extent that sometimes you emerge from the courtroom and barely recognise your own case being discussed in an anonymised form in the legal press,’ he added.
Scarratt noted that anonymity is often used to safeguard the welfare of children, protect an individual’s right to privacy regarding their health, or preserve commercially sensitive information, among other reasons.
While acknowledging Sir Nicholas’ frustration, Kinder took a different view of privacy in the family courts.
‘There is huge sensitivity around family law and it can feel extremely distressing, and at times a roller coaster of emotion fuelled by the client’s fear of the unknown,’ she says. ‘I think, in the wife’s position in this case, to feel you are being reported publicly on the minutiae of your life, comes with its own challenges.’
