Validity of a post-nuptial agreement
NA v MA [2006] EWHC 2900 (Fam), [2007] All ER (D) (Jan), Baron J attracted comment in the press and has already featured in NLJ. It was a truly sad story, though for once the solicitors’ profession came out of it better than the medics and the barristers. The wife (W) had discussed her anxieties with her doctor who promptly discussed them with her overbearing husband and members of the Bar seem to have done little to smooth the court’s path to judgment.
The main legal issue revolved around the efficacy of a “post nuptial agreement”, that is to say an agreement on the basis of which the parties were intended to resume cohabitation. The agreement had been negotiated whilst the parties were still in the throes of dealing with a very difficult relationship. The husband, the judge said, had offered the agreement on a “take it or leave it basis” as the only way to achieve a reconciliation in the marriage. The parties were still living together and, as the judge held, W was being bullied by
