A man has won his appeal against a decision that his former wife should be given most of the equity in their home after it was shown that the full value of the property wasn’t put before the judge at the original hearing.

The judge was led to believe that the house was worth about £250,000. He ordered that most of the equity from the sale should be awarded to the wife to help her buy a flat for herself and the couple’s autistic son. 

Within six months of the order an offer was made on the house for £285,000 – a full £35,000 more than the court had been told it was worth. The wife maintained that the increase in value was offset against a similar rise in the cost of the flat she wanted to buy.

However, the husband then discovered that the increase in value was not down to inflation over the intervening six months. He found marketing details from an estate agent dated only 15 days after the hearing which set the asking price at £285,000.

The Court of Appeal ruled that if the original trial judge had known this he would only have allocated the wife the amount she needed to buy her flat and would have awarded the rest of the equity to the husband.

The husband’s appeal was therefore successful.