If family law has a recurring theme, it is this: the financial remedy process works best when both parties engage honestly, promptly and proportionately. When one spouse turns the proceedings into a prolonged, combative campaign, the court’s patience wears thin — and the outcome can shift dramatically.
RKV v JWC [2025] EWFC 430 (B) is a stark illustration of litigation conduct at its very worst. Despite a net asset base of around £4 million, the husband’s behaviour throughout the litigation was, in the judge’s words, “absolutely appalling”. The judgment reads as a reminder — and a warning — that litigation conduct is not a mere sideshow. It can affect credibility, disclosure findings, and, in extreme cases, even the final division of wealth.
A Case That Should Have Been Simple — But Wasn’t
On paper, this was a straightforward case: a long marriage, a comfortable lifestyle, and an asset base that called for a broadly equal division.
But the husband’s conduct derailed everything.
The judgment records:
- Persistent failures to disclose documents
- Late evidence, often served only after repeated orders
- Aggressive, obstructive correspondence
- Missing deadlines without justification
- Attempts to relitigate settled issues
- Unfounded allegations, adding time and cost
- A general refusal to cooperate unless forced by the court
This was not a one-off lapse in compliance — it was a pattern.
As the judge noted, the husband “treated the court process with contempt,” driving up the wife’s costs and obscuring the real financial picture.
What Litigation Conduct Actually Means
Litigation conduct is not simply “being difficult.”
It must be:
- serious,
- unreasonable, and
- have financial consequences for the other party.
In financial remedy work, the court distinguishes between:
- Bad behaviour during the marriage — not usually relevant
and
- Bad behaviour within the litigation itself — can have costs and fairness consequences.
Where conduct impedes the court’s ability to determine the true financial position, it becomes relevant to both costs and the overall award.
That is exactly what happened in RKV v JWC.
The Outcome: Equality Survived — But Not Because the Husband Deserved It
Despite the husband’s conduct, the court still upheld an equal division of the £4 million asset base.
Why?
Because the wife did not argue that the husband should be penalised via a departure from equality. Instead, she sought — and received — a substantial costs order to reflect the damage his conduct had caused.
Had she pushed for a distribution adjustment, the judge signalled the door was open.
Indeed, the judgment makes clear that in an appropriate case, litigation conduct can justify a shift away from 50/50.
The reasoning is simple:
If one party forces the other to incur enormous avoidable expense, a costs order alone may not put them back in the position they should have been.
The Real Lesson: Costs Are Not the Court’s Only Tool
Courts are increasingly willing to:
- Draw adverse inferences where disclosure is obstructed
- Accept the evidence of one party where the other is unreliable
- Penalise parties with costs orders running into the hundreds of thousands
- Depart from equality where conduct has financial consequence
- Condense hearings or bypass unnecessary litigation steps to prevent manipulation of process
In other words, litigation conduct now functions as a material factor in the fairness assessment, not a footnote.
RKV v JWC is part of a growing line of cases — including OG v AG, MRU v ECR, OO v QQ and Azarmi-Movafagh v Bassiri-Dezfouli — demonstrating that parties who abuse the process will not succeed.
Closing Thoughts
The message from RKV v JWC is clear: Litigation conduct isn’t just about manners — it’s about justice.
A spouse who obstructs disclosure, ignores court orders, or inflames proceedings may find that the supposed “tactics” cost them far more in the end. The Family Court will not allow one party’s misconduct to distort the process or drain the other’s resources unchecked.
In a jurisdiction built on fairness, transparency and cooperation, RKV v JWC is a strong reminder that how parties behave in litigation can be almost as important as what they own.
