Maintenance Pending Suit Can Include Costs

A v A (Maintenance Pending Suit: Provision for Legal Fees) (TLR 14 November FD)

Although there is no direct authority on the point, the words of s22 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, requiring periodical payments to be reasonable and for the maintenance of the payee, were wide enough to empower the court to include an element towards the payee’s costs of the suit when ordering maintenance pending suit. Maintenance is not confined to daily living expenses in their most literal and restricted sense, legal fees incurred in the course of litigation were such recurring expenses of an income nature. The wife, with no other means of paying her legal fees, simply could not make any progress with the dominating issue in her life if she could not pay her lawyers; like a roof and food, it was her most pressing and urgent need, and in a time of high overheads legal representatives could not be expected to carry on unpaid. Accordingly the judge granted the wife’s application for monthly periodical payments of maintenance pending suit, to include some specifically allocated for the payment of her legal fees, on her undertaking to pay that sum to her solicitors on account of the costs of the proceedings.