Veil of ignorance?

The decision of the Court of Appeal in Petrodel Resources Ltd & Ors v Prest & Ors [2012] EWCA Civ 1395, [2012] All ER (D) 293 (Oct) has provided some clarity about when the corporate veil can be pierced in matrimonial cases. The majority judgments of Rimer LJ and Patten LJ criticise the approach taken by family division judges in the past as inconsistent with the principles of English company and property law. Unbowed, in his dissenting judgment, Thorpe LJ maintains that a robust approach is required to get to the reality of the asset position and thereby to achieve justice.

The facts

The husband was an entrepreneur in the oil industry. This was a long marriage with four children. On the husband’s case his asset position was negative £48m, whereas the wife considered he was worth “tens if not hundreds of millions” of pounds. The proceedings at first instance before Moylan J were dogged by the husband’s frustrating litigation