Pre-nup law 'will save career women from greedy men': Top lawyer says it could stop bitterness of break-ups

Baroness Deech said women need a pre-nup law to protect their earnings

Pro-marriage campaigner suggests law would stop men marrying successful women and running off with a large share of their wealth

Government advisers due to publish plans for a pre-nup law

Supporters of a pre-nup law say it would stop gold-diggers

However, others claim it would undermine the role of marriage



Baroness Deech (pictured) said career women need a pre-nup law to help them protect their earnings from predatory men

Career women need a pre-nup law to help them protect their earnings from predatory men, an influential lawyer said yesterday.

A law to allow couples to settle the terms of their divorce before their wedding would stop men marrying successful women and then running off with a large share of their wealth, Baroness Deech said.

The call from the prominent family lawyer and pro-marriage campaigner came five days before Government advisers publish their own plans for a pre-nup law.

However, any plans for marriage reform from the Law Commission could not become law before the 2015 election.



Lady Deech said she intends to bring a pre-nup Bill into the Lords this week with the aim of getting a law before the election.

Her intervention comes at a time of intensifying debate between supporters of a pre-nup law, which they say would stop gold-diggers and allow a couple to control their own break-up, and opponents who say that a pre-nup law would dangerously undermine the role of marriage as a lifelong partnership.

Lady Deech said on Radio 4’s Sunday Programme: ‘Lots of young women these days are working, earning well, and would feel it extremely unfair if a young man who they marry and perhaps leaves them is going to take with him a sizeable chunk of what they have worked so hard for.

‘The position of women has changed in the last 40 years and it’s time to recognise that in this country, like virtually every country in the world, two people who are getting married ought to be able, if they want, to make a contract about how their assets are to be divided if they divorce.’

She said the institution of marriage has been so damaged already by easy divorce that pre-nups could do no more harm. ‘The law is very odd,’ she said.



According to the Baroness, a law to allow couples to settle the terms of their divorce before their wedding would stop men marrying successful women and then running off with a large share of their wealth

‘It takes no account of fault whatsoever.



'So an awful lot of people end up having to give up homes, children and pensions feeling, rightly or wrongly, that they are innocent and the other one is guilty.

‘The law is in a sad, sad way, but it’s too late – divorce is very prevalent and I do think that pre-nups might make people think very carefully about how dreadful it might be to end it.

‘Secondly it would save them so much money, so much hostility and bitterness, if unfortunately it does come to an end.’

But the Roman Catholic Bishop of Shrewsbury, the Right Reverend Mark Davies, told the programme: ‘My concern is the message that this is likely to be sending to a diminishing number of couples who are seeking the life-long commitment to marriage when we are asking them to prepare their divorce settlement before they have even married.’

Proposals drawn up by the Law Commission are likely to contain proposals for a new pre-nup law. Ministers have, however, indicated that there is no chance of legislation before the election.

English courts have traditionally ignored pre-nup agreements and instead tried to divide a couples’ assets on merit.

