In an ultra-high net worth divorce, wealth rarely sits still. It moves across borders, settles into trusts, folds itself into business structures and, sometimes, disappears from view entirely. Two recent cases heard in the English courts have sharpened the legal profession’s focus on what happens when that concealment is discovered, and the consequences, financial and reputational, can follow a spouse for decades.
What Ultra-High Net Worth Divorce Cases Reveal About Hidden Wealth
In MK v SK, Mr Justice Peel considered the wife’s allegation that her husband had failed to disclose assets held within a trust structure. The court agreed. According to a case report published by the Financial Remedies Journal, the husband’s shareholding in the Group was held via Holdings Ltd, and the shares in Holdings Ltd were placed in the first A Trust, a structural arrangement the court found had been used to place assets beyond the reach of proper disclosure. The court concluded that the husband had enjoyed access to undisclosed assets, whether within that trust, some other structure, or held by individuals on his behalf.
The ruling is a reminder that English courts do not simply accept the face value of formal legal ownership. They look to the reality of a party’s resources and their practical access to wealth. For family offices, trustees and advisers working with very wealthy clients, the case draws attention to the risks of informal arrangements and the importance of clear governance and documentation that can withstand future scrutiny.
The second case attracted headlines of a different kind. Helliwell v Entwistle involved a short, three-year marriage preceded by a prenuptial agreement. In that agreement, both parties stated they had fully and frankly disclosed their financial resources. The wife had not. She had failed to disclose assets amounting to 73% of her wealth, including her business assets and a 50% interest in a property. The Court of Appeal found the non-disclosure had been deliberate and sent the matter back to the High Court to assess the husband’s needs.
The case matters beyond its particular facts. It makes clear that non-disclosure is not a gendered issue, and that the disclosure obligation is not confined to divorce proceedings themselves. An assertion of full disclosure in a prenuptial agreement carries exactly the same legal weight. Prenup disclosure is often provided in the form of a schedule or summary document (less granular than what is required during financial remedy proceedings) and where that falls short, the protection the agreement was designed to provide may be fatally undermined.
A Pattern Going Back Years: the Gohill and Sharland Cases
These recent rulings build on a line of authority stretching back over a decade. In Gohill, decided by the Supreme Court in 2015, Mrs Gohill succeeded in persuading the court to set aside a settlement order made 11 years earlier, after evidence emerged of her former husband’s concealed wealth and money-laundering activity. Mr Gohill had by then been sentenced to 10 years in prison. The final determination of Mrs Gohill’s financial claims did not occur until May 2025, some 20 years after the separation, when the court was at last able to identify which assets were matrimonial property untainted by her former husband’s criminal conduct. She received the entirety of those untainted assets.
At the same time, the Supreme Court reinforced the same principle in Sharland. Mr Sharland, described in proceedings as a successful software entrepreneur, had misrepresented the value of his shareholding in his software business. The court found that the precise impact of that misrepresentation on the financial outcome was difficult to calculate with certainty, but that uncertainty was no bar to overturning the original order. The court’s message was deliberate: a dishonest spouse cannot benefit from the ambiguity their own concealment creates.
Taken together, these cases establish that settlements tainted by material non-disclosure can be reopened many years after they were considered final. Complexity is not an excuse for concealment.
The Challenge for the Financially Weaker Spouse
For the wealthier party, the message is unambiguous: the duty of disclosure applies however and wherever assets are held. For the other spouse, the situation is more difficult. Most are not forensic accountants, and even commercially sophisticated individuals may lack the visibility into family wealth structures needed to evaluate whether their partner’s disclosure is complete. In longer marriages, financial expertise can become concentrated almost entirely in one spouse’s hands.
That asymmetry is compounded by timing. Allegations of non-disclosure are typically raised at the very outset of proceedings, before any evidence exists to support or refute them. A spouse arriving at an initial meeting with deep mistrust and fears about hidden assets needs advisers who will test those suspicions rigorously, not simply review the disclosure provided and move on.
Early, probing scrutiny (the kind that identifies what is missing, not just what has been produced) is what the law, and the client, requires. For those advising in an ultra-high net worth divorce, the cases of 2024 and 2025 have left the standard in no doubt. Firms such as Hughes Fowler Carruthers operate at this level of complexity, and the courts have made plain what the consequences of falling short now look like. Practitioners and clients seeking further guidance on their obligations can consult resources from The Law Society on financial remedy proceedings.