Murphy v Murphy [2014] EWHC 2263 (Fam), family law, adult periodical payments orders, safeguarding financial position
The recent High Court
decision in
Murphy v Murphy [2014]
EWHC 2263 (Fam), [2014] Fam Law 1520 provides an important restatement of the
statutory framework and case-law concerning the term of adult periodical
payments orders. This decision stresses
the importance of safeguarding the financial position of the weaker party. The
lower courts in the last several years have drawn back from making joint lives
periodical payments orders. Terms are
often made on the basis of arbitrary assessment of a wife/mother’s future
earning capacity. Husbands have sought
to argue that this development in the law is appropriate and that the days of
joint lives orders should now end (or be orders made sparingly). Baroness Deech
presented a Private Member’s Bill to the House of Lords in 2014 which stresses
the desirability of term maintenance orders and a clean break – a Bill which
sought to radically change the law. In
an important restatement of the law relating to the term of adult periodical
payments orders, Holman J in Murphy firmly sets out the principles that
should apply, stating that, ‘the law currently is not the law as it would be if
Baroness Deech’s Bill is ever enacted. It is, of course, the current law which
I must apply.’
The full version of this article appears in the January 2015 issue of Family Law.
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