Woman wins £6.6m settlement in one of UK's longest divorce battles

Highlights

• Varsha Gohil, 61, filed for divorce in 2002; settlement finalised in 2025
• CPS sought confiscation of nearly £28m tied to his criminal activity
• High Court found some assets were legitimately acquired during the marriage
• Court of Appeal rejected any further appeals last month, ending the case

A LONDON-BASED woman has won a £6.6 million divorce settlement after what courts have described as one of the longest matrimonial cases in UK legal history.

British Indian Varsha Gohil, 61, filed for divorce in May 2002 and initially accepted a modest settlement before discovering that her husband, lawyer Bhadresh Gohil, had concealed assets he was legally required to disclose.

Her case was complicated by a money-laundering investigation into her husband's conduct, which led to a 10-year prison sentence in 2010 in connection with a corruption case involving a client in Nigeria.

While the Crown Prosecution Service pursued a confiscation order over nearly £28m linked to his criminal activity, the question of Varsha's entitlement to a share of untainted matrimonial assets remained unresolved for years.

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The Court of Appeal last month rejected any further appeals, allowing a High Court judgment from last year to take effect.

Justice Williams, ruling on May 28, 2025, found that some of the assets in question had been legitimately acquired during the marriage, giving his former wife a lawful claim.

He calculated her share as £6,663,172, roughly 23.82 per cent of the identifiable untainted assets, which amounted to approximately £27.97m in total.

"The husband's conduct is at the highest end of the scale in terms of dishonesty and its consequences," he said. "The wife is now nearing retirement age and has come through the last 23 years with health problems, but financially, she is still afloat."

Bhadresh Gohil Eastern Eye

The judge took note of Bhadresh's failure to disclose his true wealth, which had put his family through the "devastation that the litigation and his criminality have wrought."

On the length of the case, he said the name Gohil would "linger long in the memories of lawyers and judges across a range of jurisdictions" because of the route the case had taken.

(with inputs from PTI)