Short answer: yes. Meet the granddaughter of Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian.
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Pont v. Pont
(California Court of Appeal) – Held that a former husband was entitled to an attorney fee award when he prevailed in his former wife’s lawsuit alleging that he siphoned some of the marriage’s community assets. Fee awards were authorized under a stipulated divorce judgment if the parties ended up back in court.
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Valuing a company established prior to the marriage
It is a common scenario that one of the main assets of a marriage is a business that was acquired or established by one of the parties prior to the marriage. When the marriage breaks down the court will often order that the value of the business that accumulated during the marriage should be shared between the parties. Accordingly, the court must decide two matters in relation to the business: how much is it worth, and what proportion of that sum accumulated prior to the marriage?
These were the central questions in the recent Court of Appeal case Martin v Martin.
Now, there is an awful lot going on in Martin v Martin (as is often the case in big money financial remedy cases, especially when they are concerned with business assets), and I am just going to scratch the surface here. If you want all the detail, you can read the full judgment, all 147 paragraphs of it, at the link below. I’m just going to concentrate on those two central questions, dealing with them as simply (and hopefully understandably!) as I can. I have also taken some small liberties with the case, for the sake of clarity.
Extremely briefly, the relevant facts in the case were that the husband started the business in 1978, the parties began living together in 1986, were married in 1989, separated in 2015, and divorce proceedings ensued. (I told you it would be brief!)
In 2017 the wife’s financial remedies application was determined by Mr Justice Mostyn. He awarded the wife a half share of the marital wealth, which included the value of the husband’s company (and other assets), less its value as at the date the parties started living together.
To value the company, Mr Justice Mostyn used its net value, which he considered was equivalent to cash, as “the only difference between it (i.e. the company) and its cash proceeds is … the sound of the auctioneer’s hammer”. In other words, the value of the company was “the estimate of what it will sell for now”.
To determine the value of the company as at the date that the parties began cohabiting Mr Justice Mostyn applied a ‘straight line apportionment’ to the present value of the company, from the date that it was first incorporated in 1978 to the date of the hearing. To understand this, I refer the reader to paragraph 19 of Mr Justice Mostyn’s judgment (which you can find here), which sets out the method in graphical form.
The wife appealed against the decision, to the Court of Appeal, and the husband cross-appealed. Both appeals were in relation to how Mr Justice Mostyn had approached those two central questions in relation to the company. The wife argued that he was wrong to use a straight line apportionment, and the husband argued that he had wrongly treated the value he ascribed to the company as equivalent to cash and, as a result, had awarded the wife an unfair proportion of the ‘non-risk’ assets.
The leading judgment of the Court of Appeal was given by Lord Justice Moylan.
As to the question of the valuation of the company, he found that the husband had not shown that Mr Justice Mostyn’s factual determination of the value of the company was wrong. However, Mr Justice Mostyn was wrong when he said that the “only difference between [the company] and its cash proceeds is … the sound of the auctioneer’s hammer”. As a result of this conclusion Mr Justice Mostyn failed to consider whether his proposed award achieved “a fair division of both the copper-bottomed assets and the illiquid and risk laden assets”. There was no evidence that the sum awarded to the wife could be extracted from the company within the timescale that Mr Justice Mostyn envisaged. Lord Justice Moylan therefore increased the period for the payment of that sum, from one year to four years.
As to the question of the value of the company as at the date that the parties began to cohabit, Lord Justice Moylan found that Mr Justice Mostyn was entitled to adopt the straight line apportionment approach. That approach may be ‘broad brush’, but it saved the time and expense of getting an accountancy valuation. He also found that it “resonates with fairness”, because it “takes an overarching view of the weight to be attributed to the husband’s contributions to the business throughout its existence.”
Accordingly, Lord Justice Moylan dismissed the wife’s appeal, and only allowed the husband’s appeal to the extent set out above.
Lords Justices Coulson and Simon gave concurring judgments.
If you wish to, you can read the full Court of Appeal judgment here.
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Author: John Bolch
The Tactile Dome
Getting the feel of the Exploratorium
San Francisco’s Exploratorium is an immense (and immensely popular) hands-on science museum. Exhibits cover the usual range of subjects—electricity, physics, optics, biology, and so on—but with a degree of interactive friendliness that’s rare even in the best science museums (and I’ve seen quite a few). Almost everything is designed to be touched, played with, and experimented on—even by young children, whose destructive impulses know no bounds.
