Dividing complex wealth in high-net-worth divorce

Involving a bitcoin fortune, complex business structures, the London Lionesses football club, and overseas tax liabilities arising from the husband’s status as an ‘Accidental American’, the recently reported case of Culligan v Culligan [2025] EWFC 1 typifies the complexities of High Net Worth divorce proceedings. While the couple agreed in principle that their assets should be divided equally after a long marriage, they could not agree on how best to value their net assets or who should receive what to achieve that outcome.

Case insight

When the case was heard by Mr Justice McDonald over four days in November 2024, the parties were in their early sixties, had three adult children and had had a forty-year marriage, during which time they had amassed a fortune worth £27.3m. By any estimation, their assets placed them in the category of High-Net-Worth individuals whose financial resources, when considered by the court in the exercise of its powers of distribution under s25 Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, exceeded their individual needs. 

While the foundation of the marital wealth was acknowledged to be the proceeds of the husband’s £2.5m lawsuit against F & C in 2011—used to fund a jointly owned investment property portfolio—and his 2012 purchase of £10,000 in bitcoin, which rose to approximately £20m by 2017, neither party argued for a departure from equal sharing. Both accepted that no individual contribution during the marriage justified an unequal division of the assets.

Both parties acknowledged that the bitcoin had been sold off at times to fund various financial projects, in particular Mr Culligan’s blockchain company, SETL Ltd, which was acquired by Colendi in 2022, and Mrs Culligan’s company, ELSA which was set up to purchase the London City Lionesses football club in 2019. 

As well as their business interests, Mr and Mrs Culligan’s family home, with 9 bedrooms, seven bathrooms, several reception rooms and a home cinema was valued as being worth £7m at the time of the hearing, and was central to the parties’ dispute. 

Mrs Culligan sought to have the house transferred to her to keep as part of her share of the assets. Mr Culligan wanted to have the property sold and the proceeds divided equally. 

Mrs Culligan is widely reported as having ‘won’ her case because she was successful in persuading the court to award her the family home as part of her 50 percent of the asset division. Mr Culligan, on the other hand, retained a larger portion of his Colendi shareholdings, valued at £19m based on expert evidence accepted by the court, as well as the investment properties allocated to his side.

The judge acknowledged the challenge in the case, common to High-Net-Worth divorce cases, whereby close to half of the total assets available for distribution were illiquid, carrying an element of risk and uncertainty in their value. 

These were primarily Mr Culligan’s shareholdings in Colendi. There was also added complexity in relation to the way in which Mr Culligan’s shares were held in trust, meaning that there was some doubt as to if, how or when Mrs Culligan may be able to realise the value in any shares transferred to her as part of her award.

As in most cases, even for the highly wealthy, the judge identified the need for housing as the primary capital need of each party. 

While he rejected the suggestion that Mrs Culligan needed, as a single person, to continue living in the 9-bedroom former family home, he acknowledged her ‘emotional connection’ to the property which the parties had purchased in 1993. 

Fortunately for Mrs Culligan, Mr Culligan had purchased a property in the USA in 2021 and had confirmed his intention to relocate there, so the Judge was able to arrive at the conclusion that he could allow Mrs Culligan to keep the family home. The point of Mr Culligan’s housing need was therefore capable of being met from other assets. 

Overall, however, the judge’s rationale for allowing Mrs Culligan to keep more of the ‘safer’ assets—such as the family home and cash savings—and Mr Culligan to receive a greater share of the riskier, illiquid business shareholdings, was rooted in Mr Culligan’s unilateral financial decisions. He had placed his shareholdings into a more illiquid structure without consulting Mrs Culligan. 

Asset division in High-Net-Worth divorce cases

The Culligan case illustrates many of the features, and challenges, involved in dividing the accumulated assets in High-Net-Worth divorces which prevent them from settling by agreement and lead to litigation.

Business assets are very often illiquid and have inherent market risk in their value and give rise to arguments about whether the party who receives them should do so at a ‘discount’ when compared to the safer, ‘copper-bottomed’ assets such as property and cash. 

There are almost always tax liabilities on the future disposal of assets to be allowed for, as in this case in more than one jurisdiction. The nature of Mr Culligan’s business, starting out with a relatively modest bitcoin purchase, and setting up in the fintech industry, is arguably the epitome of the high risk / high reward strategy which at times can see an asset lose its value just as quickly as it has been acquired.

However, one of the issues the lawyers and the courts have to grapple with is the need to fix on a value for each of the assets at the date of the hearing. The court cannot look into the future and speculate on what an asset may be worth; it can only distribute them based on the agreed or determined value at the date of the decision-making. 

Despite the debate about who won or lost in this case, there is a sting in the tail. The case was clearly acrimonious with allegations about bad conduct and non-disclosure, largely being made by Mrs Culligan against her husband, which added considerably to the issues the court needed to hear and the amount of court time it took to decide them. 

The Judge was critical of most of the allegations Mrs Culligan made which were found to be without merit, and both parties were described as being unimpressive witnesses. 

The result in costs was that Mrs Culligan ended up paying close to £1m in her own legal costs and 20 percent of Mr Culligan’s costs. Mrs Culligan’s application for anonymity in the case reporting was also refused. The case serves as a timely reminder of the advantages of the parties being willing to engage in non-court family dispute resolution options such as arbitration, collaborative practice or lawyer-led mediation due to the reduced costs and greater privacy they afford.