A judge at Yeovil Financial Remedies Court (pictured) has described a man who transferred his remaining UK property into a trust for his sister in a bid to avoid paying overdue child maintenance for his three daughters as “dishonest and deceitful”.
In a reserved judgment, deputy district judge David Hodson found for the ex-wife in F v EE [2026] EWFC 249 (B), after she sought to be paid a lump sum of almost £150,000 ordered by the court 12 months ago representing capitalised child maintenance for three children from 2023.
The judge set aside an attempt made by the man to place a UK property in a trust belonging to his sister. The home, valued at up to £750,000 containing equity estimated at between £440,000 and £550,000, can now be sold to pay the arrears in child maintenance.
The application for enforcement by the former wife was on an order of Yeovil court dated 15th July 2025. The reserved judgment followed a two-day final hearing conducted remotely on 18 August 2026, in which Nick Davies of Pardoes solicitors appeared for the applicant and the former husband and his sister appeared for themselves.
The ex-husband, who is a surgeon working in a Middle Eastern country, was found to have misled the judge at the hearing in June. Despite claiming otherwise, emails showed he sought to “defeat the anticipated order of the court” and a tranche of documentary evidence examined at the hearing “showed his deceit”.
Judge Hodson also criticised the man for having “misled and deceived” his sister who “had no idea that when he engaged in a property transfer arrangement with her that his primary motive was not her beneficial interest but getting rid of any opportunity by which his former wife, or indeed this court, could pursue a claim against him”.
In his judgment, Hodson wrote: “It is a tragic fact across world history that in the context of domestic relationships where there are dishonest and deceitful men, the victims often having to fight it out are two women. As it is here between the former wife and her former husband’s sister with the former husband effectively sitting back, protected by being in Country B, a country in the Middle East and without any reciprocal family law arrangements with the UK, and having divested himself of all English-based assets. In reality I had to decide between them. In fact it was even more unattractive.
“The former wife was pursuing child maintenance and therefore in reality it was his three daughters against his sister, their aunt. How exceedingly unattractive for a man to create and allow this situation, which he has.”
Hodson noted that at a previous hearing, a judge found the former husband to be “a wholly unreliable witness”. He added: “I agree and more. He has deliberately taken steps to make sure that his daughters have, during the later years of their minority, no opportunity of being financially supported by him by his disposing all his assets from the jurisdiction and putting himself beyond practical enforcement measures.”
The judge referred to evidence showing that the man had tried to sell two UK properties in the months before a financial remedies hearing, and when one of the homes failed to sell, he transferred it into a trust for his sister. The man claimed that he owed his sister money from her previous financial support of him during his divorce, and as a swap for her stake in a property in the Middle East which they had both inherited.
The judge found the man had lied about his plans to transfer the property to his sister. He claimed to have investigated doing this in January rather than June, which was just prior to the remedies hearing; however, there was a wealth of evidence disproving this and showing the intention of the man was to “defeat the claims” of the court.
Hodson wrote: “My powers include to ‘require any property transferred as part of the transaction to be vested in any person, either absolutely or for the benefit of all the persons on whose behalf the application for the order is treated as made’. My understanding is that I can therefore transfer the property to the former wife. At the moment I’m not going that far but I might yet.”
He added: “[The wife] is not interested in the entire property or the entire proceeds. She just wants her lump-sum as ordered by the court 12 months ago. In the first instance, I am restoring the position to what it would have been if the transaction had not been entered into.
“In other words without the deed of trust, without the fortune of timing for the former husband in the context of the delay in the delivery of the judgment after the April hearing. Specifically in the context of his blatant attempts to defeat claims. It is set aside.”
He added: “It is rare to have a paper trail in which a party to family court proceedings is so explicit, so raw, so adamant that the purpose of a transaction was to defeat claims, to frustrate the purposes, the justice and fairness, of the family court and to ensure the person had no assets in the jurisdiction against which enforcement could occur.”
