NHS doctor claims divorce judges have made him work seven days a week to meet maintenance payments

An NHS hospital doctor who said divorce judges condemned him to working the equivalent of seven full days a week so he can meet maintenance payments to his ex-wife, has told the Appeal Court he was treated unfairly.

Obstetrician Dr Mark Tattersall, 39, claimed he was forced to work a 56-hour week, the same as seven eight-hour days, in order to keep his ex-wife, Oxford University academic Amanda Tattersall, in the manner to which she is accustomed.

When the pair split in 2011, after over a decade of marriage, Mrs Tattersall was handed 70% of the family fortune, the bulk of which was invested in a string of buy to let properties stretching from London to Liverpool.

Additionally Dr Tattersall was ordered to pay her £1,070-a-month in personal maintenance, along with almost £600-a-month in child maintenance.

The doctor, who is from Bolton and works at Liverpool Women’s Hospital , said he had no choice but to work his fingers to the bone in order to meet his own basic needs and keep up the payments to his ex.

Dr Tattersall claimed divorce judges were “wrong to expect him to work more than a normal 40-hour week” and has now told London’s Appeal Court he feels he has been the victim of “unfair” treatment.

The court heard that Dr Tattersall met his wife whilst they were both students and the pair married in 2000.

Mrs Tattersall, studied physiological sciences at St Hilda’s College Oxford, and worked at Cambridge University as a researcher before taking up her current position at Oxford University.

The couple had a child together but separated in 2011, after accumulating properties in Loughborough Park, Brixton, and St Aldates, Oxford, as well as Cambridge, Birmingham and Liverpool during their marriage, the equity in which was worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The wife was handed 70% of the marital assets, along with the maintenance order, which Dr Tattersall claimed left him chained to the grindstone.

NHS hospital doctors routinely put in much longer hours on the job than the average 35-hour nine-to-five working week.

But the European Working Hours Directive has now limited compulsory working time for UK hospital doctors to 48 hours, though it is legal for medics to work overtime by choice.

Dr Tattersall, who was earning £75,000 annually and working 56 hours, including weekends, before the split, told judges he wanted to cut back his hours to 40 per week so that he had weekends free to potentially spend time with his young daughter.

The divorce court ruling on maintenance had left him unable to do that, he insisted.

He complained that “the judge had erred in dividing the capital unequally and in ordering him to pay too much for too long by way of periodical payments (maintenance) to his wife.”

The judge had “overestimated his income” and “should have based herself on his current salary, without overtime,” he argued.

He also claimed that what was left in his pay packet after making the payments to his wife “will not cover his income needs.”
The judge had been “over-generous in assessing the wife’s needs,” he said.

An initial challenge to the maintenance award was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in 2013.

Judges found that he had not put forward sufficient evidence to support his claims about the number of hours or days he would need to work.

However he has continued to protest and has been hit with further court orders over his failure to keep up the maintenance payments.

Future payments were ordered to be rolled up into a lump sum and paid all at once by a family judge in March 2014.

And the doctor was also hit with an enforcement order in relation to the arrears, which could potentially lead to him being jailed if he still fails to pay up.

He is now fighting those orders, claiming to have suffered “procedural unfairness” and that his ex-wife “has manipulated judges” in order to get the result she wants.

“The way my former wife has conducted this litigation has manipulated judges,” he told Lady Justice King.

He also accused the judge who made the orders of dealing with the case “in an intemperate manner.”

Dr Tattersall now faces an anxious wait whilst his case is decided after Lady Justice King reserved her decision following an hour-long hearing.

The judge will give her ruling on his case at a later date, yet to be set.