Regulation or interpretation?

In Harper v Harper the pursuer objected to the private sale of a property by his wife, and sought an incidental order under s 14 for the sale to be regulated by the court.

The sheriff determined that the incidental order provision cannot be invoked to cure a defect in a minute of agreement.

The terms of a minute of agreement are “one of contract” and do not “sit comfortably within the jurisprudence of family law”. The pursuer could not invite the court to “trespass on the law of obligations”.

The parties were at loggerheads over the proper interpretation of a minute of agreement, but even where that agreement seemed to be preliminary to a joint minute, the dispute “cannot be said in any way to be incidental or ancillary” to the separate court orders in the case.