Pre-nup victory for heiress changes rules of marriage

The strength of pre-nuptial agreements was dramatically increased today after a Court of Appeal ruling which could affect hundreds of future divorce cases.

Three of the country's most senior judges backed claims by a German heiress that a contract signed before her marriage did protect her £100 million fortune.

Katrin Radmacher's husband, Frenchman Nicolas Granatino, will lose most of the £5.85 million settlement awarded at an earlier court hearing.

Legal experts said the decision would ensure that pre-nup agreements would be increasingly accepted by the courts. Emma Hatley, a divorce specialist from the London legal firm Stewarts Law, said: "In light of this decision, it would be foolhardy for anyone entering a pre-nup to assume that they will not be held to the terms."

Ms Radmacher, 39, married Mr Granatino, 37, in 1998 after they had signed a pre-nup in which he agreed not to make any financial demands on her if they divorced. Last year the High Court awarded him £5.8 million.

The figure was today cut to about £1 million after the appeal judges ruled that Mr Granatino should receive money to support the couple's two girls, but nothing for himself.

Ms Radmacher said: "The agreement was at my father's insistence as he wanted to protect my inheritance.

"Like all wealthy parents, he feared gold-diggers. As an heir himself, Nicolas perfectly understood this. The agreement gave me reassurance that Nicolas was marrying me because he loved me as I loved him."

She added: "I am delighted that the court accepts that the agreement Nicolas and I entered into as intelligent adults before our marriage should be honoured. This case has been about what I regard as a broken promise.

"I will never regard my marriage as a mistake."

The couple seemed a natural match when they met at Tramp nightclub in 1997. Both from very wealthy European families and enjoying their lives as young socialites about town.

Ms Radmacher, then 28 and running a Knightsbridge boutique with her sister, was on paper the wealthier — having been given six per cent of her father's paper-making empire, she was a multi-milllionairess.

So it was only natural that before they married in London in 1998, they signed a pre-nuptial agreement under which her prospective husband agreed not to make any claim on her inheritance if the marriage brokedown.

As Mr Granatino, then 26, was a merchant banker, earning an estimated £300,000 a year, and from a wealthy family of French industrialists, she had little reason to suspect he would ever want to make such a claim anyway. But in 2003, Mr Granatino left his job to study for a doctorate in biotechnology at Oxford, where, according to his supervising professor, he is "an outstanding student".

However his lifestyle choice led to their marriage breaking down and they separated in 2006. Miss Radmacher returned to Germany with their two young daughters.

The High Court divorce hearing last year heard that although Mr Granatino's future income as an academic researcher would be a modest one of about £30,000 a year, he continued to live a playboy lifestyle and had run up debts of almost £800,000. He continued to live in the former matrimonial home in Knightsbridge, at a rent of £87,000 a year.

English law does not take into account any future inheritance. Mrs Justice Baron was unable to speculate on what he might be worth when his father dies and, with the pre-nuptial agreement not binding in the English courts, ruled in Mr Granatino's favour.

She dismissed Ms Radmacher's assertion that her husband had deliberately delayed his PhD to maximise his divorce settlement, but said Ms Radmacher was "far nicer, being more engaging and open" than her "superficially very charming" husband.