NA v MA: When is an agreement not an agreement?

Margaret Hatwood, Associate, Thomas Eggar. Twenty years ago if a family lawyer had been asked if a pre-nuptial agreement was binding the reply would have been an emphatic 'No'. In 2007 a family lawyer will give a much longer response which can be neatly encapsulated by the word 'maybe'.

In this article, Margaret Hatwood reviews the movement towards a situation where agreements are increasingly regarded as binding and draws practitioners attention to possible danger areas as well as the difficulties of ancillary relief litigation where one party is seeking to uphold an agreement. The article also reviews the decision of Baron J in NA v MA [2006] EWHC 2900 (Fam), [2007] 1 FLR 1760, which is a good read both in terms of its insights into the lives of the very wealthy and, more significantly, for lawyers it contains an excellent analysis of some of the relevant cases. For the full article see November [2007] Fam Law.

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