Money alert: Divorcing? don’t hide assets

There was good news for divorcing wives this week after the Supreme Court ruled that husbands could not hide assets in companies.

In the case of Prest v Petrodel Resource, the husband – a Nigerian oil tycoon – had claimed that three offshore companies were independent from him. Therefore valuable properties owned by them couldn’t be part of their £17.5m divorce settlement.

Lawyer Alison Hawes of Irwin Mitchell, said: “The ruling means that business people cannot deliberately ‘hide’ their assets in businesses and corporate structures to protect them in future in the event of a divorce.”

It was a coincidence that a day after the ruling, Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng announced their separation. Even if he was tempted to hide assets, their split won’t be affected by the ruling as Murdoch is a US citizen.