AO v EO

First, the relevant pleadings, applications and orders, both in England and in Nigeria.

Secondly, from the wife, a Form E dated 13^th October 2025 and a statement dated 17^th October 2025, together with the exhibits to the statement.

Thirdly, from the husband, a Form E and a statement both dated 12^th September 2025, together with the exhibits to the statement.

Fourthly, an SJE report produced on 6^th October 2025 by Mr OA, a suitably qualified Nigerian lawyer.

The husband was born in Nigeria and is now aged 56. He has had a reasonably successful career in Nigeria and, although he says he has retired that career, he continues to be involved with business and property dealing in Nigeria (the extent of which is in dispute) and he told me he has spent a good portion of 2025 carrying out some studying in strategic and policy management in an institute in Nigeria. He has always been and remains a Nigerian citizen but also has indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom.

The wife was born in Nigeria and is now aged 48. She has always been a Nigerian citizen but became, in addition, a British Citizen in 2019 and continues to have dual nationality. She presented as an able and intelligent individual but has not had remunerative employment since the marriage and identifies herself as a homemaker and mother.

On 24^th November 2001 the parties celebrated their marriage in a religious ceremony at an Anglican Church in Nigeria, confirming the earlier formal marriage at a Registry Office in Nigeria on 14^th September 2001.

There have been three children of the marriage:(a) A daughter known as E who is now aged 23).

The family spent the early years of the marriage in Nigeria but from 2009 they owned a real property in England and they always visited England from time to time. Notwithstanding this, it is common ground that up to 2012 the family’s home and residence was in Nigeria.

In June 2012 however (when the two older children were aged 10 and 7 and G was not yet born – he was later born in England) they decided to relocate and move their main family home and residence and the children’s schooling from Nigeria to England. In immigration terms this move was facilitated by the taking out of an

It is common ground that the children were at school in England. E attended English schools up to A levels in 2019 before going to C University in the USA. After university, after a period in England, she has remained living and working in the USA. O attended English schools up to A levels in 2023 before also going to C University in the USA, which he still attends. G attended a school in Surrey from 2017 to 2021 and again from April 2024.

The family lived at various addresses in Surrey between 2012 and 2018 but eventually purchased (in 2016) and redeveloped a substantial house in Surrey in which they lived after the development works were completed in August 2018 (“the Surrey house”). I have seen photographs of the interior and exterior of this property and can see that this is a large and luxuriously fitted out family house (with floor area of about 7,000 square feet) with a good classical design and a tennis court and a swimming pool. The evidence I have heard and seen suggests that this property was purchased for £1,750,000 in 2016 and at least £4,000,000 was spent on the redevelopment project.

The marriage appears to have become more distant and troubled as the years passed between 2012 and 2021. One cause of this might have been the physical separation (the wife being predominantly in England and the husband predominantly in Nigeria) but, as the husband told me, togetherness is not necessarily a panacea for happiness. In any event by 2021 the wife was concerned about the state of the marriage and decided to spend more time with the husband in Nigeria, which she hoped would save the marriage. So in September 2021 she took G out of his school in England and entered him in an International School in Nigeria. A short lease was taken out on a five-bedroomed property in Lagos State, Nigeria and the husband and wife and G lived there. They did not, however, sell or even rent out the Surrey property and the wife continued to spend significant periods of time at this property in England after September 2021, albeit spending more time in Nigeria than England in this period. A table produced partly by Mr Scott and partly by me from source material, although it should not be regarded as being necessarily pinpoint accurate, broadly illustrates the position, showing where the wife was between 2020 and 2024:-

Unfortunately, togetherness did not save the marriage and by September 2023 the marriage had completely broken down and the wife demanded that the husband should vacate the rented property in Nigeria, which he did. The separation was acrimonious and unhappy for both parties. They have not lived together since.

