The court has powers to prevent a spouse from evading his obligations by divesting property and income to third party or by transferring it out of the country. If the disposition is about to be made, the court has power to stop that transaction or if the disposition has already been made, the court has power to set aside that transaction.
Applications are made within existing family proceedings the Matrimonial Causes Act. The Applicant has to show that the spouse at fault is about to make a disposition or to transfer out of the jurisdiction or otherwise deal with a property with the intention of defeating a claim for financial relief. In the case of a disposition already made, there is an additional requirement for the Applicant to show that had the transaction not taken place, the Applicant would have been granted some kind of financial relief or a different type of financial relief if such was already granted.
The court is mainly concerned with the subjective intention of the party at fault and it has to be proven that it was the main, not necessarily the whole, intention to prevent the Applicant form benefitting from such assets being disposed. Such intention can be difficult to prove and the circumstances of the parties has to be carefully analysed. Indeed, such behaviour by the party at fault can be regarded as bad conduct and will inevitably contribute towards the courts ultimate decision on a final award.
In practical and real terms, it may not be cost effective to pursue a court order as described above to recover an asset that has already been disposed of and most people will consider off-setting the economic value of the lost benefit against another asset, if there were such assets within the matrimonial pot.
As soon as you suspect that your spouse’s intentions are not quite right, take immediate action.