Prenuptial Agreements

A prenuptial agreement (commonly known as pre-nup) is an agreement that is entered into before a couple get married. The agreement sets out how finances and assets will be split in the event of a marriage breakdown.

Whilst in an ideal world everybody that marries would stay together throughout their lives, this is sadly not reality and many marriages come to an end.

Whilst they are not suitable for everyone, they can be an effective mechanism to ensure that a couple are in control of what happens to their finances and assets in the event that the marriage broke down.

Divorcing couples who have not entered into a pre-nuptial agreement will be faced with the starting position of splitting marital assets equally. This could disadvantage one of the parties if they have brought in more wealth to the marriage than the other party.

Statute is yet to be amended to state that pre-nuptial agreements are binding on the Courts, but there has been a growing recognition of these agreements within the Courts. As a result, the Court are likely to follow the terms of an agreement providing certain criteria is met.

The criteria that should be fulfilled to give a pre nuptial agreement the best chance of being upheld by the Court includes the following:

• Both parties should get independent legal advice
• There should be full of all assets by both parties
• Each party must understand the implications of the document
• The agreement must be entered into freely
• The agreement shouldn’t unreasonably prejudice the position of any children of the family
• Should have an element of fairness in the terms of the agreement

A post-nuptial agreement is an agreement which is entered into after a couple are married. This allows a couple to create a financial agreement to detail what should happen if their marriage ends. This is dealt with in the same way as a pre-nuptial agreement and the same criteria applies.

This depends on the complexity of the agreement, but costs start from as little as £1,000 plus VAT.

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