In an ultra-high net worth divorce, the question of what a spouse actually owns, as opposed to what they formally declare, has never been under sharper judicial scrutiny. Wealth held across multiple jurisdictions, threaded through trust structures, family offices and illiquid business interests, creates a landscape in which the duty of full and frank financial disclosure is both more pressing and, for some, more tempting to ignore.
The legal position has been settled for decades. Every divorcing spouse carries an identical obligation to disclose their assets and resources fully during financial remedy proceedings, regardless of the scale or complexity of that wealth. What has shifted in recent years is the vigour with which courts are prepared to unpick structures designed, whether deliberately or incidentally, to obscure the picture.
What the Courts Now Demand in Ultra-High Net Worth Divorce Cases
The case of MK v SK [2026] EWFC 28 illustrates the point with clarity. Mr Justice Peel considered allegations made by a wife that her husband had failed to disclose assets held within a trust structure, following a marriage that had lasted 19 years, according to Paradigm Family Law. The court agreed. It concluded that the husband had concealed wealth and that he enjoyed access to undisclosed assets, whether held in a trust, some other structure, or by individuals acting on his behalf.
The principle the court applied is one of substance over form. Formal legal title and registered ownership matter less than the reality of a party’s access to resources. For wealthy individuals and the advisers, trustees and family offices who support them, this casts a long shadow over informal arrangements that have never been stress-tested against disclosure requirements. Strong governance and clear documentation are no longer optional considerations; they are practical necessities.
A second case from early 2026 adds further weight. In DR v ES and Ors (Further LSPO Application) [2026] EWFC 15, Mr Justice MacDonald granted a Legal Services Payment Order of £560,120 to cover both historic and future legal costs in financial remedy proceedings. The order underlines a wider truth about these disputes: the financially weaker party in a complex, high-value case can find themselves structurally disadvantaged from the outset, unable to fund the forensic scrutiny that disclosure demands without court intervention.
Non-Disclosure Before the Marriage Begins
The disclosure obligation does not begin at the point of separation. The case of Helliwell v Entwistle, decided last year, made that plain. The parties had entered into a prenuptial agreement before a marriage that lasted three years. In it, both stated that they had fully and frankly disclosed their financial positions. The wife had not. She had failed to disclose assets amounting to 73% of her total wealth, including her business assets and a 50% interest in property. The Court of Appeal found the non-disclosure was deliberate and returned the case to the High Court to assess the husband’s needs.
The implications stretch well beyond this particular couple. Prenuptial agreements typically require only a high-level schedule of assets, far less granular than the disclosure demanded during divorce proceedings. When that summary is combined with a formal assertion of completeness, any shortfall can fatally undermine the agreement’s protective purpose. With pre- and postnuptial agreements growing in popularity, the costs of getting this wrong at the start of a marriage may only become clearer on the way out of one.
The longer arc of these cases reaches back to the Supreme Court’s decision in Gohill in 2015, where Mrs Gohill succeeded in setting aside a settlement order made eleven years earlier, after evidence emerged of her former husband’s concealed wealth and money-laundering activity. Mr Gohill had been sentenced to ten years in prison. The final determination of Mrs Gohill’s financial claims did not occur until May 2025, some twenty years after separation, when the court was at last able to identify which assets were matrimonial property and untainted by criminal conduct. She received the entirety of those identified untainted assets.
Around the same time, in Sharland, the Supreme Court overturned an order after a husband, a software entrepreneur, had misrepresented the value of his shareholding in a software business. The court was explicit: a dishonest spouse cannot benefit from the uncertainty their own concealment creates, even where the precise impact of that non-disclosure is difficult to quantify.
For those advising wealthy clients, the message threading through all of these decisions is consistent. Complexity in wealth planning is no defence for incomplete disclosure. Orders can be reopened years, even decades, after they were thought final. The reputational damage of being found to have concealed assets in proceedings can outlast any financial saving that concealment was intended to achieve.
For the financially weaker spouse in these cases, the challenge is different in kind. Most arrive without forensic accounting knowledge or visibility into how family wealth is actually structured. Early, rigorous scrutiny of what has been disclosed, and active probing for what has not, is essential work for their advisers from the very first meeting. Hughes Fowler Carruthers notes that merely reviewing the disclosure provided is not enough: the task is to identify what is missing.