Family News For every half-kilo the wife gains during the marriage, she shall pay her husband $500. Each time the husband is rude to his in-laws, he shall pay $10,000. If the marriage ends, the husband keeps the gardener; the wife gets the pool boy.
Pre-nuptial agreements, which lawyers report are increasingly used by Australian couples, may cover anything the couple wishes, from a sensible allocation of assets to bizarre “lifestyle clauses”, regulating behaviour rather than money.
Enforcing them is another matter, but they have a life of their own among the wealthy, famous and odd. By a shrewd pre-nup, the troubled pop star Britney Spears limited her payout to Kevin Federline (known as K-Fed before the divorce, and Fed-Ex after it). Catherine Zeta-Jones, who has one with Michael Douglas, thinks them brilliant. The Danish monarchy had the world’s most famous Tasmanian sign one before marrying her prince; Sir Paul McCartney didn’t bother with one for Heather Mills.
In the United States, questionable lifestyle clauses have turned pre-nups into the stuff of legal folklore. Lawyers’ websites list the most bizarre. They ban adultery and drug-taking, roster child-minding and football-watching, and force grooms to help in the kitchen. A Beverly Hills lawyer proudly told CNN he once drafted a clause requiring the couple to copulate at least five times a week.
Few courts would enforce such clauses - judges don’t fancy themselves as bedroom police - and suggesting a pre-nup is about as romantic as proposing for a fixed term. In sickness and in health, until four years do us part; I get the house, you get the car and we split the dogs.
Although Jews have signed versions of them for 2000 years, most people, one hopes, are optimistic enough at the start of a marriage not to contemplate its end.
Despite divorces totalling roughly half the marriages registered each year, Family News romance and optimism are probably why pre-nups remain relatively scarce. Even in the US, accepted estimates put the figure well below 10 per cent.
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