Fraud, coercion and a 40% cut: the impact of ‘deplorable conduct’ in Financial Remedies cases

The recent case of LP v MP shows that the Family courts can and will take a robust approach where it can be shown that one party’s conduct is so poor that it would be unfair to disregard it when dividing up finances on divorce. The lack of quantifiable financial loss is no bar to the Court considering conduct.

Background

The husband was 72 and the wife was 60, and they were married for nearly 12 years. They had one child together. Their combined wealth was £11 million, the majority of which came from the husband before the marriage. 

The court found that the wife had inflicted a sustained pattern of deceit, coercive control and fraudulent behaviour on the husband during the marriage, including falsely claiming to be a High Court judge. She was also convicted of fraud and dishonesty offences. 

Added to this, the court also had the benefit of findings which had been made against the wife in earlier Children Act proceedings, where Mrs Justice Theis had found that she had subjected the husband to coercive and controlling behaviour and verbal, emotional and physical abuse from 2019 until 2023. Several of the violent incidents were found to have taken place in front of the child, who had suffered serious emotional harm as a result.  

The husband’s evidence, accepted by the court, showed escalating abuse, including slapping, punching, scratching, ripping clothes, grabbing his testicles, biting his face, threats to kill and brandishing a knife. The wife made false allegations of rape, sexual assault and threats with a knife, including at school, causing the husband to resign from governor and trustee roles.

There were two matrimonial homes which were held in the parties’ joint names. The husband said he would not have done so had he known of the wife’s deception, but the court held that joint ownership still reflected the reality of a long marriage and could not be discounted solely because the deception persisted; the marriage remained a relevant context for title. The consequence of conduct was addressed in valuation of entitlement, not by unravelling joint legal ownership.

The judge found that the misconduct was not merely unpleasant—it corrupted the financial process itself. The deception and coercion were directly linked to:

• the depletion of assets,
• distortion of disclosure,
• manipulation of litigation behaviour, and
• the undermining of fairness in adjudicating the financial claims.

The judge said that the wife had demonstrated ‘gross and obvious personal misconduct’. Conduct therefore became the mechanism through which an equitable outcome could be restored. 

The judge therefore found that the wife should not receive an equal share of the assets. Instead, her entitlement should be reduced by 40%, due to her lack of contribution to the financial pot and her ‘deplorable’ conduct. The remaining 60% of the pot was shared equally, leaving her with 30%.  

Mr Justice Cusworth said: ‘I consider that there is a real risk of unfairness to victims of violent or coercive controlling behaviour, if the lack of readily quantifiable financial loss prevents the courts from even considering the fairness of taking their assailant’s behaviour into account in determining the outcome of a financial remedy application.’

Conduct has been a “hot topic” in family law in recent years and there have been a number of decisions which have concluded that there is a high bar for conduct to be taken into account and there must be a direct financial consequence. LP v MP is a rare but important decision affirming that conduct remains a powerful consideration in financial remedy cases when the facts justify it. The decision reminds us that the statute says “conduct should be taken into account when it would be inequitable to disregard it” – no more and no less.