A British judge refused to allow a woman to divorce her husband after concluding that the couple’s arguments were a normal part of married life.
Tini Owens, 65, tried to end her longstanding union to Hugh Owens after she had an affair with another man and the marriage apparently turned sour.
However, her husband, a 78-year-old millionaire mushroom farmer from Worcestershire, said he had forgiven her and wanted them to remain together in old age “to enjoy 30-odd years of shared experiences”.
In a highly unusual ruling, Judge Robin Tolson QC sided with Mr Owens. He said the allegations made against him by his wife – including that he criticized her in front of their housekeeper and once had a row with her at Cancun airport – were “exaggerated” and “minor altercations of a kind to be expected in a marriage”.
The ruling effectively leaves Mrs Owens a “locked in” wife, according to her lawyers, who say she is stuck in a loveless marriage.
Yesterday Mrs Owens asked the Court of Appeal to overturn the judge’s original decision, which was made last year.
The wealthy couple, who married in 1978, have built up a £5-million-a-year business and own four houses in England, Wales and France.
Mrs Owens said that her husband’s supposedly intolerable conduct also included making her pick up bits of cardboard in the garden; “a silent meal” in a local pub; and “stinging remarks” fired at her during another meal with a friend.
The judge described these allegations as “exaggerated”, “at best flimsy”, “minor altercations of a kind to be expected in a marriage” and “an exercise in scraping the barrel”.
Mrs Owens had her affair with a man named Ted Olive between November 2012 and August 2013. She moved out of the marital home in 2015. If her appeal fails, current English law allows for a couple who have been separated for a minimum of five years to divorce automatically, meaning she could in theory divorce her husband in 2020.