Ex-wife loses Supreme Court fight against retired banker over the £80m he gave her in a bid to avoid tax - before she divorced him and kept the money

Daily Mail​

3 days ago

An ex-wife of a retired banker has lost a Supreme Court battle over an £80million sum he granted her in an attempt to avoid tax before their divorce.
Clive Standish, 70, a sheep farming tycoon and former chief financial officer of banking giant UBS, we d Anna Standish, 56, in December 2005.
But the couple separated in 2020 after a 15-year marriage, during which they had two children.
The marital assets at the time of the split amounted to £132million, almost all of which had grown from the £57.3million fortune Mr Standish brought into the marriage.
He retired in 2007, living off the profits of a £28million sheep farm in Australia, while the couple enjoyed life in 18-bedroom mansion Moundsmere Manor, set in 83 acres near Hampshire village Preston Candover.
The court heard of Mr Standish's worries about changes to the inheritance tax regime announced in 2016 by HM Revenue and Customs.
He feared these would expose his personal assets to a 40 per cent levy on his death.
He then transferred £80million-worth of assets to his wife in 2017, with a plan for them to eventually be placed in an offshore trust for the benefit of their children.
But the marriage hit the rocks before that could happen, leaving the couple estranged and Mrs Standish claiming the £80million was hers outright.
She said it had been 'gifted' to her and so should form part of the matrimonial pot to share on divorce.
Mr Justice Moor ruled in the divorce courts in December 2023 that Mr Standish should get £87.6million of the total family wealth valued at a total £132,648,326, with his wife walking away with £45million.
That decision was made using the so-called 'sharing principle' of dividing the family fortune.
Mrs Standish was said to have insisted the £80million was 'matrimonial' money to be divided equally, despite bringing 'no significant wealth' of her own into the marriage.
Last year the Court of Appeal cut her payout, ruling that the 'fair outcome' of the case would leave Mrs Standish with £25million rather than £45million.
She has since taken the case to the Supreme Court in a bid to get the ruling overturned and reclaim the extra £20million.
But today five of England and Wales' most senior judges upheld the earlier verdict, saying that the £80million had not been turned into 'matrimonial assets' simply because it was put in her name to avoid tax.
The court ruling stated: 'Tax planning schemes to save tax, involving transfers of assets from one spouse to another, are commonplace.
'The problem for the wife is that there is nothing to show that, over time, the parties were treating the 2017 assets as shared between them.
'Rather, the transfer was in pursuance of a scheme to negate inheritance tax and it was for the benefit exclusively of the children.
'The parties' intention was that the £80million should not be retained by the wife.'
Tim Bishop KC, for Mr Standish, had said during the Court of Appeal hearing that the husband had 'a very successful career in banking'.
He told the judges that in June 2004 his client was worth £57.3million, while Mrs Standish had 'no significant pre-marital wealth'.
Mr Standish is British but moved to Australia in 1976 before moving back to England with his family in 2010.
That potentially left him open to a huge inheritance tax hit when prospective changes were announced in 2016 - affecting anyone with a British domicile of origin returning to the UK from a country they had made their new permanent home.
In the face of this, he 'commenced a process to shield his property from IHT' by 'transferring his assets to the wife to hold for a period and for the wife then to settle the transferred assets into a trust', the court was told.
Mr Bishop said: 'The husband made the transfers in March 2017, but the wife failed to transfer the assets into trust by the time the marriage ran into problems in 2019 and then broke down finally in 2020.'
Mr Standish's barrister criticised the divorce judge's eventual division of the assets last December as 'unfair'.
Mr Bishop argued it had been wrong for the £80million to have been regarded as 'matrimonialised' property, rather than the personal property of the husband and not to go into the pot for division.
The Court of Appeal went on to rule that 25 per cent of the £80million should be shared, as that money had been made by the husband during a time when he was being supported by his 'homemaker' but that the rest should not - cutting her divorce payout by £20million.
For Mrs Standish, Richard Todd KC said the £80million was her property and everything else apart from the sheep farm ought to be equally split - leaving the former spouses with £56.3million apiece.
But delivering the Supreme Court ruling, Lord Burrows and Lord Stephens, with whom Lord Reed, Lord Lloyd Jones and Lady Simler agreed, said the Appeal Court had got it right.
They said: 'Here, the source of the pre-marital assets within the 2017 assets was exclusively the husband.
'Those assets have been transferred to the wife. But the problem for the wife is that there is nothing to show that, over time, the parties were treating the 2017 assets as shared between them.
'Rather, the transfer was in pursuance of a scheme to negate inheritance tax and it was for the benefit exclusively of the children.
'The parties' intention was that the £80million should not be retained by the wife but should be used by her to set up trusts for the children, thereby negating inheritance tax.
'In short, there was no matrimonialisation of the 2017 assets because, first, the transfer was to save tax and, secondly, it was for the benefit of the children not the wife.
'The 2017 assets were not, therefore, being treated by the husband and wife for any period of time as an asset that was shared between them.
'In relation to a scheme designed to save tax, under which one spouse transfers an asset to the other spouse, the parties' dealings with the asset, irrespective of the time period involved, do not normally show that the asset is being treated as shared between them. Rather, the intention is simply to save tax.
'Transfers of capital assets with the intention of saving tax do not, without some further compelling evidence, establish that the parties are treating the capital asset as shared between them.
'The 2017 assets comprise, first, the husband's pre-marital assets and, secondly, earnings that the husband made in the years 2004-2007 to which the wife contributed by being the home-maker and childcarer during those years.
'It is not in dispute that the latter constitutes matrimonial property. That should be shared on an equal basis.
'The Court of Appeal assessed the latter, i.e. the matrimonial property, as comprising 25% of the £80million.'
The judges said that meant that 25 per cent 'was to be shared equally, and the former, i.e. the pre-marital assets/non-matrimonial property, as comprising 75 per cent of the £80million'.
They added: 'We see no reason to interfere with that assessment.
The decision and orders of the Court of Appeal should therefore be upheld. For all these reasons, we would dismiss the appeal.'
Legal experts have responded by describing the judgment as a 'landmark ruling' - and suggesting it offered a cautionary note to many other couples.
Aasha Choudhary, family law partner at law firm Shakespeare Martineau, said: 'Merely transferring assets into joint names or to a spouse does not automatically transform them into matrimonial property, unless there is clear and documented intention to share an asset.
'While it may not be the most romantic topic before a wedding, this decision is a timely reminder of the value of prenuptial agreements.
'Divorces can be emotionally fraught, and decisions made during a separation don't always reflect long-term intentions.
'A well-drafted prenup allows both parties to set expectations early and protect their respective interests with transparency and fairness, saving the financial and emotional cost of litigation.
'Most crucially, this ruling makes it clear that if couples want a non-matrimonial asset to become shared property, it must be recorded clearly.
'Without that, the default position may now lean toward such assets remaining non-matrimonial, a major shift in the legal landscape.'