Fmft v. Hkwe
Read the full judgment text of CACV 230/2000 on BabelCite. This Court of Appeal judgment was delivered on 22 January 2001.
1. This is an appeal against two orders made by Deputy District Judge Jenkins on 6 December 1999 and 1 March 2000. By the 6 December 1999 Order, the Judge ordered that the petitioner ("the husband") should within 6 months from 6 December 1999 pay to the respondent ("the wife") a lump sum of $5 million for her maintenance. He also varied the amount of the periodic payment pending suit from $35,000 a month to $17,500 a month, effective as from 8 June 1999, and ordered such varied maintenance be co
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CACV000230/2000 CACV 230/2000 IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION COURT OF APPEAL CIVIL APPEAL NO. 230 OF 2000 (ON APPEAL FROM DISTRICT COURT --------------------------------
-------------------------------- Coram: Hon Rogers VP, Woo and Le Pichon JJA in Court Date of hearing: 12 January 2001 Date of handing down of judgment: 22 January 2001 ------------------------ J U D G M E N T ------------------------ Woo JA (delivering the judgment of the Court): Introduction 1. This is an appeal against two orders made by Deputy District Judge Jenkins on 6 December 1999 and 1 March 2000. By the 6 December 1999 Order, the Judge ordered that the petitioner ("the husband") should within 6 months from 6 December 1999 pay to the respondent ("the wife") a lump sum of $5 million for her maintenance. He also varied the amount of the periodic payment pending suit from $35,000 a month to $17,500 a month, effective as from 8 June 1999, and ordered such varied maintenance be continued until the payment by the husband of the lump sum of $5 million, at which time the periodic payment would cease. 2. By the Order of 1 March 2000, the Judge ordered the husband to pay one-quarter of the wife's costs, including the costs previously reserved and those of the hearing on 1 March 2000, to be taxed if not agreed. 3. Although the husband appeals both Orders, in respect of the Order of 6 December 1999 he only appeals against the part relating to the lump sum payment of $5 million, and does not appeal against the varied amount of the maintenance pending suit. Facts 4. The husband was born in 1950 in Hong Kong. His mother, Ana Fung, is the second wife of Mr Henry Fok, a well-known businessman of immense wealth, although it seems that they have never gone through any formal marriage. The identity of the husband's father is unclear. It is not Henry Fok. However, Henry Fok allowed his name to be registered as the father of the husband at the Registry of Births. 5. Due to various reasons, including his not being the natural child of Henry Fok and his lack of success in working for Henry Fok's various companies and in his own business ventures, and in particular his being arrested and jailed for an arms deal in the States, the husband's relationship with Henry Fok has never been close and is now (because of Henry Fok's having been subpoenaed to give evidence in this case before the Judge) more distant than ever. 6. The Judge accepted that the husband had no real possibility of receiving any capital in the foreseeable future. He also found that there was no real possibility of any change in the husband's financial situation in the foreseeable future. Apart from the occasions when he worked for his own businesses and joint ventures with others, the husband has been under the employ of Henry Fok's companies for a salary, and at the time of the trial he received a sum of about $36,600 a month on average from one of those companies. 7. The husband had a son, A, by an earlier marriage, who was born in 1978. A has been well catered for by Henry Fok through Ana Fung, with all his education and travelling expenses paid in addition to a monthly sum of $8,000. 8. The couple married on 11 December 1985. Their matrimonial home was first at a flat in Amber Court, Kennedy Road, which had been bought by the wife's own family with the assistance of a mortgage. After a few months, the couple moved to live in an annex with its own entrance to an 11,000 square-foot house in grounds of 0.3 acre with a swimming pool and tennis court on Mount Kellett Road occupied by Ana Fung and the family of the husband's younger brother, rent and expense free. The Amber Court flat was sold, and the wife received $1,000,000 out of the proceeds after repayment of the mortgage loan. Out of that, the husband borrowed $500,000 which he injected into Fival Ltd, a joint venture he operated together with the wife's brother. 