Somerset woman’s divorce from abusive husband cost her £105k

A woman who endured years of abusive controlling behaviour by her ex-husband says it has cost her more than £105,000 to divorce him.

Annabelle Boucher, 48, from Somerset, wants the law changed after she paid £75,000 to David Rogers, 61, despite him admitting to coercive and controlling behaviour. She also had to pay her legal costs.

“I thought being stuck in this relationship I couldn’t get out of would be highlighted within the divorce procedure,” Boucher said. “But the divorce law doesn’t take into account the fact that he was a criminal.”

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said it had begun a consultation to reform the law so “family courts meet the needs of domestic abuse victims”.

Boucher, a mother from Chiselborough, said Rogers had come into her life in “a whirlwind” in 2017 and the pair got married two years later.

It was once they were married that things started to “take a turn”, she said, and “some very extreme behaviour started to happen”.

“It creeps up on you and you’re in it, and so you don’t kind of notice what is happening.”

Boucher said she had ended up “shutting down emotionally” and “cutting off from everyone” because she feared what would happen.

“You find that you’re trapped within a situation that you can’t get out of.”