Divorce court finds England had jurisdiction after wife’s January 2024 return

The Central Family Court held it could hear a wife's divorce application because she had been habitually resident in England and Wales for more than a year before applying, while proceedings were also under way in Nigeria.

In AO v EO [2026] EWFC 30 (B), His Honour Judge Edward Hess gave a written judgment in the Central Family Court, handed down by email on 6 February 2026. The case is anonymised: the judgment refers to the parties as the wife (AO) and the husband (EO).

Background

Both parties were born in Nigeria and married there in 2001. The husband is a Nigerian citizen with indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom. The wife is a Nigerian citizen who became a British citizen in 2019.

In June 2012 the family moved their main home and the children's schooling from Nigeria to England, facilitated by an Investor Tier One visa. They later bought and redeveloped a large house in Surrey. In September 2021 the wife, hoping to save the marriage, took the youngest child out of his English school and entered him in a school in Nigeria, and the couple lived in a rented property there. She kept the Surrey house and continued to spend significant periods in it. The marriage broke down in September 2023.

The wife arrived back in England at 5.00 a.m. on 14 January 2024. She issued her divorce application at 3.39 p.m. on 14 January 2025. The jurisdiction and forum issues were heard over three days, from 4 to 6 February 2026.

The questions

First, did the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction? That depended on whether the wife had been habitually resident and resident in England and Wales for one year before applying. Second, would Nigeria be a more appropriate forum, so that the English proceedings should be stayed under section 5(6) and Schedule 1, paragraph 9 of the Domicile and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1973?

The decision on jurisdiction

The judge held that the court had jurisdiction. He found the wife had been continually resident in England since 2012, even when she was also resident in Nigeria, and described 2021 to 2024 as "a paradigm illustration of a person having two residences".

Habitual residence is different, because a person can have only one. The judge found hers was in England from 2012. In September 2021 she moved the centre of her interests to Nigeria, most obviously by moving her youngest child's schooling there. When the marriage broke down in September 2023 she decided to return her centre of interests to England, and the judge found it moved back when she arrived in England on 14 January 2024.

He relied on her oral evidence and on a February 2024 text message to the husband saying "I have relocated". He rejected the suggestion that the message was written to help her case.

The wife returned to Nigeria on 23 February 2024 and came back to England with the youngest child on 19 March 2024. The judge said this did not materially detract from his conclusion, because her centre of interests had changed in January 2024 and the trip was to collect the child.

The forum question

The judge then turned to whether Nigeria was the more appropriate forum. Under Schedule 1, paragraph 9, a stay may be ordered where proceedings are continuing in another jurisdiction and the balance of fairness, including convenience, makes it appropriate for those proceedings to be disposed of first.

Sources

• AO v EO [2026] EWFC 30 (B), Central Family Court, judgment of HHJ Edward Hess handed down 6 February 2026: https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewfc/b/2026/30