The total assets in the case were £4.5M and Mr and Mrs White were dairy farmers who worked in partnership with one another and had three children together.  Up until this 2001 case a wife on divorce would be limited to receiving her “reasonable needs” in a financial settlement.  At first instance, the judge awarded the wife £800,000 calculated to enable her to buy a house and to meet her income needs from a capitalised sum.  The judge left the business, the farms and the other assets with the husband.  The wife appealed to the Court of Appeal who found the trial judge’s approach inappropriate and increased her award to £1.5M to reflect her contributions – both to the farming business and to the family.  This left Mrs White with about two-fifths of the assets and she appealed again to the House of Lords arguing that her contributions were equal to those of the husband and that she should get an equal share of the assets.  The husband also appealed asking the court to reinstate the original order.  For the very first time the court said, “In seeking to achieve a fair outcome there is no place for discrimination between husband and wife and their respective roles.”  Judges were advised to check their decisions against “the yardstick of equality of division.” Equal division should only be departed from with very good reason. As Lord Nichols said, “Fairness, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder” and leaving this wife with such a small proportion of the assets after a marriage that had truly been a partnership in every sense certainly did not feel fair.  This case marked a significant move by the courts to be more in line with societal norms and brought an end to discriminatory awards in favour of the breadwinner.