Jonathan Herring on the death knell of marriage
he twentieth of October 2010. Mark that date in your diary. It was beginning of the end for marriage. On that day the Supreme Court in Radmacher v Granatino [2010] UKSC 42 made a decisive step toward reducing marriage to a contract: marriage diminished to a private autonomous agreement between individuals.
I say a step towards reducing marriage to a contract because, of course, their lordships were not saying that pre-marriage agreements are now binding contracts. They made it clear that a court could make an ancillary relief order under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 that departed from a “pre-nup” where it would not be fair to hold the parties to the agreement. They gave examples when a pre-nup would not be fair: where it fails to provide for the needs of the children or for the needs of a spouse (paras 76, 77).
However, that should not disguise the fact the decision marks the contractualisation of marriage. In the future, in ancillary relief cases involving a pre-nup the starting point will be that the pre-nup will be
