JMW’s family law team acted for a wife in financial remedy proceedings after her husband sought to set aside a consent order due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the family business. We successfully resisted the application, ensuring that the original financial settlement remained in place.

The Case

Our client was involved in financial remedy proceedings with her husband, with whom she had agreed a financial settlement at a dispute resolution hearing, which was recorded in a consent order.

Under the terms of the order, the husband was to retain the family business and pay our client a series of lump sums totalling £1 million. However, the husband failed to pay the first instalment and applied to set aside the order entirely. His case was that COVID-19 and its effect on the business amounted to a Barder event.

This created significant uncertainty for our client. She faced delay, the risk of losing the financial sums that had already been agreed, and the prospect of further costly litigation. This was particularly concerning because she had already transferred risk-heavy assets to the husband under the original settlement.

Our client needed a team that could oppose the application robustly, protect the terms of the order and keep the focus on the fairness and commercial logic of the original agreement.

How Did JMW Help?

JMW helped our client oppose the husband’s application and maintain pressure to enforce the terms of the order agreed between the parties.

We focused on the fairness of the original settlement, the allocation of risk that had already been built into the agreement, and the legal threshold required to justify setting aside a final financial order. We argued that the husband should not be able to unravel the order simply because the asset he had retained had become more difficult or less advantageous than anticipated.

The case required careful analysis of the background to the agreement, the structure of the assets and the husband’s arguments about post-order events. We presented our client’s position clearly and firmly, showing why the circumstances did not justify reopening the financial settlement.

By taking this approach, JMW helped the court see that the original order reflected a fair allocation of risk between the parties and should remain in place.

The Outcome

The court dismissed the husband’s application to set aside the consent order. Although the judge accepted that the COVID-19 pandemic was an extraordinary event and could, in principle, support a set-aside application in an appropriate case, the court concluded that the husband had not shown sufficient grounds to set aside this particular order.

This meant that the original financial settlement remained in place.

This was an excellent outcome for our client. It preserved the value of the agreement she had already reached, avoided the need for the case to be reheard from the beginning, and protected her from the delay and expense of a wholesale re-evaluation of the assets.

The outcome also gave our client greater certainty and maintained the structure of an order designed to provide financial security and a route towards a clean break.

Cases involving applications to set aside financial orders are highly fact-sensitive and require careful handling, particularly where there are arguments about business value, liquidity and unforeseen market events. JMW combined detailed financial remedies expertise with a clear strategic focus on protecting the integrity of the original order and resisting further litigation on issues that had already been agreed.