Read what our Surrey Consultant, Lewis Hulatt, of Major Family Law, divorce and family law specialist, says in today’s blog:
In bringing you my topical musings about disclosure after the offshore tax scandal’, instead of referencing ‘Offshore Banking Business’ by The Members, a 1970s punk group containing both Nick Cash and Chris Payne, I went for something ‘shadier’.
E L James’ phenomenally-successful book ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ involves the super-rich Christian having an ‘unconventional’ relationship with Anastasia. She is Steele, he is Grey and the theme is ‘colourful’. Grey insists on a non-disclosure agreement and gives Anastasia a contract with Rules, Limits and Appendices. I wonder where clauses on Dominant-Submissive Relations would be in the ‘Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents’…
So far as I know, E L James gave no credit to The Members, but might have Christian Grey been inspired by Chris Payne? Is the crack of the whip or the slap of the paddle ‘the Sound of the Suburbs’?
There was also instructional Member ‘Nick Cash’.
The disclosure of tax-saving schemes has been an embarrassment to people in the public eye. Certainty for both the individual and the state was a key features of fair taxation, as Adam Smith wrote in 1776. The alternative is that the Revenue get to decide how much they fancy taking and most people would find that more objectionable than the rich using strict rules to minimise their tax. I bet Mr Grey would prefer it that way on both counts.
Whilst we have a movement towards ‘transparency’ with the Prime Minister publishing his tax returns, in the celebrity threesome affair of ‘PJS’, the identities remain secret in England at time of writing. Most of the world is allowed to know who did what to whom, but we in England are not to be told thanks to an injunction.
Personally, I do not subscribe to Heat, OK! or the Daily Mail, such is my lack of interest in celebrity gossip, but for only the English to be denied knowledge of such trivia feels ‘wrong’ in principle. Imagine ‘Fifty Shades’ not being published here.
Couples can include ‘privacy’ clauses in Nuptial Agreements to protect their reputations, but the Agreements are based on full knowledge being shared.
In family law, if there is not ‘full and frank disclosure’ of your financial circumstances, any deal you reach might be re-opened. Better to explain an uncomfortable fact than have the settlement at risk.
The Members’ latest release? ‘One Law’.