High Court Judge Mr Justice Holman has urged a divorcing couple to settle their differences, saying family litigation was “like a boxing match”.
The veteran Judge is due to preside over the forthcoming divorce of Richard and Ekaterina Fields, a wealthy couple who had two children during their decade together. They are now disputing the division of £6 million in assets, The Guardian reports, but could lose more than £1 million of that to legal fees if the case continues.
After hearing preliminary submissions, Mr Justice Holman urged the couple to have a “serious discussion” and try to reach a settlement. When Mrs Field admitted that she had not previously undertaken litigation, the Judge told her:
“It’s awful. Don’t you think it’s awful? It’s like a boxing match.”
He continued:
“You and Mr Fields were married to each other for ten years roughly. You have got two children. It really doesn’t have to be like this. It should never have got this far.”
The couple’s continuing dispute was “unedifying” he declared.
In many other European jurisdictions, this kind of fighting about finances does not happen because it cannot happen. They have law, such as legally binding regimes for matrimonial assets, which keeps divorcing couples away from the courts and prevents such madness. Here we have judges, but no law.
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The result is indeed, as justice Holman says, a boxing match. But it is a bout in which the family justice system and courts acts as boxing promoters (for a huge purse). They set divorcing couples up as combatants from day one. They push them towards the ring. They tie their gloves. They ring the bell.
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To then express surprise and regret when the parties inevitably start fighting is hypocrisy.