Having heard and read the evidence, I am satisfied that the wife decided to return to England at this time, i.e. September 2023. What stopped her returning to England for good and immediately at that stage was that G had just started the school year at the school in Nigeria and did not have a place at a school in England. The wife was concerned that an immediate move might be emotionally and educationally disruptive to him. She did start laying plans for the return to England and the evidence shows that she was away from Nigeria (mostly in England) from 11^th October 2023 to 28^th October 2023, again from 17^th November 2023 to 3^rd December

On 6^th May 2024 the wife issued a petition for judicial separation in the High Court of Justice in the Ogun State of Nigeria . This petition asserted that she was domiciled in Nigeria but gave two residential addresses: the the Surrey house in England and the rented address in Nigeria. This petition had been through a number of hearings (which also dealt with finances) and had not been determined when, on 9^th January 2025, the wife issued a notice of discontinuance and the petition was formally dismissed on 4^th March 2025.

On 14^th January 2025 (the divorce portal shows that the divorce application was issued at 3.39 pm on 14^th January 2025) the wife issued a divorce application in England and Wales. The sole jurisdictional ground appearing on the application is

On 20^th January 2025 the wife issued a Form A in England and Wales seeking financial remedies. This was listed in the standard way for a First Appointment before me on 1^st August 2025.

On 5^th February 2025 the husband formally responded to the wife’s divorce application in England and Wales by asserting that there was no jurisdiction for this application because the wife was habitually resident in Nigeria and had only moved to England in March 2024 (i.e. she “has not resided in England for the last one year immediately before the application was made”) and that Nigeria was in any event the appropriate place for the divorce and financial remedies proceedings to take place. On 9^th May 2025 the divorce application was formally transferred to the Central Family Court and in due course I directed that the husband’s jurisdictional and forum non conveniens challenges to the divorce application would be considered at the First Appointment on 1^st August 2025.

On 7^th March 2025 the husband issued a divorce petition in the High Court of Justice in the Lagos State of Nigeria (case number IKD/***/2025).

On 30^th June 2025 DDJ Wootton made a Hemain injunction ordering that the husband should not progress the divorce petition in Nigeria pending the hearing before me on 1^st August 2025.

On 4^th July 2025 Hon. Justice A.F. Pokanu, sitting in the Lagos State court in Nigeria directed that the Nigerian divorce petition would be stayed sine die pending the jurisdiction decision in England. On 14^th July 2025 the husband issued a notice of appeal against this decision.

On 1^st August 2025 I made an order which included the following directions:-

The husband has complied with the Hemain injunction and the Nigerian divorce thus remains on hold.

The parties duly produced their witnesses statements: the husband’s dated 12^th September 2025 and the wife’s dated 17^th October 2025. The parties duly produced their Forms E: the husband’s dated 12^th September 2025 and the wife’s dated 13^th October 2025. The SJE report was duly produced on 6^th October 2025 by Mr O A, a suitably qualified Nigerian lawyer.

The PTR and final hearings have now taken place before me as directed. I heard evidence and submissions on the first two days of the final hearing and have had the third day to write this judgment.

Act 1973, section 5(2)(d). This section reads as follows:-

“The court shall have jurisdiction to entertain proceedings for divorce… if (and only if) on the date of the application:…..

the applicant is habitually resident in England and Wales and has resided there for at least one year immediately before the application was made”.

The wording of indent 5 was markedly more ambiguous than the wording of Domicile and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1973, section 5(2)(d) and I do not read Sir Jonathan’s judgment as his intending to resurrect the earlier pre-Brexit argument.

(specifically The Jurisdiction and Judgments (Family) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (S.I. 2019/519), reg. 1(1), Sch. para. 7(2)(b)). Prior to 1 March 2001 section 5(2) read:-

The court shall have jurisdiction to entertain proceedings for divorce or judicial separation if (and only if) either of the parties to the marriage:-

is domiciled in England and Wales on the date when the proceedings are begun ; or (b) was habitually resident in England and Wales through out the period of one year ending with that date.”

