Yes, I always worked and my husband on the divorce got more than 50% even though I would estimate he probably earned about a fifth at the most of our assets/savings/shares. He bascially got everything, our life savings, my shares, every single penny of savings and I got a mortgage of over £1m (plus some equity in a house I can't sell because I have to house 5 children he chooses virtually not to see and not to support). He is a higher rate tax payer, has a mortgage free 5 bed house, works full time and has several hundred thousand in the bank. Such is English divorce law.
If you're already married you could try a post (after) nup. This article in the FT this week was interesting about them but from a US perspective.
"The massive infusion of cash into the so-called hedge fund communities in New York, Connecticut and California has proved to be fatal to many marriages ? and a windfall for lawyers, psychiatrists and forensic accountants who specialise in the super rich.
?There is no question that a huge infusion of wealth to relatively young people has a disastrous effect on the marriage?s stability,? says Bern Clare, a Manhattan divorce lawyer.
Divorce hedge-fund style often means the judges involved must cope with pre-nuptial and post-nuptial agreements, years of fights over access to hedge fund accounts, and monetary demands well into eight and nine figures.
?When you are dealing with the über-wealthy, you are dealing with the über-lawyers,? says Kevin Tierney, the presiding judge of the family division in Connecticut?s Stamford-Norwalk district, where many hedge fund families live. ?They have accountants and para-legals and duelling experts.?
Further complicating matters is that the assets involved, unlike real estate or jewellery, are highly variable, depending on the gyrations of the stock market. ?You can have an asset change by $1m while a witness is on the stand,? Judge Tierney says.
Hedge fund and private equity divorces are often far more bitter than those involving film stars, according to Scott Weston, a Los Angeles matrimonial lawyer. ?People are fighting for their ultimate rights,? he says. ?They?re not satisfied with $20m, $30m. They want half. Why not spend a couple more million dollars [on lawyers] to get $20m more.?
Mr Weston recently had a case where the dependant spouse, a wife, insisted she needed $800,000 a month in child support payments, even though she already had an income of $7 million a year.
?The judge listened calmly and found she had plenty to maintain herself. Then he ordered $100,000 [a month].?
Sometimes the little things prove to be the sticking point. Sheila Riesel, head of the matrimonial law group at Blank Rome, says: ?I?ve had cases involving hundreds of millions of dollars and knock-down drag-out fights over the kitchen equipment.?
In one recent divorce, the entire settlement was hung up on the issue of whether the former wife would be given $500,000 or $750,000 a year to cover the cost of first-class air travel, says Ken Burrows, an attorney who handles hedge fund divorces in New York and Connecticut.
The level of animosity sometimes seems ridiculous to non-participants.
?I?m sensing increasing resentment among the judges. You see steam start to come out of their ears,? Mr Burrows says. ?They say things like: ?If you can?t resolve it, tell your client we?re going to have a trial in two days and she had better be ready.? ?
Still, most participants say the fights eventually get worked out.
Gaetano Ferro, a Connecticut lawyer who is president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, says: ?The more the money, the easier to settle.
?When you?re fighting about $100,000 and it matters whether mom gets the house, they?ll claw and scratch. If you are fighting over $50m or $100m everyone is going to walk away with more money than they?ll ever be able to spend.?
Judge Tierney agrees. ?Ninety per cent of the big-money cases settle,? he says. t be enforceable as we are the place of choice on this planet for lower earners on divorce."
Postnuptial deals explore uncertain legal waters
By Brooke Masters in New York and Michael Peel in London
When hedge fund managers turn to postnuptial agreements in an effort to protect their new wealth and trading strategies from prying spouses, they are entering an uncertain legal world.
Postnuptial contracts are agreements to split marital assets signed after marriage. They have a somewhat unclear legal status in the US, especially in comparison with prenuptial agreements, which are signed before marriage, and have been well-litigated.
Both practices are even less well established in Britain, although attorneys there say the law is evolving, particularly as wealthy business people move between the US and the UK.
In the US, "postnups" are regulated on the state level. Most states do not specifically mention the agreements in their domestic relations code. A few, including Ohio, ban them.
Elsewhere, appeals courts have tended to accept agreements signed as part of an attempted reconciliation but, says Sean Williams, a Harvard Law School lecturer, be sceptical when one party simply gives up claims on the other's assets."