Judge says divorce rules favour wives

Britain's most senior female judge called yesterday for radical changes in the way the courts award legal costs in big-money divorce cases.

Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss was responding in a Court of Appeal judgment to criticism that current methods discriminate against husbands, who often end up paying the lion's share of lawyers' bills.

One of the main critics of the system, which favours the party that makes the money-settlement offer closest to the court's decision, is the deputy judge Nicholas Mostyn QC, who sits in the Family Division led by Dame Elizabeth. He has called for a "yardstick of equality" approach such as that given to the division of assets in a marriage.

Mr Mostyn, in a case held in private at the High Court, said the rules became unworkable when both parties had made a settlement offer. Dame Elizabeth said: "The existing procedures discriminate, he said, against husbands." Mr Mostyn said a safer method of allotting costs would be to make no order for costs, so that each party would pay their own.

Dame Elizabeth agreed with the judge's overall direction for the future but criticised his "cavalier approach" to an Act of Parliament.