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Dame Jennifer Roberts, who has died aged 71, was a High Court judge who in 2014 heard the largest marital finance case ever to come before the courts in England.
The Cooper-Hohn vs Hohn case, a dispute between British hedge fund manager Sir Christopher Hohn and his American ex-wife Jamie Cooper-Hohn, has been on trial for 10 days.
In an interim ruling issued on 7 July 2014, Justice Roberts recorded that “assets available for distribution have a value of at least $1.3 billion”.
As if the size of the assets, the complex structures in which they were kept and the twisted legal principles at play weren’t enough, she found herself having to face, in a courtroom packed with journalists who were watching her every word, a media dispute and Sir Christopher Hohn on what could and could not be reported.
His confidential judgment in the main case, delivered on 12 December 2014, was a colossal work, running to 105 pages.
He found that the marital estate amounted to $1.5 billion (£870 million) and awarded his wife the then record sum of $530 million (£330 million) or 36% of the estate, but not the 50% that the wife had requested. .
He justified the move away from equal division of assets by reference to the then-existing doctrine of “special contribution” by money-makers, which allowed the court, in its pursuit of fairness, to give credit for the creation of truly exceptional wealth or extraordinary.
Unusually for the time, Mrs Justice Roberts refused to anonymize her judgment and allowed the full details of her factual findings to be reported.
In family law circles the ruling was considered a tour de force, a model of clarity, lucidity and, above all, fairness and justice.
What the world didn’t know when she embarked on the case was that she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Although she was told that she would have to undergo surgery and start chemotherapy immediately, she refused to do so until the hearing of her case had concluded.
When he began writing the sentence during the summer holidays of 2014, he had already begun that brutal treatment.
He continued to participate in the Family Division hearing cases throughout his treatment, scheduling medical appointments before the start of his day in court.
Even though the professional and personal pressures on her were enormous, no one ever heard a word of self-pity or even complaint pass her lips.
Jennifer Mary Halden, universally known as Jenny, was born on March 3, 1953 in Southampton, the eldest of three children.
He spent his early years in Sudan, his parents meeting and marrying in Khartoum at the end of World War II.
One of Jenny’s younger brothers, Flying Officer Ian Halden, was killed while flying a Phantom fighter plane in a crash in the Falkland Islands in 1991.
After leaving school she worked briefly in London, modeling and working at Island Records.
In her thirties, with two young daughters, she enrolled at the University of Southampton to study law, combining her studies with the role of wife and mother.
He holds a bachelor’s degree.
Subsequently, in 2017, that University would award her an Honorary Doctorate in Letters.
Dame Jennifer Roberts at the University of Southampton
In 1987 Jennifer Roberts practiced law and was called in 1988 by the Inner Temple. She obtained a pupillage at the firm of Roger Gray QC in the Queen Elizabeth Building and was duly offered the tenancy.
It didn’t take her long to develop an impressive practice in both financial and children’s work. She subsequently focused on high-value wedding finance cases, taking on Silk in 2009.
In the bedrooms her grace, elegance, good looks and perfect manners earned her the affectionate nickname “Duchess”. In common with most highly successful lawyers, she had a drive for hard work, excellent judgment and complete mastery of the facts of her cases.
What set her apart from other famous people, however, was her unflappable manner and her attentiveness to her clients, qualities that inspired complete confidence in the litigants, often tested by their experiences of divorce.
A judicial colleague, Sir Nicholas Francis, recalled acting as barrister in a case in Essex in which Jenny Roberts was his opponent, and saying something “irritably irritable” in the corridor outside the courtroom.
His response was not to threaten to file a complaint with the section chief, or even to slam his pen on the table. Instead, “she stopped, adjusted her Ferragamo scarf, brushed an imaginary speck of dust off her light Chanel jacket, looked me in the eye and smiled.”
Francis concluded that, like so many of Jenny Roberts’ opponents, “she learned more in those 10 seconds than I learned in 100 beatings from people less civilized than her.”
Jenny Roberts became a recorder on the Western circuit in 2000, after just 12 years at the Bar. Although she was a family specialist, she was capable of dealing with criminal work and she also produced some impressive written judgments in a number of civil cases.
As a deputy High Court judge since 2011, he has produced numerous insightful judgments, including a fact-finding decision in a private law case involving children, running to 189 paragraphs, delivered shortly before his elevation to the High Court bench . At the judges’ meeting of 29 April 2014 (to which she had been invited) it was speculated whether, in light of Judge Charles’ recent transfer to the Queen’s Bench Division, the task of writing the Proustian-length sentences “on which the reputation of the Division depends ” she would get over it.
It didn’t disappoint. His career has gone from strength to strength, with an impressive output of massive sentences, which have rarely been successfully challenged. Upon her appointment as a High Court judge on 3 June 2014, she was immediately labeled by the then President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, as a “money judge”. She threw her straight into the deep end, assigning her Cooper-Hohn vs. Hohn.
Another notable case was Christina Estrada vs. Walid Juffali in 2016. This was a request for financial help following a foreign divorce. It had to be decided by referring to the criterion of the “reasonable needs” of the appellant alone, as there was no marital accumulation of assets to be equally distributed. Among her annual needs, his wife had requested an extraordinary sum of £1 million each year for clothes and accessories.
Lady Justice Roberts recorded, in a literary style reminiscent of Cicero, that this included “£40,000 for a new fur coat every year; £83,000 for 15 new cocktail dresses each year; £80,000 for one special dress per year; £109,000 for seven couture dresses per year; £197,000 for two sets of white tie jewelery each year; £79,000 in cocktail dress jewelery sets each year; £58,000 for two luxury bags each year; £23,000 for six casual bags each year; and £35,000 on ten clutches each year.”
With an understatement this statement was dismissed as “inflated and unnecessary in the context of adequate provision for his reasonable needs”. Even so, Justice Roberts found that Ms Estrada’s annual income requirement amounted to £2.5 million, capitalized to the tune of £44 million.
As early as the 1930s Judge McCardie was said to have unlimited knowledge of the price of women’s clothing, but it may safely be said that in that sphere he was entirely eclipsed by Justice Roberts.
Away from sentencing, Mrs. Justice Roberts has been a frequent liaison judge of the Family Division of the Western Circuit. You also chaired the Financial Needs Working Group of the Family Justice Council which produced, with the aim of harmonizing practice in England and Wales, the definitive guide to “financial needs” following divorce and the dissolution of civil partnerships.
Madam Justice Roberts was diagnosed with terminal cancer in September 2023. Over the next nine months she continued to work above and beyond the call of duty, handling court matters remotely even when prevented from sitting in court due to the punishing demands your treatment and the progression of your disease.
In 1971 she married Richard Roberts, who died in 2004. She is survived by their two daughters.
Dame Jennifer Roberts, born 3 March 1953, died 10 June 2024.
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