“Short marriage, big money” divorces are becoming ever more frequent in the UK, and “short marriage, costly separation” is not totally uncommon here either. But will this trend begin to put men off marriage unless, of course, there is a very tight prenuptial agreement?
It is one thing giving a big payout to a woman who has given up her earning power and potential for 15 years to bring up a family. It’s quite another giving half one’s fortune to someone after just a few years of marriage, isn’t it, particularly if she is the one who wants to separate, or who initiated the separation?
It is true that, for years, men have got away with giving the most paltry of amounts when their marriages break down. But women have to be careful not to be too greedy, because although marrying is a legal commitment above all else, the romantic side is important too. You know that word we are often too embarrassed to use, “love”, and no one wants to go into marriage feeling their other half is just there for the rich pickings if the couple separate.
A case is coming up before the UK courts to test the principle of whether wives should even be entitled to future earnings. However, the woman in this case was married to her high-flying accountant husband for over 16 years, she gave up totally on her lucrative career as a solicitor in order to bring up the children, and was not the one who broke up the marriage. In that case, few would deny her the right to a generous settlement.
However the case of a fund manager who was married for less than three years, and who is having to hand over £5 million to an ex-wife after a mere three years of marriage, is raising more than just eyebrows.
It is likely to make marriage even less popular than it already is in the UK, particularly among the more well off who have even more to lose! The QC (lawyer) who is handling this husband’s appeal was quoted as saying: “If my client had knocked her down with his car and she had suffered severe injuries – brain damage and the ability to have children – at most the damages would be two million.”
And yes, a five million pay off for less than three years of marriage does seem ridiculous, doesn’t it? Particularly when the other half is still young, very capable of looking after herself, very capable of marrying again and finding another man to fund her lifestyle.
The general picture is still, of course, of men who do not adequately support their wives. But it seems that just a few women sharks can give the impression that most women are just after their husband’s earnings and that love never came into it at all, much less any respect!
It’s the same with issues around domestic violence. This really is an appalling problem, with many women living lives of hell until they have the courage, locally at least, to give up everything and go to the kind saints at Dar Merhba Bik, who try to pick up the pieces of totally broken lives and marriages.
But that kind of violence is totally different to someone losing their temper once, throwing something or shoving someone. Of course all aggression is to be condemned, but if we women want to be taken seriously, if we want the problem of real domestic violence (emotional and physical) to be zero tolerated, it really is incumbent on us all to not claim domestic violence if we manage to needle or provoke someone into losing their temper.
And women know how to do this very well. There is, of course, no excuse for having a short fuse, but there really is no excuse either for women who try to claim domestic violence to get more money in our courts, when it really was not an issue that brought about any kind of separation.
Yet these sorts of things are happening in our courts. Judges, of course, have an incredibly difficult job because they are very much guided by their impressions of people and sometimes justice is not done because some women know how to play the game. Because of that, the genuine victims of serial and serious domestic violence are grilled in our courts. Because of this there is a lot of cynicism about domestic violence, simply because some women do fake it
Yes, women always have faked it. But when they do so in our courts they are doing a tremendous disservice to our courts and our system of justice, and most of all to those who are genuinely terrified and abused. Marriage, or its breakdown, should never be an easy meal ticket, particularly after a very short marriage.