Although I visited the Exploratorium a number of times during the years I lived in San Francisco, there was one exhibit I’d never experienced but always been curious about: something called the Tactile Dome. This is an exhibit for which you must make an advance reservation (and pay extra), and I had never had the foresight to call ahead before visiting the museum to see if there was an open slot. But on one visit when a same-day opening came up, I immediately signed up—after listening to a short speech on all the medical and psychological conditions that would preclude a safe visit and consenting to the non-refundability of the ticket.
A Touching Experience
The Tactile Dome is a smallish geodesic dome within the museum whose stated purpose is to explore the sense of touch—taking the “hands-on” principle to its logical extreme. Inside the dome is a series of oddly shaped chambers lined with a variety of materials. The chambers are completely dark, so visitors must navigate through them—climbing, crawling, sliding, and squeezing—using only the sense of touch for guidance. In an anteroom the eight or so people who have reservations at a given time remove their shoes and any objects that might fall out of pockets and get lost. (They are quite strict about their “no-extraneous-stuff” policy; I wasn’t even allowed to take a ballpoint pen in with me, even though it was capped and sealed in a zippered pocket behind a Velcro flap. I thought that prohibition was a bit silly, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.) Then, in smaller groups (in my case, a group of one), you proceed into the dark chambers.
A complete trip through the dome takes anywhere from five to ten minutes, and guests are spaced far enough apart that they won’t run into each other. The inside of the dome is not a maze; every chamber has just one entrance and one exit. An attendant in the anteroom monitors your progress by listening to the sounds picked up by microphones positioned throughout the dome. If a visitor gets stuck or panicked, a verbal request for help is all that’s needed; every spot in the dome is immediately reachable by hidden access doors. The intercom (which the other visitors waiting in the anteroom can also hear) serves another purpose, too: to discourage, shall we say, extracurricular activities that the dark and solitary environment might suggest. Each group gets to go through the dome several times during their visit.
As I made my way through the dome, I found that even though sight was not available, it was not a purely tactile experience. Each time I entered a new chamber, I could tell something about its size and shape from the sounds I heard, along with the combination of temperature and airflow I could feel. Even smell played a part—the characteristic scents of carpet, wood, plastics, and the smelly socks of the person who crawled through the dome before me all contributed to a mental image. And that effect was a bit eerie—even though I couldn’t see anything, I had the distinct sensation of visual images of the rooms constructed from the other sensory data I was gathering. That impression alone made the experience worthwhile for me.
Copp-ing a Feel
The Tactile Dome was designed by Dr. August F. Coppola (brother of director Francis Ford Coppola) in 1971 and has been in use ever since. Not only in the choices of materials in the dome, but in its overall design and marketing, it’s definitely showing its age—or perhaps I should say, “revealing” its age. (Note that the photo above is from the early 2000s; the dome is now a more stylish black and has better signs, though the basic design is still the same.) By an interesting coincidence, the Tactile Dome is not the only dome-shaped, building-within-a-building attraction in San Francisco that was constructed in the 1970s and designed to be experienced in total darkness. Audium, located across town, shares all these attributes but was designed to explore the sense of hearing rather than touch. If there’s also a Smell-O-Dome lurking somewhere in the city, I’d just as soon not know.
Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on June 1, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on July 5, 2004.
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Author: Joe Kissell
Benjamin Franklin Day
Benjamin Franklin was born on this day in 1706. He was, among many other things, a scientist, an inventor, an author, and a diplomat. He led a fascinating life, full of discovery and profound thought, and is certainly among my heroes. (Like all heroes, he was also flawed, but by today’s standards he was practically a saint.) Today, as I take my child to Benjamin Franklin Elementary School (no kidding), I’ll be thinking about the accomplishments and insights of this beloved figure from American history.
Image credit: After Joseph Duplessis [Public domain]
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Author: Joe Kissell
The New Mom Uniform of Park Slope
It involves clompy ol’ clogs and a mysterious strap.
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In a Children’s Theater Program, Drama Over a Peanut Allergy
The conflict over accommodating a child’s allergy turned into a legal battle that highlights the isolation that people with food allergies often face.
