Farmer's ex-wife loses £80m inheritance-tax battle

Telegraph

02-07-2025

A sheep farmer's ex-wife has lost a Supreme Court fight over £80 million he gave her to avoid potentially paying inheritance tax.
In 2017, Clive Standish, a 70-year-old farmer and former chief financial officer of UBS, transferred assets to his wife, Anna, with a plan to place the money in an offshore trust for the benefit of their two children.
But when she began divorce proceedings after 15 years of marriage in 2020, the assets remained in her name.
The marital assets at the time of the split were £132 million, almost all of which had grown from the £57.3 million fortune that Mr Standish brought into the marriage.
In 2023, a High Court judge awarded Mr Standish £87.6 million and Mrs Standish £45 million.
Mr Standish appealed against the decision, arguing that most of the money, including the £80 million of assets that he transferred, was earned before the marriage.
Last year, the Court of Appeal ruled Mrs Standish's share should be reduced to £25 million, representing her contribution having raised their children and looked after the home.
Mrs Standish, 56, subsequently went to the Supreme Court in a bid to have the ruling overturned and reclaim the £20 million.
On Wednesday, five of England and Wales' most senior judges upheld the decision, saying that putting the £80 million into her name to avoid tax did not turn it into 'matrimonial assets'.
'Tax planning schemes to save tax, involving transfers of assets from one spouse to another, are commonplace,' said the court in its ruling.
'The problem for the wife is that there is nothing to show that, over time, the parties were treating the 2017 assets as shared between them.
'Rather, the transfer was in pursuance of a scheme to negate inheritance tax and it was for the benefit exclusively of the children.
'The parties' intention was that the £80 million should not be retained by the wife.'
Mr Standish retired in 2007, living off the profits of a £28 million sheep farm in Australia. Meanwhile, the couple enjoyed life at Moundsmere Manor, an 18-bedroom mansion set in 83 acres near the Hampshire village of Preston Candover, on the site of an original manor once owned by Henry VIII.
Tim Bishop KC, for the husband, had said during the Court of Appeal hearing that in June 2004 the husband was worth £57.3 million, while the wife 'has no significant pre-marital wealth'.
Mr Standish moved to Australia in 1976 before moving back to England with his family in 2010.
This situation left him open to a potentially huge inheritance-tax hit when prospective changes were announced in 2016. These affected anyone with a British domicile of origin returning to the UK from a country they had made their new permanent home.
In the face of this, he 'commenced a process to shield his property from [inheritance tax]' by 'transferring his assets to the wife to hold for a period and for the wife then to settle the transferred assets into a trust'.
'The husband made the transfers in March 2017, but the wife failed to transfer the assets into trust by the time the marriage ran into problems in 2019 and then broke down finally in 2020,' the barrister said.
Richard Todd KC, for Mrs Standish, argued that the £80 million was the wife's property and everything else apart from the sheep farm ought to be equally split, leaving each of the former spouses with £56.3 million.
'Not shared on an equal basis'
But delivering the Supreme Court ruling, Lord Burrows and Lord Stephens agreed with the Appeal Court and dismissed the appeal.
'There was no matrimonialisation of the 2017 assets because, first, the transfer was to save tax and, secondly, it was for the benefit of the children not the wife,' they said.
'The 2017 assets were not, therefore, being treated by the husband and wife for any period of time as an asset that was shared between them.'
They added: 'Transfers of capital assets with the intention of saving tax do not, without some further compelling evidence, establish that the parties are treating the capital asset as shared between them.
'The 2017 assets comprise, first, the husband's pre-marital assets and, secondly, earnings that the husband made in the years 2004-2007 to which the wife contributed by being the home-maker and child carer during those years.
'It is not in dispute that the latter constitutes matrimonial property. That should be shared on an equal basis.
'The Court of Appeal assessed the latter, i.e. the matrimonial property, as comprising 25 per cent of the £80 million, so that that 25 per cent was to be shared equally, and the former, i.e. the pre-marital assets/non-matrimonial property, as comprising 75 per cent of the £80 million.'