AN HEIRESS yesterday won an attempt to have her pre-nuptial agreement recognised in the UK in what has been described as a landmark judgment.
Katrin Radmacher, said to be worth £100 million, had challenged a ruling that she should give £5.85m to former husband Nicolas Granatino despite him signing a contract vowing never to make claims on her if they split.
Such contracts are enforceabl
e in Germany, where the couple's agreement was signed, but not in England, where they married.
Ms Radmacher, one of Germany's richest women, won a ruling from the Court of Appeal yesterday that such contracts should be taken into account by the courts when they divide assets after a marriage collapses.
The ruling is likely to pave the way for pre-nups to be given greater weight in England and Wales, but family law experts said the agreements were already given prominence in Scottish courts.
Mr Granatino, 37, is now expected to take the case to the House of Lords to allow the issue of pre-nuptials to be decided by the highest court in the land.
Appeal judge Lord Justice Thorpe said in any future cases, the judge deciding the division of marriage assets should give "due weight" to pre-nuptial contracts freely entered into by the parties.
"This is not to apply foreign law, nor is it to give effect to a contract foreign to English tradition," he said.
He highlighted that in the English courts, the husband had been awarded more than £5m but in France or Germany he would have been awarded nothing because of the pre-nuptial contract.
He said he believed it had become "increasingly unrealistic" to regard such contracts as void.
"It reflects the laws and morals of earlier generations. It does not sufficiently recognise the rights of autonomous adults to govern their future financial relationship by agreement in an age when marriage is not generally regarded as a sacrament and divorce is a statistical commonplace."
The couple's marriage was said to have broken down after Mr Granatino gave up a lucrative job in the emerging markets sector in 2003 to become a £30,000-a-year biotechnology researcher at Oxford University. They divorced in 2006.
Miss Radmacher, 39, said in a statement: "Ultimately, this case has been about what I regard as a broken promise.
"When we met and married, Nicolas and I were broadly on an equal footing financially. He too is an heir to a multimillion-pound fortune and, when we met, was an investment banker earning up to £330,000 a year.
"The agreement was at my father's insistence as he wanted to protect my inheritance – this is perfectly normal in our countries of origin, France and Germany.
"My father taught me the value of hard work and family values. Like all wealthy parents, he feared gold-diggers.
"As an heir himself, Nicolas perfectly understood this. The agreement gave me reassurance that Nicolas was marrying me because he loved me as I loved him... that we were marrying for the right reasons."
Her solicitor, Ayesha Vardag, said: "The Court of Appeal, in a carefully reasoned, thoroughly modern judgment has enabled English matrimonial law to catch up with the rest of the world.
"From today grown-ups can agree in the best of times what will happen in the worst of times."
Miss Radmacher, a paper industry heiress, had challenged the Family Division ruling by Mrs Justice Baron that it would be "manifestly unfair" to hold Mr Granatino to the pre-nuptial contract, which was signed in Germany before the couple married in London in 1998.
Although the judge recognised the pre-nuptial agreement would have been fully enforceable in Germany or France, she ruled that they had never been legally binding in this country.
The court ruled yesterday that Mr Granatino would be given about £1m as a lump sum, with a fund of £2.5m for a house that will be returned to Miss Radmacher when the youngest of their two daughters, who is six, reaches the age of 22.
His debts of about £700,000 are to be paid off by the heiress, who had always agreed to this.
Analysis: Decision will not change the view of Scotland's sheriffsFAMILY law experts said yesterday the Radmacher case will have little impact on the way Scotland's courts view pre-nuptial agreements, arguing that the ruling shows England and Wales are simply "catching up".
Whereas pre-nups are regarded as merely persuasive in the courts of England and Wales, they are viewed north of the Border as having greater authority. Scott Cochrane, a partner at Brodies and one of Scotland's leading family law experts, said pre-nups were respected by Scotland's courts as far back as Victorian times.
He said: "We don't see it as making a bit of difference in Scotland. It's more the case that England is catching up with us.
"There's never been anything legally binding (regarding pre-nups] and there is no case law about it. You can never guarantee anything, and we don't.
"But no one has successfully overturned a pre-nup in the courts. There have been challenges in the past, and they have failed. The key is ensuring the agreement is well drafted and fair."
He added: "It's good to see the profile of pre-nups being raised with this case. More people should have them."
Alasdair Loudon, partner and head of the family law team at Turcan Connell, said: "Although the matter has not been tested by the courts, it is generally taken to be the case that a court in Scotland would uphold a pre-nuptial agreement providing conditions are satisfied."
Mr Loudon added: "The party being presented with the pre-nup should have a proper opportunity to reflect upon its significance; both parties should have a proper opportunity to take legal advice on the significance of the pre-nup; (and] there should be full disclosure between the parties of their respective financial positions at the time of entering in to the prenup."