This was replaced by a different formulation in 2001. After 31 December 2020, the wording of section 5(2)(d) was changed to the version set out above. I agree with Mr Scott that the change in wording – written at a time when the Marinos versus Munro debate was well known – should properly be taken as a deliberate endorsement of the proposition that what was required for the year prior to the application was mere residence, not habitual residence. If Mr Ifere’s interpretation of this were correct, the old wording of section 5(2)(b) could simply have been revived.

The wife was habitually resident in England between 2012 and September 2021, then became habitually resident in Nigeria, but from the moment she arrived in England at 5.00 a.m. on 14^th January 2024 and onwards was habitually resident in England again.

Even during the period that she was habitually resident in Nigeria between September 2021 and 5.00 a.m. on 14^th January 2024 she continued to be resident (in addition) in England. I am satisfied that she was resident in both countries for this period.

Accordingly, applying my interpretation of the meaning of Domicile and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1973, section 5(2)(d), the wife has established the necessary pre-requisites for the courts of England and Wales to have jurisdiction to deal with her divorce application.

Even if Mr Ifere’s interpretation of section 5(2)(d) was correct (which I do not accept), then the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction to deal with the wife’s divorce application since she was habitually resident in England and Wales for one year plus a number of hours between 5.00 a.m. on 14^th January 2024 and 3.39 p.m. on 14^th January 2025.

I have no doubt that the wife regarded England as her home from 2012 onwards and (from 2018 onwards) regarded Surrey house as her home and her residence, hopefully forever but certainly for the foreseeable future. She had lovingly overseen its redevelopment. She had decorated it and fitted it out. She had installed her possessions in the house to create a home. Her children had lived there with her and went to school from there. It was a well-established and much-loved family house. She attended courses in Art History in England. When she visited or resided in Nigeria she did not either sell or rent out the property. Indeed this possibility appears not even to have been considered during the period 2021 to 2024 when she was mainly in Nigeria trying to save her marriage – instead she did regularly come back and live in the property during this period, for 133 days in 2022 and 143 days in 2023 and O remained as a boarder at his school in England and the wife spent a lot of time with him at home in England during school holidays. The period 2021 to 2024 seems to me a paradigm illustration of a person having two residences. She remained resident in England without a break, even when she was also resident in Nigeria. It follows that the wife has been continually resident in England since 2012.

In my view the wife had also established her habitual residence as being in England from 2012 onwards. She had made declarations broadly to this effect in the 2012 visa application and seen this through by establishing a home and the children’s schooling in England. Further, she established her medical care as being in England and this was important because she suffers from Type 2 Diabetes for which she was under the care in England of a General Practitioner, an endocrinologist and a haematologist. England was very much her permanent and habitual centre of interest.

In my view this changed in September 2021 when, motivated by wishing to save her marriage, the wife moved the centre of her interests to Nigeria. Most obviously, she moved G’s schooling from England to Nigeria. Since an individual can only have one place of habitual residence, my view is that from September 2021 the balance in her centre of interests had been tipped towards Nigeria.

If her marriage had not broken down it may have been that this situation would have continued in the long term, but when her marriage broke down in September 2023 it is clear to me on the evidence that the wife made the decision to return her centre of interests to England. I am satisfied that the only reason she delayed a permanent return to England was that she did not wish to disrupt G’s schooling. She did however spend a good deal of her time in England thereafter while her mother looked after G and she sought a school for G in England, which in due course paved the way for his return to his previous school in England. On the evidence I am satisfied that the moment the centre of her interests tipped back to England was when she arrived back in England at 5.00 a.m. on 14^th January 2024. This accords with the oral evidence before me. It also accords with a contemporaneous text message sent in February 2024 by the wife to the husband in which she said: “I have relocated…The timing of my relocation in January had to do with my health appointments and the finances running back and forth”. I entirely reject Mr Ifere’s suggestion that this was a manipulatively motivated message to help her case – I am satisfied that it was a genuine expression of her view at the time, made without even one eye on the dispute we are now having, and that it is of real significance in assessing the timing of her return to England. It follows that, when she issued her divorce application at 3.39 p.m. on 14^th January 2025, she had been both habitually resident and resident for more than one year.

