EUPillar Jane Elizabeth Marinos v Nikolas Lykourgos Marinos [2007] EWHC 2047 (Fam)

Summary

The parties to the divorce proceedings were a Greek husband and an English wife. They married in 1992 in England, and lived here till 2002 when they moved to Greece. They had two children, who were both born in England. The family remained in Greece from 2002 until 31 January 2007 when the wife returned to England with the two children. That said, it should be noted that, from July 2003 onwards, the wife was either working or studying in England even though the matrimonial home remained in Greece. On 1st February, the wife issued a petition for divorce in England. The husband challenged the jurisdiction of the English court by submitting that both parties were habitually resident in Greece. He initiate parallel proceedings in Greece. Mr Justice Munby held that the English wife was habitually resident in England from September 2004, and as a result the English court had jurisdiction as being the first seised within the meaning of Regulation No 2201/2003. In particular, Mr Justice Munby held: “81 The question to be determined is the location of the habitual centre of the wife's interests. The difficulty is presented by the fact that whereas the centre of many of her interests was indubitably this country, the centre of at least some of her interests was equally obviously Greece. On the one hand the centre of her employment and education interests was plainly in this country, the land of her birth, the country to which she retained the emotional commitment which she never had to Greece, and the country with which she retained all the other links identified by Mr Castle. As against that, the centre of her emotional, personal and family interests was equally plainly Greece, the country where her children lived — the children who not surprisingly were, in her own words, “the centre of my life.” 82 At the end of the day all these various factors, some pointing in one direction, some in the other, have to be balanced and evaluated with a view to identifying the habitual centre of the wife's interests. One cannot, as it seems to me, say a priori that any one factor is of more or less intrinsic weight than another. How the balance comes to be struck must depend upon all the factors in issue in the particular case, the task for the judge being to attribute to each of those factors the weight which in his estimation attaches to it in the particular circumstances of the particular case. In one case the factor of employment may weigh more heavily than in another superficially similar case. In another case the location of the matrimonial home may carry particular weight. 83 Acknowledging that the factors which are in play in this case point very sharply to starkly opposing conclusions, and recognising that they are, when all is said and done, very evenly balanced, I am nonetheless persuaded that the overall balance points to this country as being the habitual centre of the wife's interests. Evaluating all those interests together and in the round, the centre of gravity is located in this country and not in Greece. If the wife was a mother she was also a career woman, and if her children were in Greece both her current career and her planned future career were in this country. 84 I find therefore that the wife was both resident and habitually resident in this country at all material times from (say) September 2004 onwards. On this basis she was entitled to petition in this country when she issued her petition on 1 February 2007.” [81-84]