In BN v MA, the unnamed foreign couple separated after an 11 year relationship, not long after the wife became pregnant with the couple’s second child. However they had been married for just over a year. Before the couple’s engagement, the husband’s solicitors drew up a prenuptial agreement which was closely negotiated before both parties signed it shortly before their wedding.
On the basis of the couple’s ‘habitual residence’ (residence for legal purposes) in the UK, the wife applied for a full financial settlement.
At the High Court, Mr Justice Mostyn considered the wife’s applications for maintenance pending suit (temporary maintenance during divorce proceedings), ‘interim’ child maintenance and a legal services order (payment of her legal costs).
The judge considered the former couple’s prenuptial agreement. He concluded:
“…the law adopts a strict policy of requiring the demonstration of something unfair before it will open the Pandora’s Box of litigation where there has been an agreement of this nature.”
He added:
“…where there has been a prenuptial agreement, the court should seek to apply the terms of the prenuptial agreement as closely and practically as it can, unless the evidence of the wife in support of her application demonstrates, to a convincing standard, that she has a prospect of satisfying a court that the agreement should not be upheld.”
He awarded maintenance pending suit and interim child maintenance on the terms set out in the prenuptial agreement
However, Mr Justice Mostyn found that the wife had no entitlement to a legal services order because she had provided highly speculative figures in the light of the couple’s prenuptial agreement. She not provided sufficient detail, and she had also failed to satisfy the court that she is unable to secure a loan to pay her legal costs. She had received offers, albeit at steep rates of interest which the husband would have to pay if she won her case.
Comments(3)
Expand all comments Collapse all comments