A billionaire tech entrepreneur who used ‘scare tactics’ to pressure his wife into accepting his financial demands during their divorce has been ordered to pay her £230 million in a landmark ruling.
In a case involving an unnamed ‘phenomenally wealthy’ couple, Justice Cobb awarded the wife the third-largest settlement in English legal history, after ruling that her husband’s persistent controlling behaviour had eroded her free will.
Court documents show that the man told his wife that if she stuck to a postnuptial agreement they had signed in 2021, the family would become bankrupt, their three children would be denied their inheritance and she would ‘end up working on the tills at Tesco’.
[See also: Pre-marital wealth doesn’t have to be shared on divorce, Supreme Court rules]
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‘Sign or fight for years’
The couple, both in their 40s, had married in 2005 in what court documents called ‘Country A’ before moving to the UK in 2018 to educate their children in England and avoid security fears in the country they had left. The couple had become ‘rich beyond their wildest dreams’ after the husband floated his tech firm in 2012, but their marriage broke down in 2022.
During the ensuing negotiations, the husband repeatedly warned his wife that if she didn’t sign a new financial agreement, it would mean ‘five years of fight’. She described the process as ‘killing me … in the real sense’ and said she would ‘start to shake’ whenever his name appeared on her phone. At one point, the wife told her husband: ‘What is my time worth? How much is my trapped life worth? … End that torture right away!’
The court’s close scrutiny of WhatsApp messages, voice messages, texts and emails in this case may indicate a ‘marked step’ towards a more modern and nuanced approach to assessing coercive control in the context of financial outcomes, says Farrer & Co’s Claire Gordon, who represented the wife.
‘We’re delighted the court has recognised that there’s no longer the need for one big “blowout” event,’ Gordon told Spear’s. ‘We’re now looking at the build-up of persistent and attritional conduct, and the pressure that can put on relationships.’
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‘Historically judges have tried to steer away from considering the dynamic of a relationship in financial cases,’ Gordon continues. ‘But we now have a High Court case looking at coercive control in real detail, analysing a couple’s communications over many, many months and making findings about the impact – in this case, on the wife – in the context of a marital agreement.’
[See also: Landmark ruling targets economic abuse in HNW relationships]
Coercive tactics
The husband had challenged the postnup in a bid to secure a more favourable settlement agreement. Justice Cobb found he had ‘specifically and deliberately’ tried to isolate his wife from her lawyer, and sought to ‘drive a wedge between them for his own advantage’.
The case outcome, Gordon said, also emphasises the benefits of a properly negotiated nuptial agreement – with full financial disclosure, legal advice on both sides, and no undue pressure – as demonstrated by the postnup being upheld.
Cobb ultimately dismissed the husband’s effort to enforce a second post-separation agreement, describing it as ‘inchoate’ and the result of ‘undue influence’. His ruling made clear that even substantial settlements will not stand where one party has been pressured.
Gordon acknowledges that the legal profession remains divided on how much weight courts should give to coercive control and domestic abuse in financial cases. But she believes the ruling could lead to greater scrutiny of conduct – especially coercive control – when determining a fair financial award.