In reaching these conclusions I do recognise that she did not bring G back to England until a little later. She went back to Nigeria on 23^rd February 2024 and returned to England with him on 19^th March 2024, after which he returned to his previous school. In my view these facts (heavily relied upon by Mr Ifere) do not materially detract from the conclusions I have reached above. Her centre of interest had changed in January 2024 and the purpose of her going back was merely to pick up G and bring him back with her. This fact does not change what was in her mind and what was her situation and intention.

1973, section 5(6) and Schedule 1, paragraph 9:-

Section 5(6) reads: “Schedule 1 to this Act shall have effect as to the cases in which matrimonial proceedings in England and Wales (whether the proceedings are in respect of the marriage of a man and a woman or the marriage of a same sex couple) are to be, or may be, stayed by the court where there are concurrent proceedings elsewhere in respect of the same marriage”.

Schedule 1, paragraph 9, reads:-

Where before the beginning of the trial or first trial in any matrimonial proceedings, other than proceedings governed by the Council Regulation, which are continuing in the court it appears to the court –

that any proceedings in respect of the marriage in question, or capable of affecting its validity or subsistence, are continuing in another jurisdiction; and

that the balance of fairness (including convenience) as between the parties to the marriage is such that it is appropriate for the proceedings in that jurisdiction to be disposed of before further steps are taken in proceedings in the court or in those proceedings so far as they consist of a particular kind of matrimonial proceedings, the court may then, if it thinks fit, order that the proceedings be stayed or, as the case may be, that those proceedings shall be stayed so far as they consist of proceedings of that kind.

In considering the balance of fairness and convenience for the purposes of subparagraph (1)(b) above, the court shall have regard to all the factors appearing to be relevant, including the convenience of witnesses and any delay or expense which may result from the proceedings being stayed, or not being stayed…”

Nigeria does not (whether clearly and distinctly or on balance) provide a more appropriate forum for the divorce and the financial applications than the courts of England and Wales. Indeed, on balance, the courts of England and Wales are the more appropriate forum.

I should not order a stay of the proceedings in England. Indeed, for avoidance of doubt I should continue the existing Hemain injunction until the divorce and financial remedies proceedings in England have been concluded.

This family undoubtedly has strong connections both with England and with Nigeria. In many ways their divorce and financial remedies applications could be conducted in either Nigeria or England. Both parties are familiar with both countries and (subject to expense) can travel in one direction or another without too much difficulty. A divorce could be obtained in either jurisdiction without great difficulty. Nothing that I have read suggests that there is any huge difference in the substantive financial remedies law.

There are, however, some potentially significant procedural differences (some of which are apparent from the SJE report and some of which became apparent to the wife in the course of the judicial separation litigation she pursued in Nigeria in 2024) between how the financial remedies proceedings would be handled in Nigeria as opposed to in England. Obtaining full and frank disclosure is more difficult in Nigeria as the toolbox of measures for enforcing it (for example questionnaires, schedules of deficiency, third party disclosure orders and the drawing of adverse inferences) is much more available in England than in Nigeria and given the husband’s reluctance to give clear and full answers to straightforward questions about his finances (which I saw very clearly myself even in the limited session of cross-examination we had in this jurisdictional hearing and which matched the wife’s experience in the 2024 judicial separation proceedings) this may well be an important aspect of such proceedings and this factor favours England. Further, MPS and LSPO orders are much less likely to be ordered in Nigeria and, given the husband’s decision in August 2025 to stop paying into the joint account £5,500 per month to help fund the upkeep of the Leatherhead property, this may be of importance. The SJE report made no reference to the existence of litigation loans in Nigerian financial remedies litigation and this may be another significant matter.

