International Divorce - Case Study

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Wife and Husband are both resident overseas in Dubai and Singapore respectively. Although neither husband nor wife are habitually resident in the UK, the Wife considers herself to be domiciled here and has not changed her domicile. The jurisdiction of England and Wales can be used for the issue of the divorce application. 

We issue a divorce application for the wife in the UK as she wishes to secure the UK as the jurisdiction for dealing with the divorce due to the favourable financial remedy claims available to her in this country. Husband does not wish to participate in the proceedings and is evasive. 

Following the issue of the divorce application, the Husband continues to fail to respond. Therefore, we arranged service out of the jurisdiction on the Husband through the Foreign Process Section of the Royal Courts of Justice. Service was effected and although service took many months to be effected, the application was eventually served and the divorce application continued smoothly to decree absolute.  

We regularly deal with international divorces where one or both parties are habitually resident abroad and service issues are complex. In one matter, we served a husband in circumstances where Wife believed he was living in India but he was traced to and served in India and on another, our client was resident out of the jurisdiction on cruise ships and Husband after evaded service for over a year, responded to say he was living in a tree house in South America and would never be located so the divorce could never proceed. That gave us sufficient evidence that he was aware of the divorce proceedings and we obtained decree absolute for our client.

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