As a “money” judge, it fell to Dame Jennifer Roberts to deal with some of the biggest divorce claims to come before the courts. She had just been appointed to the High Court bench when she was allotted what was, at the time, the largest and most complex matrimonial finance dispute of its kind.
Sir Christopher Hohn, the London hedge fund manager and philanthropist, and his estranged American wife Jamie Cooper-Hohn, were battling over their £870 million fortune. Roberts had been a High Court judge for just one month — although she had sat as a deputy — and it was a tribute to her skills, hard work and attention to detail that Sir James Munby, then president of the family division, chose her to take the case.
In a mammoth 105-page ruling in December 2014, Roberts dismissed the financier’s claim that his former wife was entitled to only a quarter of their fortune and awarded her £337 million, then the biggest such award in the UK courts and one that underlined London’s status as the divorce capital of the world.
At 36 per cent of the assets, it was a departure from the accepted 50-50 baseline split, and was based on the principle that the moneymaker had made a “special contribution”. Roberts did not anonymise her judgment and allowed reporting of the full factual findings in the case (Cooper-Hohn v Hohn).
Family lawyers praised her ruling for its clarity as well as its fairness. But what was generally unknown at the time was that when she started hearing the case, she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer, and delayed surgery and chemotherapy until the trial was over and until she had begun writing her judgment in the summer of 2014. Sir Nicholas Mostyn, a fellow judge, said that despite the huge professional and personal pressure on her, “nobody ever heard a word of self-pity or even complaint fall from her lips. Her indefatigability at that time was a hallmark of her character which all who knew and loved her came to recognise and admire”.
Roberts continued hearing cases throughout her treatment. Another landmark case was that of Christina Estrada v Walid Juffali in 2016. This was a claim for financial relief following a foreign divorce. The test was what were the “reasonable needs” of the claimant, as there was no marital pot of assets to be divided. Among her annual needs the wife had claimed the sum of £1 million each year for clothes and accessories. Roberts listed these claims, which included: “£40,000 for a new fur coat every year; £83,000 for 15 new cocktail dresses every year; £80,000 for a special gown annually; £109,000 for seven haute couture dresses annually; £197,000 for two white tie jewellery sets every year; £79,000 on cocktail dress jewellery sets every year; £58,000 for two luxury handbags every year; £23,000 for six casual handbags every year; and £35,000 on ten clutch handbags every year”.
Unsurprisingly, Roberts dismissed that claim as “inflated and unnecessary in the context of adequate provision for her reasonable needs”. But she nonetheless found that Estrada’s annual income needs amounted to £2.5 million, which was capitalised in the sum of £44 million.
Roberts was the perfect judge for the case. Always elegantly and immaculately turned out herself, typically with a Hermès bag or scarf, she loved fashion. A fellow judge recalled an encounter when he was counsel in a case where she was his opponent. Outside court he admitted to saying something “irritatingly tetchy”. Roberts “paused, adjusted her Ferragamo scarf, brushed an imaginary speck of dust off her pale Chanel jacket, looked me in the eye and smiled at me”. He said: “I learnt more in those 10 seconds than I have in 100 drubbings from those less civilised than she.”
Jennifer (Jenny) Mary Halden was born in 1953 in Southampton. Her early years were spent in Sudan. Her parents, Michael Halden and Mary Kelway Pope, had met and married in Khartoum after the Second World War. They lived and worked there until 1960, although her mother travelled to England for Jenny’s birth. Michael was a sales executive for various big corporations.
Roberts was the eldest of three siblings. Her younger brother, Flying Officer Ian Halden, was killed piloting a Phantom fighter jet in the Falkland Islands in 1991. After leaving school, Roberts worked briefly in London, modelling and working at Island Records.
She married Richard Roberts in 1971, a recruitment headhunter, who died in 2004. They had two daughters: Melanie, who runs a family tailoring business; and Sophie, a mother with small children. Her brother Simon, a businessman, also survives her.
In her thirties with two young daughters under her care, she decided to go for law. She enrolled at Southampton University, juggling her studies with being a wife and mother. She was awarded a first-class degree. Later, in 2017, the university awarded her an honorary doctorate of letters.
Her career as a late starter was rapid. In 1987 Roberts read for the Bar and was called in 1988 by the Inner Temple. She obtained a pupillage at the chambers of Roger Gray QC at Queen Elizabeth Building and was then offered a tenancy. She practised there for her whole Bar career, remaining hugely attached to the set and supportive — and gaining the nickname “Duchess”, for her flair, elegant style and graceful manner.
Roberts became a recorder on the Western circuit in 2000, after only 12 years at the Bar. Although a family specialist, she ably handled criminal work and also produced a range of judgments in civil cases. She became a deputy High Court judge where she was known for compassion, but also acquired a reputation for somewhat lengthy judgments, including a fact-finding decision in a private law children case, running to 189 paragraphs, given shortly before her promotion to the High Court bench in 2014. She assiduously covered all points, one colleague said, and as a result was rarely appealed.
As High Court judge she handled several big cases, including some of the most difficult so-called “right to die” cases or those involving consent to medical treatment. In August 2023 she agreed that an NHS hospital could withdraw life-saving treatment from a 19-year-old girl with mitochondrial disease, accepting that the girl was unable to make a decision for herself. In 2019, in a case echoing the central story in Ian McEwan’s 2014 novel The Children Act, she overrode the wishes of a “competent” 14-year-old Jehovah’s Witness to refuse blood transfusions after chemotherapy.
Her abilities as a judge were recognised last week when the lady chief justice led tributes at a valedictory gathering at the Royal Courts of Justice. Roberts, said Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, was “bright, funny and kind”. Her calm compassion and care for clients, litigants and court staff was a constant theme. Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family division, said she was the “most thoughtful of individuals”, respecting all with whom she worked. She did not aspire to the more intellectual and rarefied atmosphere of the Court of Appeal; she loved the High Court, where she could be the mistress of her domain, and was good at it.
Away from court Roberts was a family division liaison judge on the Western Circuit, which she managed with empathy. She also chaired the Family Justice Council’s financial needs working group which produced a definitive guide to how to determine needs on divorce.
Roberts was diagnosed with terminal cancer last September. In her remaining months, she was helped to move to London from the New Forest and to rent a flat close to Sir Nicholas Mostyn and his wife Elizabeth Clarke: Clarke, a family barrister and longstanding friend, visited her daily and ensured she had a joyful final few months, with concerts, theatre visits, galleries and restaurant meals. Roberts carried on working to the last, even taking her laptop into hospital in the days before she died so that she could deal with emails.
Clarke said: “In our profession, a lot of people are respected, and admired, but not that many are loved. She really was. And there was never any self-pity: life was what it was. You have to put your best foot forward and get on with it.”
Dame Jennifer Roberts, High Court judge, was born on March 3, 1953. She died of cancer on June 10, 2024, aged 71.
