How Valid Is Your Marriage? City Banker Who Claimed He Never Married His Wife Loses Divorce Fight!

A city banker who claimed his wife married another man with the same name three days before their own wedding has lost his acrimonious divorce battle at the Court of Appeal.

Amit Goyal alleged his wife, Anita, ‘married another Amit Goyal’ while he was relaxing six hours away. The 36-year-old investment banker pleaded that as they were never legally wed in the first place, his wife could neither divorce him, nor claim financial support for herself and their six-year-old daughter. Mrs Goyal had already been granted a decree nisi last year by Judge Mark Everall QC, who described her husband as an ‘unreliable’ witness. However, Mr Goyal called on an expert witness who highlighted several ‘oddities’ about the first ceremony in the Indian city of Meerut in 2013, including a photograph of the groom and his thumb print, neither of which were his image.

The former Barclays banker also claimed it ‘simply was not possible’ he could have been at the wedding as he was still in his hometown of Bathinda at 9am that day. After marrying, the couple moved to Paris before setting up home near London’s Canary Wharf, celebrating the birth of their daughter in 2007. The marriage ‘irretrievably broke down’, though, and Mrs Goyal moved out of their Docklands house in 2011.

It is only then that Mr Goyal said he realised the marriage was ‘invalid’. However, appeal judge Lord Justice Kitchin dismissed this claim along with Mr Goyal’s assertion he is £300,000 in debt, saying: ‘I do not detect that [Judge Everall] had any real difficulty in arriving at his conclusion. ‘Indeed, having regard to his finding that Mr Goyal’s evidence pointed to him being unreliable, it seems to me that the conclusion to which he came was, in reality, the only one which was open to him.’ Speaking after the hearing, Mrs Goyal said she was ‘very happy’ at the outcome.