What is a high net worth divorce?

Usually, these involve parties whose combined assets exceed £5 million, although there is no legal definition for a high net worth divorce.  Divorces involving a lot of money and/or when there are multi-faceted assets such as businesses, properties abroad, trusts and complicated income streams require specialist advice, including careful consideration of the legal aspects and strategy, often with the involvement of accountants and tax experts.  Most cases that my team are involved in have assets situated globally, and these require careful and skilled representation to navigate the numerous complex issues that may arise.

It is important to have an excellent legal team on your side experienced in dealing with these types of matters and able to provide bespoke advice to ensure a fair outcome for you and protect your interest.

 

Overview of the High Net Worth Divorce Process

There are several stages in this kind of divorce.

The initial consultation is the first meeting to ensure that you and your solicitor are suited to each other because it is a personal process and you need to feel trust and faith in the team that you intend instructing.  You can also expect the consultation to cover the process and obtaining your specific background information and exploring your priorities.

The next stage is gathering all the financial information, identifying and valuing assets and discussing and agreeing a strategy for the financial negotiations and discussions.

The divorce process itself is very simple as the divorce application is filed on an online portal and there are no allegations required in terms of behaviour.  It is critical milestone because it starts the formal legal process.

Financial disclosure involves you receiving and providing all financial information to your ex-partner, including income, assets, liabilities and it is important to be fully transparent to ensure that any deal reached ultimately stands.

Sometimes exchange of financial disclosure can throw up questions about the values of various assets and how they should be treated and there can be significant work done after the exchange to ensure that you are happy with the information collected, before negotiations can start.

If there are business or other commercial assets, we would often instruct an accountant to assist in ensuring that a viable valuation is obtained.

Once we have collated all the information about assets and income, we should be in a position to start negotiations with your ex-partner’s legal team, sometimes with the assistance of the Court at an FDR or a private neutral evaluator, and at this time, offers will normally be exchanged with a view to concluding a binding agreement which is then turned into a Consent Order.

If you would like to have an initial discussion about your situation, please contact me by email on Louise.barretto@russells.co.uk