Michael Drake, a matrimonial lawyer in London, recently had three clients, all men, come in to discuss their financial situations before getting married. Based on those conversations, two decided not to go through with their weddings.
Vanessa Lloyd Platt, a lawyer and author on divorce law, says women tell her that they feel like they are penalized for working during their marriage. Judges, she explained, will expect women who have worked to return to the work force after a divorce, even if they have children, whereas women with no former career typically will receive alimony for the rest of their lives.
And at a dinner party in London, a divorced mother of two, whose ex-husband earns a high salary, said she was jealous of the lifetime support payments her recently divorced friends are receiving. "When I divorced five years ago I felt lucky to get half of our community property," said the woman, who did not want to be identified.
If anything can be gleaned from these diverse views of marriage and money in the new millennium, it is this: Gone are the days when the prospect of a big drop in lifestyle kept the spouses of wealthy people from filing for divorce to end a less-than-perfect union.
In fact, when a big-money marriage goes sour these days, it is more than likely that the high- earner will pay handsomely ? especially if the spouse has never worked, and even if they were married for a relative eye-blink. As a result, it is more than likely that the spouse with the money will try to stick out a shaky marriage or put in the effort to make it work ? if, that is, they ever make it to the altar.
Nowhere is this more true than in Britain, where the vow "for richer or for poorer" seems to apply more to divorce than to marriage. Nearly 10 months after the House of Lords ruled in two landmark divorce cases that spouses were entitled to a share of lifetime earnings and that a "legitimate expectation" of a wealthy lifestyle justified a high settlement, family law practitioners around the world are debating whether the balance has swung too far.
They are also wondering whether these rulings ? which came just as the boom in London's financial services industry was putting multimillion- pound bonuses into the pockets of bankers and lawyers ? are actually threatening the institution of marriage, or at least the concept of marriage as a partnership of equals.
And as globalization takes hold even in the realm of divorce ? with wealthy couples, who often hold assets in more than one country, shopping for the most advantageous jurisdiction in which to divide them up ? an extreme case in one legal system can end up becoming case law in another.
"These laws create a disincentive to marry," said Jeremy Levison, a lawyer who represented Kenneth McFarlane, the husband in one of the landmark cases. McFarlane, an accountant who earned ?750,000, or $1.46 million, a year, was ordered to pay his ex-wife ?250,000 a year for the rest of her life. On May 24, 2006, the Law Lords, the highest appeals court in England and Wales (Scotland has its own jurisdiction), agreed with a lower court that Julia McFarlane's contribution to her husband's career during a 16-year marriage entitled her to a share of his future earnings.
On the same day, the high court upheld an award to Melissa Miller of ?5 million of her ex- husband's ?17.5 million assets. The couple had been married less than three years and had no children together, yet the Law Lords refused Alan Miller's appeal of a lower court ruling in which Melissa Miller's lawyer argued that she was entitled to "a legitimate expectation that in the future she would be living on a higher economic plane."
While it is still too early to know whether the divorce rate has risen in light of the judgments, past statistics are hardly encouraging. In 2004, 273,100 marriages were registered in England and Wales. Of those, 109,400 were remarriages. In the same year, 154,000 divorces were granted.
"The social impact of these laws has truly made people cautious about marriage and remarriage because of what they can lose financially," Drake said.
The Miller case, in particular, paved the way for what Philip Beresford, who compiles the annual Rich List of wealthy British for The Sunday Times, calls "platinum diggers" ? a more ambitious version of gold diggers, who marry for money with divorce in mind.
"I feel sorry for the next generation of Internet entrepreneurs," Beresford said, adding that not all of the targets would be men: By the year 2025, it is estimated that 60 percent of the wealth in Britain will be held by women.
"With all the millionaires and billionaires coming to town, the London lawyers must be quite happy," Beresford said.
In fact, though, many divorce lawyers said they were stunned by the decisions.
"Business is booming, but it is actually terrifying," said Lloyd Platt, who practices in London. "The impact of these cases on the longer-married couples ? the 45- to 50-year-old group ? is dramatic. Now that they can get the money, they don't want to stay in the relationship."
A side effect of the two cases, Lloyd Platt added, is that it has created a disincentive to work during marriage, for fear of jeopardizing a big award in the event of a divorce.
"The wife who gets her nails done, has a nanny, plays tennis and spends her husband's money as fast as he can make it will get a better settlement than the woman who works her guts out," Lloyd Platt said.
Liz Vernon, a family lawyer with Clintons, a London firm, said that even in the McFarlane case the issue of "compensation" ? the amount required for financial redress to a party who is disadvantaged by a marital breakup ? was "nebulous" and "unclear."
"I am saddened that the House of Lords did not issue more guidelines and think about us here on the ground," Vernon said. "We are the ones who have to deal with the people going through these costly divorces." Most big-money divorces take 18 months and cost at least ?1 million in fees, according to Bramdiva, a financial advisory firm for wealthy women.
A further repercussion of the rulings is that England and Wales are now indisputably the best places in the world for the spouses of wealthy partners to petition for divorce ? the Harrods, as it were, for those shopping for divorce jurisdictions.
The trend started in 2000 with the White decision, in which the Law Lords ruled that the starting point for equitable distribution of assets should be 50-50, rather than the "reasonable needs" standard commonly applied at the time.
The Brussels II regulation of 2001 added fuel to the fire by harmonizing the rules on divorce jurisdiction across European Union member states except Denmark. "It stated that wherever divorce proceedings are first issued is where the divorce will take place," said Charlotte Bradley, a partner in Kingsley Napley, a London law firm.
That ruling, and the fact that many well-to- do people fulfill the criteria for jurisdiction in at least three countries ? where they were born, where they live and where they own property ? have led to what Bradley and other lawyers call the "Eurostar divorce."
"If I am acting for a French wife married to a banker, I will tell her to file immediately in England," where the couple lives, Bradley said. If Bradley's client is the husband, "I have a list of French lawyers I send him to immediately telling him to file quickly in France, which is a much kinder country to wealthier husbands," she said.
Drake described a pending case in which both the husband and wife filed for divorce on opposite sides of the Channel on the same morning. "The difference in the jurisdiction is worth millions to the husband," he said.
The phenomenon is so entrenched that some people plan their futures around it. "I know men who are moving their families to France anticipating ending the marriage in a few years," Levison, the lawyer for McFarlane, said. "They now simply look at it as good tax planning."
Even in jurisdictions where large settlements are not the norm, establishing where to file can consume time and money.
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