Avoiding The Pitfalls When Making a UK Prenuptial Agreement

Creating a prenuptial agreement helps prevent couples from falling into the financial trap of getting married and not protection their assets properly. They are themselves however not foolproof.

The biggest problem you may face is where a UK court will ignore your pre-nup wishes if you fall outside of these requirements.

For example, any prenuptial agreement (or prenup as it is often known) will probably not be enforceable in the UK if it can be shown that one or other of the parties did not get independent legal advice. This would kick in where one party suffers as they did not take legal advice when putting together the conditions of the prenup. Ideally UK courts want to see that both parties have been separately represented by an independent solicitor with experience of prenuptial agreements. Should either have been misrepresented - or not represented at all - the potential agreement will not be worth the paper it is written on and will therefore be discarded.

Also a UK prenuptial agreement will be challenged should either party not make a full and proper disclosure of his or her financial assets at the time it was entered into. The requires all your assets to be disclosed and where relevant included. An exception to this was demonstrated in the Crossley v Crossley case where the court decided that an in depth diclosure was not necesary where there has only been a short marriage and both parties were quite weathly.

Considering the potential pitfalls, it is advisable that you allow good time for your prenuptial agreement to be made. In an ideal world, you should be wanting to get your prenup in place about 1 month before the date of your wedding. If your prenup is created the moment before the wedding this could raise suspicions of duress which could be brought up later on.

Should you even consider delaying the date of your wedding in order to conclude a satisfactory agreement? The answer could be 'yes; if those issues which have arisen are crucial to you. You must consider that the process of drafting a prenuptial agreement can take as little as a week where there are no complex issues or it can take a lot longer.

When deciding if to use a prenup you must look from the perspective of it potentially saving you lots of stress and money during a divorce. The case involving Karen Radmacher showed that the UK courts will acknowledge the contents of a prenuptial agreement when dealing with divorce.

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