Our marital home is haunted…
In a divorce case with modest assets, financial matters will often focus primarily upon the matrimonial home. In a situation where the desire is to stretch one home into enough capital to buy two, or where one party wishes to purchase the other’s share in the home, the value of that home can be very important.
Historically each party would seek their own informal valuations of the property from local estate agents. However this often would do little to resolve the matter as each party would often try to rely on the opinion of whichever valuer they could find to determine the most favourable price to suit their needs, resulting in two wide ranging values being presented to the Court.
To address this problem the usual procedure is now for the parties to seek the opinion of a Single Joint Expert to determine what value should be attributed to the home. Both parties instruct a single valuer and under the court’s procedural rules their ultimate duty is to the Court to provide an accurate valuation and not to either of the parties.
An amusing example of a party attempting to influence the joint expert’s valuation of the matrimonial home is in the Australian case of Descas (2013) FMCA Fam 69
In this case the wife wished to remain in the home and so hoped for a low valuation to limit the cost of buying out the husband’s share. The expert and the Court were not convinced to say the least by the wife’s assertion that the house was haunted and that therefore this should affect the value of the house.
Quite pertinently, the wife was questioned that if were the case then why did she want to stay in the home. The most amusing comment, however, goes to the valuer who stated “Exorcism is not one of our many speciality services and unless the ghost was held captive in the room to which we could not gain access, it must have been at lunch”.
Not surprisingly, the wife was found by the judge not to be a credible witness!
Partner
Family Law
PLancaster@LawBlacks.com
0113 227 9285
View profile
Paul Lancaster
