A Consent Order can be challenged and Set Aside if your spouse Misrepresented the truth to you before you agreed to sign the agreement or, worse yet, acted Fraudulently. . This is called Fraud & Misrepresentation’ and it is the second of four ways in which a Consent Order can be challenged.
2. Fraud & Misrepresentation
This can also come under the non-disclosure heading, but clearly fraud is more extreme and it will result in the original Consent Order being set aside. In other words – cancelled – revoked – binned!
This type of misrepresentation can be unintentional and accidental. For example, I had a case where the husband had disclosed the value of his pensions. Later it transpired that the valuation was wrong; it was a genuine mistake made by him (actually by his mortgage provider). The parties jointly applied to court to have the original Consent Order and Pension Sharing Order set aside.
Fraud is even more extreme. I had a case some years ago where the husband forged 24 months worth of HSBC bank statements. He did a wonderful job of it too as they were produced in colour and meticulously detailed. Unfortunately for him though, he had a falling out with his new girlfriend and she decided to pay me a visit with the real statements. He came out of that case very bruised – I managed to get 90% of the matrimonial assets for my client plus the Porsche that he had ‘forgotten‘ to tell the court about! I on the other hand ended up with a very happy client.
There are altogether four separate reasons for challenging a Consent Order. These are:
- Non-disclosure of relevant facts
- Fraud & Misrepresentation (see above)
- Supervising events & significant change in circumstance; or
- Undue influence
I have dealt with each of these separately and by clicking the highlighted links, you can start to get into the details of each category and see whether it fits your own circumstances. If you think it does, then perhaps it’s worth contacting us for more specific advice.
Cyrus Mansouri
