Hayley Trim's Analysis: Discretion - Variation on a theme

Advising a client on financial remedies is often difficult. There is a category of cases where there is clearly enough capital for a fair division within an ascertainable bracket no need for ongoing maintenance and everyone will be comfortable (although not perhaps quite as comfortable as they were before). Clever things may be done with complex assets to maximise the benefits to one or both parties but at the end of the day no one is genuinely going to struggle. These are a minority but over represented in the reported cases because they are the cases where there is money to fight.

The more difficult cases are where there is not enough capital to rehouse both spouses and/or where periodical payments are an inevitable part of any package. I found periodical payments particularly difficult to advise a client about with a lot coming down to experience (inevitably based on a particular court) and a gut feeling looking at the...

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