Despite the connections with both countries, in my view the natural forum for this dispute for this family is England. The family chose in 2012, by making their immigration application, to make England the centre of interest for the family as a whole. The children have largely been educated in English schools since then. Even when attending university in the USA the children have spent their vacations mostly in England and there is no evidence that any of them wish to move to live in Nigeria. When O had some mental health issues which caused him to break his university course in the USA, he spent some rehabilitative time in England doing an acting course at RADA. Both the wife and the children have taken British citizenship, and the husband has obtained indefinite leave to remain in England. The health needs of the family, including the husband, have been met in England – I note that the husband himself chose to have wrist surgery on the NHS in England in 2024, which he was only able to do because of the life choices made in 2012.

The most valuable asset which the family owns (the Surrey house, worth somewhere between £3,000,000 and £4,500,000) probably represents more than half of the parties’ overall assets. It is, of course, not determinative, but this is another pointer towards England as the appropriate forum. The court is familiar with valuing overseas assets within English proceedings and that does not present any particular problem. Further, it may well be that a significant part of the financial remedies determination will be an assessment of the wife’s needs, which will be referable to house prices and living costs in England.

It is clear from the SJE report that any property adjustment order or order for sale of property by the court in England in relation to property in Nigeria would not be enforced by the courts in Nigeria. In so far as this should be treated as a factor in the forum dispute, this is neutralised, in my view adequately, by the wife’s clear statement to me that in no circumstances would she be seeking such an order. She told me that her claim would consist only of a property adjustment order of the Surrey house plus (possibly) a lump sum order or periodical payments order in personam against the husband. The SJE report suggests that such orders would, in theory anyway, be enforceable against the husband in Nigeria.

Mr Ifere urged me to attach significant importance to the fact that there are four pieces of civil litigation which the wife has brought in Nigeria and which are ongoing. He says that they are, in reality, a part of the matrimonial dispute and financial remedies proceedings in Nigeria would best be able to incorporate the implications of this litigation. They are quite complex and are fairly fully described in the letter dated 28^th January 2026 from the wife’s Nigerian lawyers, Babalakin & Co. Two of the pieces of litigation relate to the sale by the husband, or by a company controlled by him, of a plot of land in Ikoyi, Lagos, Nigeria. The wife’s case is that the husband has forged certain documents to secure this sale and has also lied to her and to the English court about how much money he received on this sale and what he has done with it. The third-party buyer of the land is involved in this litigation. This litigation seems to be at a preliminary stage and, whilst I am certainly not making findings on these matters, I can comment that the evidence I heard suggests that the wife has an arguable case here at least. The other two pieces of litigation relate to two companies in which the wife believes the husband has behaved unlawfully to remove her shareholdings or remove the value of her shareholdings. I don’t have enough information to make even a preliminary comment on these claims. I can see that, prima facie, the existence of this litigation is a factor pointing to the divorce and financial remedies litigation being more conveniently conducted in Nigeria alongside these other pieces of litigation. I have been persuaded, however, by Mr Scott that this factor should not outweigh the other factors to which I have already referred and, more particularly, the wife’s main purpose in pursuing these pieces of litigation was to preserve assets in Nigeria from dissipation and that the financial remedies court in England should be able to function perfectly well alongside the extant litigation in Nigeria. He suggested that the court could be fully informed by the wife’s Nigerian lawyers as to where this litigation has got to and the most likely outcome of the financial remedies proceedings in England be that the value of any claims being pursued in Nigeria would be given up on an off-setting basis against a portion or the whole of the husband’s interest in the Leatherhead property. In the end I have been persuaded by Mr Scott that the existence of the civil litigation does not significantly impeded the prosecution of the financial remedies litigation.

discussion as to whether the Final Order should or should not await the outcome of the financial remedies proceedings – I have no view on this issue at this stage.

Directions on the Financial Remedies Proceedings