9. The husband has the use of a second-hand Jaguar car which was bought for him through hire purchase by Ana Fung. The expenses for the car have also been paid for him by his family. 10. The annex to the Mount Kellett Road property, of an area of 1,088 square feet, had been the matrimonial home for the couple and their child R, born in 1986 shortly after they moved in, until the wife left with R in 1994. The wife started then to lodge with her friend, Ester Chan who, according to the wife, provided a home for themselves and R in a 1,800 square-foot flat with a 2,200 square-foot terrace on Briar Avenue. It appears that the wife and R had been well taken care of by Ester Chan, and the Judge found that the wife had no immediate need to obtain the $13,500 monthly payment from National Investment Co Ltd, a company of Henry Fok. That payment had been made available to her every month between June 1992 and June 1999 at about the time when a subpoena to testify was served on Henry Fok, but she only went to collect the money about once every three months during the period. 11. The Judge found that the wife who used to be a television performer would not be able to take up any paid employment at her age of 44 years. He did not believe her evidence that she had no interest in the Briar Avenue flat, or that she did not have personal interest in the amounts of money in the account of Boomwing Development Ltd which purchased the flat that she said were held for her friends. She was a director of Boomwing Development. He also found that she had engaged in share dealing on a substantial scale, but her explanation was that all the transactions she did were on behalf of Ester Chan and other friends. He felt that she was not being entirely frank with the court. 12. The Judge summed up the parties' financial positions thus: "both the husband and wife enjoy a comfortable way of life despite having little visible income. The husband's expenses are largely covered by his family with the wife's being paid for by Ester." 13. He found that the husband was able to obtain loans, on a commercial basis or on a domestic basis, from Henry Fok's companies or relatives and did not have any trouble if he did not repay. He ordered that the husband pay a lump sum of $5,000,000 to the wife to effect a clean break, while he ordered him also to make a periodic payment of $5,000 a month for the maintenance of R. That sum of $5 million was adopted for enabling the wife to provide a lodging for herself and R, whose custody was granted to her, in case they could not live with Ester Chan any more. The lodging envisaged was more modest than the Briar Avenue flat or a flat that the wife had hoped for. Grounds of appeal 14. Six grounds of appeal are raised regarding the order for the lump sum payment. They are set out below.
15. Regarding the appeal against the order for costs, the only ground raised is that the Judge erred in principle and was plainly wrong in the exercise of his discretion in holding, despite clear evidence of the wife's misconduct in the litigation, material non-disclosure and false presentation of her evidence, that the husband should pay a quarter of the wife's costs of the various applications before the Court. The needs of the wife 16. We start with the wife's "needs" which is attacked by Ground (5). A part of Ground (4) also challenges the needs of the wife on the basis of the evidence. Mr Pilbrow for the husband refers us to H v H (Financial Provision: Capital Allowance) [1993] 2 FLR 335 where on an appeal by a husband on ancillary relief, Thorpe J said @ 349F:
17. Mr Pilbrow further suggests that the Judge having found that the wife had been enjoying a very comfortable way of life with Ester Chan and that there was no reason for the resources not to continue in the foreseeable future, the award was clearly to provide a Besterman cushion for the wife, which should not have been allowed. He further submits that as the award was based not on the husband's resources, but a "hope of a loan from the family", the court should scrutinise the wife's needs even more carefully. 18. In re Besterman, decd [1984] FLR 503, where the applicant, the widow of a very wealthy deceased, sought financial provision under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, Oliver LJ held that a lump sum exceeding the cost of an appropriate annuity should be awarded to the widow. However, the case has no general application, as the judge himself expressed at p 522H of the report that "it would be a pity if this case should be used as a basis for drawing general deductions of principle to be applied in other and probably quite different cases, whether of large or small estates." 19. At the trial below, counsel for the wife suggested a lump sum of $8,250,000 for the purchase of a flat, based on a 1,500 square feet property at $5,500 per square foot, and a further lump sum of $6,600,000 for living expenses for the wife and R calculated at $55,000 a month for 10 years. The Judge balanced these suggested figures with the ability of the husband to pay. He said:
