By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune News Editor

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

A SUPREME Court judge has ruled that a woman did not break Bahamian law when she accessed her estranged husband’s iPad and laptop to obtain emails and documents she used to challenge his financial disclosure in their high-value divorce case.

Justice Hope Strachan rejected the husband’s application to strike the material from his wife’s affidavit, ruling that her actions did not violate the Computer Misuse Act and that the records were relevant and admissible in the interests of justice.

The judgment outlined the couple’s sharply contrasting portrayals of their finances. The wife described her husband as “an extremely wealthy man from a wealthy family” who never encouraged her to work and instead accustomed her to a lavish lifestyle of “parties, expensive travel, expensive homes, credit cards and paid expenses.” 

The wife had filed documents purporting to show that her husband failed to make full and frank disclosure of his assets in his affidavit to the court. She alleged that he used corporate structures and trusts in The Bahamas and Canada to obscure his true wealth, which she estimated exceeded US$400m. The husband denied this, saying the couple were in debt and that his companies were operating at a loss.

She said that during their marriage she was entirely dependent on him, supported by a credit card he paid off each month, and that her monthly allowance averaged between $10,000 and $20,000. By the time she filed for divorce, she claimed to have “no savings, no pension,” and sought $15,000 per month in maintenance.

The husband, however, painted a drastically different picture, insisting that the family was heavily in debt and that his businesses were operating at a loss. He disclosed total assets of $2.3 million against liabilities of $2.6 million, including companies in The Bahamas and Canada that he said were not profitable.

Justice Strachan’s decision, delivered on October 7, came after months of wrangling over whether the wife’s use of information from the devices amounted to unlawful interception of data. The court said the issue went to the heart of what constitutes authority to access digital devices within a marriage.

The husband, identified only by initials PJD, argued that the wife, KLD., unlawfully accessed private emails and business records from his personal and work devices without his consent, contrary to the Computer Misuse Act. He asked the court to exclude the evidence, claiming it included privileged communications and confidential information about family assets.

But Justice Strachan found the wife’s account more credible. She accepted the wife’s claim that she had long been authorised to use the devices and passwords to help her husband with business affairs, and that the iPad was commonly used in their home to operate household systems. The judge said the husband’s later removal of the device after the divorce petition was filed suggested he knew it contained material relevant to the case.

“Considering all the circumstances,” the judge wrote, “the wife’s obtaining of the information from the iPad and laptop of the husband was not ‘unlawful.’”

In her ruling, Justice Strachan cited the 2011 English Court of Appeal case Imerman v Tchenguiz, which limited the use of private documents obtained without consent between spouses. 

However, she distinguished that precedent, noting that in Imerman the wife had no prior authority to access her husband’s files. In contrast, the Bahamian wife’s access was established during the marriage and occurred after disclosure obligations had already arisen.

The court said the husband had “failed to give full and frank disclosure” and appeared to have “attempted to hide evidence from the court and to mislead the court.” Justice Strachan ruled that the documents the husband sought to strike — spanning financial statements, company correspondence, and emails — were relevant to determining the couple’s true financial circumstances and would help save costs by avoiding further discovery proceedings.

However, the judge agreed to strike two exhibits from the wife’s affidavit, a letter from the husband’s Canadian lawyer and another marked “without prejudice” from his Bahamian counsel, after finding they were protected by legal professional privilege.

Justice Strachan awarded the wife her costs of the application, discounted by 30 percent to account for the husband’s limited success on the privilege issue.