Finding the romance in pre-nups

We're not just talking about celebrities like the grasping Heather Mills, who walked away with �24-million of Paul McCartney's fortune after a miserable four-year marriage.

We're not just talking about celebrities like the grasping Heather Mills, who walked away with �24-million of Paul McCartney's fortune after a miserable four-year marriage.

Published Feb 6, 2014

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London - When I get married again, and I believe I will, there are many things I want from my future husband; someone who loves and respects me as much as I do him; a man who embraces ginger cats, long walks in the countryside, offbeat holidays and enjoys take-aways as much as good food. A lover tender, passionate and true.

What I also want - indeed would insist upon - is a pre-nuptial agreement.

Because far from being unromantic, as Paul McCartney naively labelled them before his disastrous marriage to Heather Mills, I firmly believe they enable romance.

With a pre-nup, neither partner is in any doubt that the other married for anything but love. No financial incentive, no niggling worries that the other spouse is in it for what he or she can get.

No nightmare scenarios if it all sadly goes wrong, as you’ve agreed up front about the one thing people rip each other apart over during divorce - money and assets. How quickly love can turn to greed.

With a pre-nup, you get only what you agree to up front and the very process of drawing one up before the wedding, will be, I imagine, liberating.

That’s why I was delighted to learn that the Law Commission is to enshrine pre-nuptial agreements into law under the biggest shake-up to divorce laws this country has ever seen.

It is expected to get cross-party support and become law perhaps even before 2015.

That will mean more than 250 000 couples a year could choose to have legally binding settlements before they wed which determine how money and property should be shared if the marriage breaks down.

Most importantly it would ring-fence property, assets and gifts they bring to the marriage. So what they build together during the union is afterwards split fairly. But what they bring into the marriage is untouchable. That sounds pretty fair to me.

Perhaps I have a more jaundiced view of divorce than some, after my own experience. We were two young Australian journalists making our way in London.

My husband was not as lucky as me in his career and spent quite a lot of time unemployed. Things were difficult for him and for our marriage as a result.

I didn’t care; my money was his money. All that I had was his, and vice versa, that’s what we vowed. He was a clever and funny writer, I knew he’d find his feet.

What I didn’t count on was that he’d find a mistress first. The marriage ended after four years and the battle began. I was never a day out of work, but one newspaper I was on closed and I was given a redundancy payment which then, in the late Eighties, was a small fortune.

He sought and got half of it. His lawyer’s letter of demands of his share of our possessions included everything we owned except my clothes. He also demanded one of our two cats, Ronnie not Reggie, brothers he never particularly wanted and who had not been separated since birth.

I was threatened that I didn’t cough up, he’d seek maintenance as I had been the main breadwinner.

So one can understand why I have been cautious of marriage ever since.

And then there are the examples of ruin and injustice you see around you under the current system. And we’re not just talking about celebrities like the grasping Heather Mills, who walked away with £24-million of Paul McCartney’s fortune after a miserable four-year marriage.

One of my girlfriends, a teacher, fell madly in love with her headteacher and they married. Her seriously ill father died before the wedding, which was heartbreaking for her as for any bride who had long dreamt of walking down the aisle on dad’s arm. They moved into her father’s lovely sprawling home, which had been in the family for 200 years.

She wanted children, he kept putting it off, then she discovered the reason. It had all been a terrible mistake, he said, he was in love with someone else.

The considerable value of her father’s estate and the family home were split between her and her husband. She couldn’t afford to buy out his half of the house so, heartbreakingly, it was sold.

Months later she discovered her ex husband had bought it himself and moved his mistress and their child in.

A pre-nup would have prevented such gross unfairness, and perhaps even seen off a predatory male in the first place who was not in the relationship for love.

Many couples are now having pre-nups - not yet formally part of the legal system but borne in mind by the courts - especially when they either marry later in life or when it is a second or third union. When my husband and I divorced, we didn’t have that much to fight over, just a couple of cats, some cheap furniture and a tiny flat.

But when you get to your 50s, like me, it’s a different story. Next time around I will have a substantial home, jewellery, assets, a pension and, again, two ginger cats to protect - and I intend to do so.

Pre-nups are not about greed, quite the opposite, they formalise fairness. Speaking to solicitor Emma Nash - who specialises in family law at London-based Spring Law - this week, I was heartened to learn that even future wealth such as an inheritance from your parents could be ring-fenced in a pre-nup.

If that had been the case years ago, my friend would still be living in her family home and planning to leave it to the son she has from a subsequent happy marriage.

Another proposed change to the law will remove the ‘meal-ticket for life’ which ex-spouses can claim from the wealthier party.

Under the new proposals, maintenance would no longer be for life but payable only for a limited period, to encourage independence.

Reading that proposal reminded me of another friend in his early 50s who recently divorced after ten years. Not his idea, he loves his wife, but she had other ideas.

In a period of just six months she mysteriously quit her six-figure plus big bonus job - he also works in the City - and bought a pile in the country. She then started spending increasing time away from him and their London home, taking their young daughter with her.

The divorce papers duly arrived and she claimed she had to quit her job due to the stress of living with a man who ‘emotionally abused’ her.

He is the sweetest, kindest man you can imagine, yet she walked away with a massive maintenance meal ticket for life.

At just 44 and formerly a high-flying businesswoman, she has no intention of ever returning to work.

He, meanwhile has lost his home (which he bought outright long before they married), which had to be sold off, along with his savings and pension (much of which were accrued before they even met).

He now sees his child only at weekends and will have to work till he drops to support her.

Thankfully such injustice is about to end, and not before time. In future the wedding vows could go “to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health and with a binding pre-nup”.

And I bet many couples will have a better chance of living happily ever after as a result.

Strange prenup demands include no piano playing when the husband is home and a wife not allowed to cut her hair. - Daily Mail

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