Animals take centre stage in divorce
Appeal judges awarded the woman a £1.5 million divorce package, which included a £900,000 lump sum to buy a house with enough land to graze her animals.
The childless couple from Gloucestershire were married for 11 years. The court heard the horses had almost become a child substitute for the wife, a talented rider who enjoyed eventing.
“During the marriage the horses played a major part in the wife’s life with the consent and encouragement of the husband,” Mark Potter, Britain’s most senior family judge, said.
The animals took on this role “all the more so after she lost a baby in 2001 and the husband gave her a third horse to celebrate their 10th anniversary in 2004, to add to her own two horses which she had bought herself for £20,000 out of a personal inheritance in order to justify her eventing“.
Top British matrimonial and family lawyer Ayesha Vardag says the needs of the parties are considered paramount by British divorce courts.
The husband — a City-worker on a salary of £60,000, plus bonuses — said the horses were an unjustified extravagance and had attempted to argue that the wife’s needs could be met with a £600,000 house without grazing land.
