Is the law evolving?
For many years, family lawyers have advised clients that conduct during a marriage is unlikely to affect the financial outcome on divorce. The courts have consistently maintained that financial remedy proceedings are not intended to punish one spouse for poor behaviour.
However, the recent High Court decision in LP v MP [2025] EWFC 473 has prompted significant discussion about whether the law is evolving, particularly in cases involving coercive and controlling behaviour.
The background
The parties had been married for 12 years and had one child. The husband had accumulated substantial wealth before the marriage, while the wife made serious representations about her professional status that were later found to be untrue. Earlier Children Act proceedings had already resulted in findings that the wife had subjected the husband to:
- coercive and controlling behaviour;
- emotional and verbal abuse;
- physical violence;
- financial manipulation; and
- false allegations against him.
The court also considered evidence that the marriage itself had been founded on deception, with the husband being persuaded to provide substantial sums of money based on the wife’s repeated dishonesty.
The legal issue – should this behaviour affect the financial settlement?
The central question was whether this coercive and controlling behaviour should affect the financial settlement. Traditionally, the courts have applied a very high threshold before taking conduct into account under section 25(2)(g) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. The conduct must be so serious that it would be inequitable to disregard it.
Many previous cases have suggested that conduct should only influence the outcome where there is an obvious financial consequence or where the behaviour is truly exceptional.
The decision
Mr Justice Cusworth concluded that this was one of those exceptional cases. He accepted that the wife’s sustained coercive and controlling behaviour formed an important part of the overall assessment of fairness. Significantly, he observed that the absence of an easily measurable financial loss does not necessarily mean that abusive behaviour has had no financial impact.
As a result, the court departed from the usual principle of equal sharing. Rather than awarding the wife half of the matrimonial assets, the judge reduced her sharing entitlement by 40%, taking into account both her lack of meaningful contribution to the creation of wealth and what he described as her “deplorable conduct.” He also declined to assess her future needs by reference to the marital standard of living.
This judgment is important because it demonstrates a growing judicial recognition that coercive and controlling behaviour can have profound financial consequences, even where those consequences cannot easily be calculated.
The decision also contains an important observation that there is a real risk of unfairness if victims of violent or coercive controlling behaviour are prevented from relying on that abuse simply because its financial effects cannot be precisely quantified.
Does this mean conduct will now affect every divorce settlement?
No. The threshold remains exceptionally high, and LP v MP should not be viewed as opening the floodgates to conduct arguments in every financial remedy case. The facts were extraordinary, involving sustained deception, criminal offending, coercive control, physical violence, financial manipulation and false allegations over many years.
Most divorcing couples will still find that the court focuses on factors such as needs, resources, earning capacity and the welfare of any children, rather than the reasons why the relationship broke down.
For practitioners, LP v MP serves as an important reminder that allegations of coercive and controlling behaviour should not automatically be dismissed as irrelevant to financial remedy proceedings. Where the abuse has fundamentally distorted the financial relationship between the parties or has contributed to an unfair financial outcome, there may now be greater scope for arguing that it would be inequitable for the court to ignore that conduct.
Whether LP v MP represents a genuine shift in the law or simply an exceptional decision on exceptional facts will become clearer as future cases are decided. What is certain is that the judgment has reignited debate about the role of domestic abuse and coercive control in achieving fairness in financial remedy proceedings.
