The England and Wales Family Court (EWFC) has awarded a formerly high-earning wife 54 per cent of the couple's GBP13-million matrimonial assets, because she had ‘made a relationship-generated sacrifice of her high earning career in investment finance to devote herself to supporting her husband's career choices and providing child-care for her children’.

The couple married in the US in 2006 and moved to the UK later that year while both pursued careers in international finance. Two children were born in 2008 and 2011. In 2008, the wife took maternity leave. This being the year of the financial crash, she was made redundant by the bank she worked for and never worked in the field again, devoting herself to the child-care role instead.

When the marriage broke down in 2021, part of the wife's financial remedy claim was based on compensation for her lost earnings in taking up this child-care role. The EWFC noted that a series of judgments over the past 15 years have demonstrated the England and Wales courts' wariness of free-standing awards for compensation for lost career prospects...