Family Law News

Boost for pre- marital agreements

Pre-marital (also known as prenuptial) agreements have always been void because it is against public policy for one spouse to divest themselves of their financial rights against the other and risk becoming a charge on the public purse. No longer. A recent case between a wealthy Greek heiress and her divorced husband has changed all that. The Court of Appeal held that judges should give weight to the marital property regime into which the parties have freely entered. The parties were responsible adults who had willingly and knowingly entered into an agreement protecting the wife’s £100 million fortune and the husband had a proper understanding of its consequences. The court reduced an award to the husband of nearly £6 million to £700,000, the amount to which he was entitled under the agreement.

The court emphasised that prenuptial contacts are not just for the rich. A party may wish to preserve property which has been in his or her family for many years and couples, perhaps each contemplating a second marriage, may wish to protect the interests of the children of earlier marriages if the second marriage breaks down. Or simply, as the wife, Katrin Radmacher, said, the agreement reassured her that she was being married for love and not for her money

The Law Commission is preparing a report on the status and enforceability of pre-nuptial contracts and in the meantime the courts will now regard prenuptial agreements as decisive when distributing the family assets on the breakdown of a marriage unless there has been duress, failure to disclose assets or lack of independent legal advice.

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