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Last week, a judge was asked to rule over how a lottery win should be divided following a divorce in what is believed to be the first judgement of its kind in England and Wales. To cut a long story short, the couple in question were battling over £500,000 that the wife had won in 1999. She did not inform her husband of her winnings at the time, though he later became aware of them and, in 2006, filed for a divorce in the UK as a result. His wife filed in the couple’s native Columbia, however, and the divorce was finalised within this jurisdiction leaving the husband with no share of her winnings. In 2010, the husband filed for financial relief following an overseas divorce. The matter was later heard by Sir Justice Mostyn of the High Court. Within his judgement – which was published last week – Mostyn declared that the wife’s winnings could not be considered a matrimonial asset, claiming that the fact that the winning ticket had been bought from the couple’s communal funds was irrelevant due, largely, to the diminutive cost of the ticket. He further declared, however, that the property that the wife had purchased with her winnings was matrimonial property and that the husband should be awarded £85,000 as a result.  Several legal professionals have since criticised this judgement, not least Amanda Melton, a partner at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin LLP. Writing for the Telegraph, Melton has suggested that this ruling encourages spouses to keep any windfall to themselves rather than using it to provide for their family. In some ways, this assessment makes a great deal of sense. If a spouse was to either win or inherent a substantial amount of money and they were unhappy with their marriage, they may well keep this to themselves in the knowledge that it will assist them greatly following a divorce. Alternatively, though, a happily married spouse is likely to use at least some of this money in order to assist their partner and family. After all, if a couple genuinely planned to spend the rest of their life together, then what would one partner have to lose through paying off their mortgage? It is logical to conclude, then, that whilst there is some validity to Melton’s assessment, it cannot be concluded that all, or even the majority of, spouses will conceal assets from their partners. Some will, of course, but as we already knew following Grant Thornton’s recent survey into divorce patterns in the UK, it is not uncommon for one spouse to conceal their true worth from their partner, and Mostyn’s judgement is unlikely to affect this. What this judgement may do, however, is prompt an unhappy spouse that suddenly finds themselves in receipt of a substantial windfall will be more inclined to file for a divorce and refrain from spending their new found wealth on what could later be deemed to be a matrimonial asset. This ruling does not discourage all spouses from sharing their wealth; it merely discourages unhappy – and possibly greedy – husbands and wives from sharing their wealth.