Following a recent divorce case Mr Justice Mostyn has advocated for a costs cap in family cases.
In Xanthopoulos v Rakshina Mr Justice Mostyn described how the parties had already incurred costs of more than £5.4m in less than two years since the husband filed his petition. The total bill is expected to reach between £7.2m and £8m.
Mr Justice Mostyn commented:
“In my opinion the lord chancellor should consider whether statutory measures could be introduced which limit the scale and rate of costs run up in these cases … Alternatively, the matter should be considered further by the Family Procedure Rule Committee. Either way, steps must be taken.”
The parties concerned are Lazaros Xanthopoulos, 42, a Greek-born Russia resident who describes himself as a homemaker and his former wife, 41, who is a senior executive with a Siberian supermarket business and is thought to be the 75th richest woman in Russia worth more than £300 million. The couple married in 2006 in Moscow and separated in 2020. A court in Russia pronounced a divorce in March 2021 on the wife’s application but a dispute remains over the financial remedy.
Arguments for both parties exceeded the prescribed 10-page limit and were filed late, with Mostyn commenting that the preparation for the latest hearing could “only be described as shocking”. Despite rules restricting parties to a bundle of 350 pages of text, the judge was provided with four bundles coming to a total of 1,878 pages.
Mostyn said that the amounts incurred were difficult to accept “even in a conflict between the uber-rich”. In this case the dispute was over two London properties worth £5 million each and a sum of £11 million in a Coutts account. The costs incurred in arguing over these sums were said to be “beyond nihilistic”, by Mostyn.
Mostyn continued:
“This utter disregard for the relevant guidance, procedure, and indeed orders is totally unacceptable. I struggle to understand the mentality of litigants and their advisers who still seem to think that guidance, procedure, and orders can be blithely ignored.”
Mostyn said he “struggled to find the language that aptly describes the exorbitance of the litigious conduct of the parties”.
