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Accessible legal tips, know-how and news for anyone with a complaint or legal issue from Stephen Gold, author of The Return of Breaking Law, the book

Wednesday 29 November 2017

Dear Harry and Meghan

Dear Harry and Meghan (if I may)

Let me be the 2,689,767th person today to congratulate you on the occasion of your engagement to be married. I wish you every happiness for the future.

You may feel it is indelicate of me but I feel I must raise the topic of pre-nuptial agreements. I have never hidden my view that, generally, any person who seeks to enter into such an agreement with their future spouse or partner is despicable. On the other hand, I know that some engagements  would falter if such an agreement was not entered into. Under the law of England and Wales as it currently stands,  there is no cast iron guarantee that an agreement would stand up if it was challenged in court but there is a good chance that the court would follow it so long as it was fair in what it said, freely entered into and the party challenging it was not the victim of fraud or misrepresentation by the other party.

It may be that in the light of your particular financial circumstances - and I fancy that you, Harry, have beneficial interests in a number of trusts - I could sympathise with your wish to go down the pre-nuptial agreement road. If that be so then why shell out £1K per hour on the charges of a Central London lawyer when for just £19.99 - though the publishers and Amazon etc have deals on at the moment - you can access a template agreement in Breaking Law by Stephen Gold? Crikey, I've just realised, that's me. And you could also make an agreement just to cover cohabitation for the time being in case plans were changed. All sorts of remote and ridiculous contingencies are sometimes contemplated. Anyway, there is a cohabitation agreement template as well in Breaking Law which many couples who never plan marriage or civil partnership would find handy so as to protect their respective positions.

I'm not expecting an invite but I will be watching you next May and wondering whether you put Breaking Law up for sale on e-bay after you had finished with it. 

Kindest regards
Stephen
PS I realise you won't be needing the no-sex agrement template but you may find it interesting.