PRE-NUPS
Due respect for adult autonomy suggested that, subject to proper safeguards, a carefully fashioned pre-nuptial contract should be available as an alternative to the stress, anxieties and expense of a trial. The basic principles were that: ... any contract would be subject to the review of a judge exercising his duty under s.25 Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 if it was asserted to be manifestly unfair to one of the contracting parties. In so far as the rule that pre-nuptial contracts were void had survived, it was an increasingly unrealistic rule, reflecting the laws and morals of earlier generations, which did not sufficiently recognise the rights of autonomous adults to govern their future financial relationship by agreement in an age in which marriage was not generally regarded as a sacrament and divorce was a statistical commonplace. Society should be seeking to reduce and not to maintain rules of law that divided England and Wales from the majority of the member states of Europe, and, Europe apart, the jurisdiction was in danger of isolation in the wider common law world if it did not give greater force and effect to pre-nuptial contracts