Discuss

Surrey couple's divorce payments raised after 15 years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-38891663

I can't understand it myself - although it must be legal.

How can someone married for 13 years but divorced for 15 years (two years longer than they were married) - have to pay her increased monthly maintenance because she lost her money through bad investments?

The bloke has since remarried and has another family to look out for.

Seems madness to me - even the judge predicts there will be another court order on this!

Not much point in getting married if things like this happen 15 years later through no fault of his own.

If the bloke had blown all his money instead of her, do you think the court would ask her to pay him monthly maintenance 15 years later?

No, me neither.

I think Sluffy has covered it there so there's not much more to be said. Ridiculous.

So much for sexual equality! Completely wrong decision imo. Divorce should mean divorce, end of. I read about a bloke who was divorced and after remarrying he won the lottery and his first wife pursued him through the court for a percentage of his winnings. 

Looks like a pretty one sided system to me.

Obviously we have to assume there's more to this if it genuinely impacts on rights. We don't know the real story whereas the judge will have heard both sides so the decision is probably based on something the sensationalist news article has omitted to tell us.

Perhaps he hid most of their wealth or lied to the judge at the time of the divorce or was instrumental in the failed property deals or in some other way damaged her earnings potential afterwards? 

On the other hand the judge may be a fundamentalist Christian "marriage is for life" evangelist intent on punishing divorcees.

Without the facts it's difficult to say whether the decision is fair or not, but the judge had much better info than we have.