London: Britain's Supreme Court yesterday ruled in favour of a German heiress seeking to protect her fortune from her former husband — a decision that gives new strength to prenuptial agreements in England.
The ruling marks a potential turning point in the legal battle over prenuptial agreements in England, where courts have generally refused to recognise them as valid, binding agreements.
Nicholas Phillips, the president of the Supreme Court, said the judges decided by an 8-1 margin to let stand an earlier Appeals Court ruling that the prenuptial agreement in this case was fair and should be applied.
Greater share
It is a victory for Katrin Radmacher, 40, a paper industry heiress with a fortune of at least £55 million (Dh318 million), and a defeat for her former husband, Nicolas Granatino, 39, a former investment banker who had been seeking a greater share of her wealth than had been spelled out in their pre-nup.
The case was complex: Radmacher is German, her former husband is French, but they married, lived and divorced in England.
The prenuptial agreement was signed at Radmacher's father's insistence in Germany, and would have been recognised in both France and Germany, where pre-nups are commonly upheld.
"For Nicolas and I, in our homelands — France and Germany — these agreements are entirely normal and routine," Radmacher said in a statement. "We made a promise to each other that if anything went wrong between us, both of us would walk away without making financial claims on each other. The promise made to me was broken."
Deeply tanned
The heiress, deeply tanned and wearing a white knit coat-style mini-dress, appeared nervous before the ruling. She sat only a few feet from Granatino — unkempt in jeans and a sweater — but the two did not exchange pleasantries or even glance at each other.
The couple married in 1998, had two daughters and separated eight years later.
Granatino — sporting both an iPhone and a BlackBerry — declined to comment after the defeat. He paused long enough to embrace his legal team, then hurriedly departed on foot while his former wife made an appearance before the cameras outside the court.