20. The Judge did not provide a Besterman cushion for the wife in awarding the lump sum. Although he believed that she could choose to remain living with Ester Chan indefinitely, he rejected the argument of Mr Pilbrow, who also appeared for the husband before him, that there was any financial claim that could be raised by the wife against Ester Chan if their relationship broke down. The Judge took into account the reality in Hong Kong that
We do not see anything wrong in those observations of the Judge. One cannot foretell the vicissitudes of life and how long, if at all, the wife could continue to enjoy the generosity of Ester Chan towards her and R. The Judge cannot be criticised for making a lump sum award for the wife to effect a clean break between the parties in order cater for a lodging for her and R, in case she and R had to leave Briar Avenue, for one reason or another. The monthly payment of $5,000 he ordered the husband to pay for maintaining R obviously did not include any lodging expenses for the child, nor did the interim payment of $17,500 per month for the wife cover her lodging needs. If a lodging is not required in the foreseeable future, the $5 million will produce an income of about $300,000 a year, based on the prevailing normal interest rate of about 6% per annum that banks in Hong Kong pay on a large sum fixed deposit, meaning $25,000 a month, not too much over the $17,500 interim payment, which will cease upon the $5 million being paid. The interest income so assessed is much lower than the $50,000 (ie, $55,000 less $5,000 for R) a month for the wife's living expenses mentioned above. As Mr Pilbrow has not challenged the varied interim payment of $17,500 per month ordered by the Judge, we do not see how he can complain that the $5 million lump sum award does not represent a fair figure for the wife's needs. Ground (5) and the part of Ground (4) relating to the wife's needs therefore fail. The husband's resources 21. All other grounds relate to the sufficiency of the husband's resources to meet the lump sum order. 22. Mr Pilbrow relies heavily on Howard v Howard [1945] P 1, where a husband was a beneficiary under a discretionary trust. Lord Greene MR said @ p 4:
23. Although we accept Mr Pilbrow's submission that the judgment of Lord Greene in Howard remains good law, a body of authority has developed that "judicious encouragement" can be legitimately made by the court to induce family companies and discretionary trustees to help a maintaining spouse to satisfy financial arrangements made by the court: see B v B (Financial Provision) (1982) 3 FLR 298, and Thomas v Thomas [1995] 2 FLR 668. We will refer to a passage in the judgment of Waite LJ in Thomas because it has particular relevance to the present case; he said at p 669-670:
24. Mr Pilbrow tries to distinguish the above cases and the other cases that he has cited, namely, Brown v Brown [1989] 1 FLR 291 and T v T and Others (Joinder of Third Parties) [1996] 2 FLR 357, where "judicious encouragement" was applied by submitting that those cases related to the maintaining spouse having effective control of the trustees who would exercise their discretion in accordance with his or her direction. However, on close examination of all the four cases, one cannot find any judicial observation that the doctrine of "judicious encouragement" only applies to such a maintaining spouse. What Mr Pilbrow suggests flies in the face of the judgment of Waite LJ, cited above. 25. We are not satisfied that the Judge had erred in the manner as stated in Grounds (2) and (3). Indeed, all the grounds of appeal on law against the lump sum order are not substantiated. The Judge's decision 26. While the factual matters mentioned in support of Ground (1) are mostly correct, the conclusion is not. The Judge's reasoning for ordering the lump sum can be found in the following part of his judgment:
27. After dealing with evidence on each of the factors mentioned in s 7(1) of the Matrimonial Proceedings and Property Ordinance, Cap 192, namely, their parties' needs, obligations and responsibilities, the standard of living before the breakdown of the marriage, their ages and duration of marriage, their physical and mental disabilities, their contributions, loss of benefit, and their conduct, the Judge awarded the lump sum to the wife. In particular, it should be mentioned that the Judge alluded to the wife's contribution of $500,000 being the loan to the husband for his investing into Fival. 28. The loans that the husband was able to raise are also mentioned in the judgment. They were connected with his employment history, and can be summarised as follows:
