David Hodson on International Family Law: From Russia with a forged divorce

The controversial comments made by LJ Thorpe last Tuesday in the Court of Appeal in Golubovich [2010] EWCA 180 raise many issues on some of which there is comment this week with some of the bigger policy issues dealt with next week.

My fellow Jordans columnist Sandra Davis has already made some strong trenchant remarks with which I agree. The very wealthy Russian husband and his young Russian wife had close links with both Moscow and London and engaged in the inevitable and very expensive forum dispute. The unexpected was the husband's forgery of a Russian divorce rumbled by the English court followed up by his breaching a Hemain anti-suit injunction and obtaining a Russian divorce in the hope of stopping any claims in England. Apart from the surprising decision to recognise that divorce despite public policy reasons not to do so as it was obtained in breach of an English order the Court of Appeal was...

Read the full article here.