Sir, Prenuptial agreements can be of influence in divorce settlements in England and Wales, depending on the circumstances, but they are not enforceable in our courts. There is not even a presumption that the court will uphold their terms unless there is good reason not to.

Many think it strange that most other countries and their courts respect and uphold the rights of their citizens to regulate their interpersonal relationships by binding prenuptial agreements, but not this country. Those who are English or who come before the English court on the breakdown of their marriage do not have the ability to make or rely on such binding agreements. They have to rely on a highly discretionary and increasingly uncertain regime, one in which the court may at the point of divorce be interpreting and applying the law very differently from how it appeared at the date of marriage.

Why, if people are adult enough to marry, mature enough to buy houses and to make other contracts, should they not have the ability to make an agreement which, if fairly arrived at, is presumed to be binding? There could be residual safeguards to protect the needs of children, if the agreement failed to do so.

It is bad enough that English married couples (or foreign married couples who divorce in England) are denied the rights which citizens of many other countries have, but if the Law Commission report leads to contracts between unmarried cohabiting couples being enforceable, the position will be discriminatory. We will have the ridiculous situation that those who merely live together have greater rights to regulate their relationship than those who marry.

JEREMY POSNANSKY, QC
London EC4

Sir, Prenuptial agreements hardly send out a great message to the one you love. They are self-fulfilling; thoughts of divorce raise the risk of later actual divorce. Prenups also diminish the sense of identity as a couple, thus undermining the main reason why most marriages today still last a lifetime. Women tend to commit when a couple live together, but men tend to commit when they make the decision to marry.

For those of us who want marriage to succeed, a far better strategy than signing a prenup is to spend a day or few evenings on a relationship education course. These have been shown to reduce dramatically the odds of divorce and increase the quality of the relationship.

HARRY BENSON
Bristol Community
Family Trust

Sir, The idea that women should receive any divorce settlement is relatively new, but then so is female emancipation. Now we have legal equality of the sexes. It is a concept many men find difficult to understand, particularly as so many men still have a stereotypical view of women. Divorce is one area where legal equality of the sexes can now be enforced.

The few women in a better financial position than their spouse are now finding this equality distasteful, as the rules apply to all in property settlement. However, most women are not in a better financial position. For many women it is a fact that earning power is eroded though marital commitment. Consequently, they see their contribution within the marriage as a provision against that loss. Therefore if the marriage fails, the issue becomes one of compensation for lost security.

The interesting question is whether the amount of settlement is the amount the husband would have disposed to his wife had the marriage continued. I suspect the answer is that the latter would be a great deal less than the former. The answer must be for men, get married by all means, it’s cheap. Just put in more effort to avoid divorce, chaps.

HELEN CLAPHAM
Cobham

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