Sue me, sue you...
Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 11:25 am
A little schadenfreude for you...
A divorcing barrister couple spent £100,000 fighting over their £1million home before it was declared to be worthless because it has Grenfell-style cladding.
The debt-laden couple spent the huge sum on legal fees to claim their respective stakes in the London flat.
But their courtroom battle ended in disaster when the family home was found to be fitted with cladding outlawed because of the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. This gave it a grand worth of exactly zero pounds.
A judge ended the costly fight with a ruling that has given the couple – both themselves high-earning lawyers – three years to deal with the cladding problem before they settle up with each other.
Judge Edward Hess said: ‘It is very sad for the objective observer to witness two educated, intelligent and resourceful individuals being so unable to compromise their differences that their collective activities risk mutual self-destruction.’
He added: ‘As the story unfolds it can be seen that the parties fell victim to the long shadows of the awful Grenfell Tower disaster.’
The couple, who married in 2007 and have two children, broke up in 2019 and began their struggle over their ‘stretched’ resources.
The wife, 44, who earns £155,000 a year working for a City bank, aimed to keep the flat in a ‘striking multi-storey block’ near the financial district for herself and her children.
She agreed to pay her 51-year-old husband, who earns £69,000 a year as a Government lawyer, £300,000 for his share of the £1.1million flat.
The wife was preparing to raise a fresh mortgage of £300,000 to pay the husband for his share of their flat.