2 July 2025

Baldip Singh No5 Chambers | Financial Remedies Barrister

Today, the Supreme Court delivered its judgment in Standish v Standish [2025] UKSC 26, a landmark case for financial remedies practitioners. It rewrites the financial playbook for wealthy divorces or, at the very least, causes a few sharp intakes of breath in Belgravia. The central issue? When does pre-marital money lose its frosty, separate status and warm itself in the matrimonial pot?

If one spouse earns most of the assets before the wedding bells ring, should those assets still be shared equally on divorce? Enter the slippery concept of “matrimonialisation”. Yes, it’s a mouthful, and no, it’s not yet in the Oxford English Dictionary and my Microsoft spell check does not recognise it either, but today the Supreme Court decided that it should feature more permanently in the family law lexicon.

Background

At the heart of the matter is Anna Standish, who was initially awarded a £45 million slice of the marital cake by Mr Justice Moor, roughly 60/40 in favour of her former husband, Clive Standish, a retired UBS banker with a rather healthy pension pot. The Court of Appeal, however, took a sterner view, trimming her award to £25 million and declaring that most of the transferred assets were, in fact, not matrimonial at all. The wife appealed to the Supreme Court to give that decision another look.

In Standish, the sums are substantial. The parties lived a life of international luxury after cohabiting from 2004 and marrying in 2005. The husband retired in 2007, having built his fortune beforehand. In 2017, he transferred £78 million to his wife, ostensibly for tax planning.

She did not settle it into a trust as agreed. Instead, in 2020, she settled into a solicitor’s office and began divorce proceedings, arguing that since the assets were in her name, they were now hers, or at least fair game for sharing.

The High Court found that the husband’s generous transfer amounted to a matrimonialisation of the assets, but because they originated from non-marital wealth, a full fifty-fifty was not appropriate. The award? £45 million to the wife. The husband appealed successfully. The Court of Appeal said: hang on, that transfer did not wave a magic matrimonial wand. The assets kept their non-marital character. So, the wife’s award was cut to £25 million. The matter was appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Legal Evolution

Not so long ago (well, until the late 1990s), divorcing spouses were lucky if their “reasonable needs” were met. Equality was more of a theory than a practice. That changed in 2000 with White v White, which put homemaker and breadwinner on equal footing. By 2006, Miller and McFarlane introduced the “sharing principle”: if assets were built up during the marriage, they would usually be split down the middle.

But what of assets generated before the marriage? Or gifted? Or inherited? Those are classed as “non-matrimonial”. They are protected… in theory. But what if you mingle them, pool them, or dare we say it, gift them to your spouse?

That is where Standish v Standish bites. So, what exactly is “matrimonialisation”? At present, it’s a handy term for when property originally “non-matrimonial” that is, acquired before the marriage or from inheritance or gifts  becomes “matrimonial” through mingling, mixing, or some other act of marital alchemy. That could be via joint use, transfer, or just treating it as shared. But the law had not quite settled on what exactly triggers this transformation.

The Three Key Questions the Supreme Court Was Asked to Tackle:

1. Does matrimonialisation exist at all, or is it a figment of family lawyers’ collective imagination?
2. If it does, what sort of conduct, if any, transforms non-matrimonial property into matrimonial property?
3. And if property is matrimonialised, should it be shared equally, or does the source still matter?

The Supreme Court on When Money Becomes Matrimonial

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Standish serves as a much-needed clarifier in the occasionally murky waters of matrimonial finance, particularly concerning the division of matrimonial and non-matrimonial property. Practitioners will find the Court has now firmly endorsed principles first hinted at in the landmark cases of White v White and Miller/McFarlane, but has gone further in drawing sharp lines around the sharing principle, adding a splash of clarity to an area long ripe for debate.

At the heart of the Court’s decision is the much-debated distinction between matrimonial and non-matrimonial property. Matrimonial property is generally that which either stems from the joint effort of the spouses during the marriage or reflects the fruits of the matrimonial partnership, think of it as the couple’s shared piggy bank. Non-matrimonial property, in contrast, usually refers to assets brought into the marriage, or inherited or gifted from a third party effectively the “private stash” one spouse holds onto, with their name on the label. The Supreme Court made it crystal clear that the sharing principle, which often conjures images of a fifty-fifty split, applies only to matrimonial property. Non-matrimonial property, in principle, remains out of reach for this equal sharing approach, although the courts may still consider it under the principles of needs and compensation.

This emphasis neatly echoes Lord Nicholls’ warning from White v White that fairness is the yardstick, not a rigid rule, and that discrimination between spouses (or between types of assets) has no place at the dinner table, or indeed the courtroom. However, it also means that the presumption of equal sharing does not operate as an unyielding mandate once the source of the property diverges.

One of the key takeaways from Standish is the endorsement of the concept of “matrimonialisation”. Yes, you can now add this to your Microsoft dictionary. This process describes how non-matrimonial property can, over time and depending on the parties’ conduct, transform into matrimonial property. It is the couple’s mutual treatment of an asset as shared, rather than mere legal title, that counts. The Court agreed that matrimonialisation is not a narrow or overly broad concept; it hinges on whether the spouses, by their actions over time, treat an asset as joint. If one spouse transfers their pre-marital assets into joint ventures or family use, and the couple act as if it is shared property, that asset may be matrimonialised.

This ruling neatly solves a common confusion: not every asset that crosses the marital threshold becomes shared property just because it is on joint papers or moved around for financial convenience. The Court’s pragmatic approach saves time and expense, as it rejected the idea that every penny of pre-marital wealth needs a forensic accounting deep dive when matrimonial assets dwarf non-matrimonial ones.

In short, practitioners should now comfortably advise clients that equal sharing is the default for matrimonial property, but non-matrimonial property is treated differently and falls outside the sharing principle, except insofar as needs or compensation justify otherwise. They should also stress the importance of the parties’ intentions and behaviour over time in potentially “matrimonialising” certain assets.

A Conference Checklist

1. Ask where the money came from. Was it earned during the marriage? Gifted? Inherited? Brought into the marriage pre-wedding and pre-wine?
2. Assess how it was used. Did the parties treat it as joint? Was it used to buy the family home or left untouched like an unopened wedding gift?
3. Distinguish between sharing and needs. Just because an asset cannot be shared does not mean it will not be needed.
4. Tax planning is not the same as sharing. Even if an asset was transferred between spouses, look for intention and conduct, not just paperwork.
5. Avoid automatic assumptions. Title and name on the account are not the be-all and end-all, focus on context and conduct.

For those that scrolled straight to the bottom of this article

The Supreme Court has now drawn a firmer boundary between the matrimonial and the non-matrimonial, bringing clarity where once there was caution. Practitioners can be reassured (and parties perhaps disappointed) that not all property is up for sharing. The guiding principle remains fairness, but fairness does not require equality of all things, only of the right things.

As for matrimonialisation, it is not a slippery slope but a process of shared conduct and intention over time. If your client simply handed over the family shares to their spouse to keep HMRC at bay, do not expect a court to find that love made it mutual.

Sometimes, a gift is just a gift. And sometimes, what is mine really is mine, unless they both decided otherwise and have the lifestyle receipts to prove it.

Baldip Singh
No5 Chambers | Financial Remedies Barrister