Court rejects Husband's attempt to wipe out divorce debts

A businesswoman has fought off a court bid by her ex-husband to wipe out a £350,000 divorce debt.

If Alexander McRoberts, from Datchet - former boss of a company with a reported multi-million pound turnover - had beaten his ex-wife's £349,000 divorce claim, it could have opened the floodgates for discharged bankrupts seeking to get rid of their matrimonial debts.

Mr Justice Hildyard rejected the case at High Court on Thursday last week, after Mandy McRoberts' lawyers argued her ex-husband's financial prospects are not so hopeless and it would not be equitable to release him from his debt.

The judge said Mr McRoberts' tax returns indicated that, while he had received very little salary, his travel and subsistence expenses had come to more than £100,000 in a year. The court was handed pages from the businessman's passport "showing stamps for destinations, such as the Maldives at Christmas-time, which do not appear to be in countries where he said he had been doing business."

The judge said: "These indications do not encourage the conclusion that Mr McRoberts has done everything he can to discharge his obligations to his ex-wife; they do encourage a sense that his finances may not be entirely transparent."

While accepting the "curtain had come down" on Mr McRoberts' business ventures and that his income stream had been "turned off", the judge said that did not mean his finances might not improve in the future.

Mr McRoberts had also argued there was a risk of his ex-wife "harassing" him if his debt to her remained on his shoulders. The judge accepted Mrs McRoberts' arguments that wiping out her ex-husband's debt to her would cause her "irremediable prejudice" and would not be a "fair outcome".

When Mr McRoberts, 54, and his company director ex-wife split in 2003, she was handed their former matrimonial home and he agreed to pay her £450,000 by instalments - which should all have been paid by the end of March 2009.

However, with interest, he still owes almost £350,000 to his ex-wife, a director of a chauffeur-driven car hire company who now lives in a £500,000 home in Newton Court, Old Windsor.

Mr McRoberts was declared bankrupt in September 2006 and his ex-wife was registered as one of his creditors.

He asked the judge to rule that his matrimonial debt did not "survive" the discharge of his bankruptcy in September 2007. His barrister, Simon Calhaem, argued that Mrs McRoberts is now more comfortably off than her ex-husband and that his "financial position is such as to make any chance of a payment of £349,000 impossible now, or in the foreseeable future".

However, Byron James, for Mrs McRoberts, warned the judge that a ruling in his favour could create a legal loophole ripe for exploitation. Rejecting Mr McRoberts' case, the judge said there was "no special or particular reason" why the "ordinary or default position" - that lump sums rewarded by the divorce courts are not released by a discharge from bankruptcy - should not apply.

The businessman was ordered to pay his ex-wife's legal costs of almost £9,000.