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Our Upcoming Family Trip
A picture of the apartment where we’ll be staying
Right now I was supposed to be getting ready and packing my bags for a trip to the airport. A few months ago I booked tickets for a vacation for myself. I was to fly in to Frankfurt Hahn Airport in Germany tomorrow, take a bus to Luxembourg and stay there for the weekend at a a hostel, after which I was going to continue by bus to Paris, stay
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Author: Penniless Parenting
Budgeting for Baby: Spending Tips for All Your Baby Needs
While I’m not currently in the baby raising mode, with four children, I went through that multiple times and I know that there are many potential expenses and also many more ways in which you can be frugal. Here are some tips to keep down the costs for your baby from a reader.
According to a report from the USDA, the average middle-income family with kids will spend between $12,000 and $14,000
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Author: Penniless Parenting
Child ordered to be returned to Turkey despite apparently strong defences
On the face of it, the father’s two objections to the mother’s application for the return of their son to Turkey in the recent case K (A child : Hague Child Abduction Convention) seemed to have some merit. However, the court still ordered the return.
The background facts of the case were, briefly, that the mother is Turkish and the father has dual Turkish/British nationality. The parties met in Turkey in 2006 and married in 2007. Their son, ‘K’, was born in Turkey in 2007 and was eleven years old when the mother’s application was heard by Mr Darren Howe QC in the High Court last July (as with many child abduction cases, the report of the judgment was only published much later (last week on Bailii in this instance), possibly to ensure that the return had taken place before the publication).
The parents first separated in 2016, but there was then a reconciliation. The father left Turkey in October 2016 and relocated to England. There was some dispute as to whether he relocated with the intention of the remaining family members joining him, but this was not a matter upon which the judge had to adjudicate.
The mother and K remained in Turkey. By April 2017 the marriage had finally broken down.
In September 2017 the mother arranged for a paternal family member to collect K from Turkey and take him to England for an agreed holiday with his father. K flew to England on the 9th of September and was due to be with the father for a week. That was then extended for a second week, and K was to return by no later than the 23rd of September.
I will not go into the detail of what happened next, but suffice to say that K was not returned to Turkey. In March 2018 the mother made an application under the Hague Convention for his summary return (she claimed that she had not made the application earlier, as it was not until January 2018 that she knew of the Convention).
The father accepted that K was habitually resident in Turkey prior to September 2017, and that his retention of K in England was wrongful within the meaning of the Convention. However, he raised two defences to the mother’s application:
- That the mother had acquiesced in the father’s retention of K in England. In particular, the father relied upon an email sent to him by the mother on the 23rd of September 2017 in which she said, amongst other things, that if K really wanted to stay in England, that he could, and that “I will allow you to take K.”
- That K objected to a return to Turkey, and had attained an age and degree of maturity at which it is appropriate to take account of his views (this latter point was accepted by both parents). The court had appointed a Cafcass officer to ascertain K’s views, and the officer reported that K indicated that he did not want to return to Turkey, giving as his reasons the political situation in Turkey, that he would get a better job in England and that the schools were better here.
All in all, it might appear at first glance that these defences were quite strong. However, the judge did not find them to be made out.
As to the acquiescence defence, he found that the mother had not at any time acquiesced in the father’s retention of K in England. The context of the mother’s email had to be considered. At that time she had not been allowed by the father to speak with K on the telephone. She did not know of her rights under the Convention and was desperately putting forward proposals in an attempt to arrange telephone contact. In any event there was never a concluded agreement regarding K remaining in England, as there never was any contact.
As to K’s wishes, the judge accepted the Cafcass officer’s view that he had been influenced by his father. However, more than that he found that K’s presentation of his wishes amounted to no more than a preference or a wish, and did not reach the threshold of an objection.
Accordingly, the judge made an order directing that K be returned to Turkey forthwith.
The message, I think, from this case is clear. If you are going to succeed with a defence to a Hague Convention application, then your defence really needs to be watertight. The rationale behind the Convention is that a child should normally be returned to its ‘home’ country, and it is for the courts of that country to make decisions about future arrangements for that child. That is what should happen, and only in clear cases will a return not be ordered.
You can read the full judgment here.
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Author: John Bolch