29. The Judge found that the husband's salary was not the sole benefit he enjoyed. There was the $8,000 a month paid to A. The husband lived rent-free on Mount Kellett. He was not required to make any contribution to the running expenses of the household. Utilities, servants' wages, food bills and so forth were all paid by one or other of Henry Fok's companies. So too were his bills at the Chinese Recreation Club. He had the use of a second-hand Jaguar, with its running expenses met by one of Henry Fok's companies. 30. Mr Clough, for the wife, draws our attention to the expenses involved for the various kinds of benefit enjoyed by the husband, as follows:
31. Mr Clough submits that his enjoyment from his family, including his salary and rent-free lodging on Mount Kellett comes to $1.8 million per annum. It is also submitted that the capital required to provide for such a sum would be in excess of $45,000,000. Due to the adjustment made to item (e) above, the enjoyment of the husband including his salary and all expenses borne by his family with a home on Mount Kellett rent and expense free comes to about $1.5 million instead. Using an interest rate of 6% per annum, which is close to what may normally be obtainable from banks in Hong Kong on large amount fixed deposits, the capital required would be around $25,000,000 to produce an annual sum of $1.5 million. This is not using the Duxbury calculation for assessing a capital sum necessary to produce an annuity that will stop at the end of the expected life of the spouse being maintained, which is derived from the judgment of Ackner LJ in Duxbury v Duxbury [1987] 1 FLR 7 at p 8F-G, as follows:
32. Duxbury also deals with the criterion by which an appellate court may interfere with the trial judge's discretion. Stephen Brown LJ said at 15C:
33. Although there does not appear to have been any specific evidence to support the ability of the husband to pay the sum of $5 million, we are not disposed to hold that the Judge erred in adopting the figure. We accept that the rough estimation based on the parties' standard of living during marriage, the benefit enjoyed by the husband and his ability to raise loans as the Judge described, as well as the husband's various expenses having been paid whenever the need arose, can justify the Judge's drawing the inference that the award of the lump sum of $5 million in favour of the wife was not beyond the resources of the husband based on a practicable point of view. While the Judge found that $17,500 per month was sufficient to cover the wife's personal expenses when varying the periodic payment, that figure has not included expenses to provide a lodging for her commensurate with her standard of living before the break-up of the marriage. What the Judge did was to take into account all the evidence before him and draw inferences from the unusual facts of this case where neither the husband nor the wife seems to have any appreciable tangible assets but both have been enjoying a very comfortable way of life. That is well justified on the basis of the judgment of Waite LJ cited above. Needless to say, the award is not plainly wrong. We do not think we should interfere. 34. In the premises, we are not satisfied that the Judge had erred in principle or on facts. The appeal against the lump sum award of $5 million must be dismissed. The costs order 35. Although the Judge found that the wife had not been entirely frank with the court regarding her financial matters, and she had not been readily forthcoming in complying with the court orders for disclosure, we are not persuaded by Mr Pilbrow that the Judge, who had been dealing with the eventual financial provisions for the parties after a 15-day trial, with full knowledge of what had gone through in these proceedings before the Family Court, had erred in the exercise of his discretion on costs. He had already taken into account the conduct of the proceedings by the wife to allow only one-quarter of her costs against the husband. This appeal is also dismissed. Costs of the appeal 36. We also make an order nisi for costs of the appeal to be borne by the husband.
Representation: Mr David Pilbrow, instructed by Messrs Yeung and Chan for the Petitioner (Appellant) Mr Neal Clough, instructed by Messrs Cheung Chan Chung, for the Respondent (Respondent) |
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