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Radmacher v Granatino [2010] UKSC 42: What It Decided
Part of: Nuptial Agreements
Radmacher v Granatino [2010] UKSC 42 is the case that decided how much weight an English court gives to a marriage agreement. Nine justices heard it. They gave judgment on 20 October 2010, and family courts have followed it ever since.
You may be reading this as a student. You may also be here because your own agreement now faces a challenge. This page answers both questions, so it sets out what the court actually held and what that means in practice.
We quote the judgment itself throughout, with paragraph numbers, rather than paraphrasing a textbook. Our family law specialists work with these agreements every week.
What did Radmacher v Granatino decide?
The Supreme Court held that a court should normally hold a couple to an agreement they entered freely, knowing what it meant. It threw out the husband’s appeal, so the German agreement he signed in 1998 stood.
The test sits at paragraph 75 of the judgment. The court put it in a single sentence:
“The court should give effect to a nuptial agreement that is freely entered into by each party with a full appreciation of its implications unless in the circumstances prevailing it would not be fair to hold the parties to their agreement.”
Read that sentence slowly, because every word in it does work. Three separate questions sit inside it. Did each of you enter it freely? Did each of you appreciate what it meant? And would it be fair, now, to hold you to it?
The last question matters most. A judge asks it about the circumstances at the divorce, not the circumstances at the signing. So an agreement that looked perfectly fair on your wedding day can still fail years later.
The facts behind Radmacher v Granatino
Katrin Radmacher is German and came from a very wealthy paper and filtration family. Nicolas Granatino is French and was working for JP Morgan in London, earning around £120,000 a year by 1998.
They signed the agreement in front of a German notary on 1 August 1998, then married in London that November. It gave each of them no claim on the other. Two daughters followed. After eight years the marriage broke down, and they separated in October 2006.
The husband then claimed financial provision anyway. At first instance Baron J awarded him £5,560,000. The Court of Appeal cut that back to provision for his role as a father, and the Supreme Court agreed with the Court of Appeal.
The detail most summaries leave out
Here is what makes this case genuinely surprising. The husband had no independent legal advice. He had no translation of the German document. He had no figures for his wife’s wealth either, because she had asked the notary to delete the clause that would have disclosed them.
Most people assume those three failures would sink an agreement. In this case they did not. The notary explained the terms to him in English for two to three hours, and he had four months before the wedding to take advice. He simply did not take it.
The court’s reasoning appears at paragraph 69. Sound advice is “obviously desirable”, and full disclosure “may be necessary”. Even so, the judgment continues:
“But if it is clear that a party is fully aware of the implications of an ante-nuptial agreement and indifferent to detailed particulars of the other party’s assets, there is no need to accord the agreement reduced weight because he or she is unaware of those particulars.”
So the safeguards are not a checklist you either pass or fail. They are evidence of one thing: whether you understood the deal you were doing.
What Radmacher v Granatino did not change
The case did not make these agreements binding in England and Wales. A judge still holds the power to divide your finances however fairness requires, and no document you sign takes that power away.
The court said so in its second paragraph, before any of the analysis:
“A court when considering the grant of ancillary relief is not obliged to give effect to nuptial agreements – whether they are ante-nuptial or post-nuptial. The parties cannot, by agreement, oust the jurisdiction of the court. The court must, however, give appropriate weight to such an agreement.”
That power comes from section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, which survived this judgment untouched. At paragraph 7 the justices accepted they could not alter it, because Parliament had put it in statute.
Children sit outside the deal altogether. Paragraph 77 is blunt about it, and it is the shortest rule in the whole case:
“A nuptial agreement cannot be allowed to prejudice the reasonable requirements of any children of the family.”
Our page on nuptial agreements covers the document itself, and our guide to prenuptial agreements covers what to put in one.
How a court weighs needs, compensation and sharing
The judgment splits fairness into the three strands from White v White and Miller v Miller. Needs and compensation are the two that most often break an agreement, while sharing is the strand an agreement most often survives.
Paragraph 81 explains why. Nobody signs up for destitution:
“The parties are unlikely to have intended that their ante-nuptial agreement should result, in the event of the marriage breaking up, in one partner being left in a predicament of real need, while the other enjoys a sufficiency or more, and such a result is likely to render it unfair to hold the parties to their agreement.”
The same paragraph deals with compensation. If one of you gave up a career to run the home, an agreement letting the other keep everything they earned is “likely to be unfair”.
Sharing is different. Where both of you can meet your own needs, paragraph 82 says fairness “may well not require a departure” from what you agreed. That is precisely how the husband came to lose. The judge found him extremely able, his career change reflected his own preference, and no compensation claim arose at all.
The safeguards Radmacher v Granatino actually set out
Paragraph 71 lists what reduces or destroys the weight of an agreement. Duress, fraud and misrepresentation come first, as they would for any contract.
Then the court goes further than ordinary contract law:
“But unconscionable conduct such as undue pressure (falling short of duress) will also be likely to eliminate the weight to be attached to the agreement, and other unworthy conduct, such as exploitation of a dominant position to secure an unfair advantage, would reduce or eliminate it.”
Paragraph 72 adds the human context a judge may consider. Your emotional state counts. Your age and maturity count too, as does any earlier marriage either of you had. Above all, a judge may ask whether the wedding would have gone ahead without the agreement.
Use the questions below to see which part of the test your own agreement is weakest on. This page keeps nothing you tick and sends it nowhere.
Every box you could not tick points at one limb of the paragraph 75 test. The last three are the ones that most often reopen an agreement years later, because a judge applies them to your circumstances now.
The calls a checklist cannot make for you
- Whether what you both knew in 1998, or in 2018, amounted to a full appreciation of the implications.
- Whether a change since signing is large enough to make the agreement unfair today.
- How much of your needs claim survives once a judge weighs the agreement against it.
- Whether to negotiate round the agreement or challenge its weight head on.
These turn entirely on your own facts, and they cost far less to get right before anyone issues an application.
Book a free initial consultation
One of our specialists will give you initial advice on where your agreement stands.
Lady Hale’s dissent in Radmacher v Granatino
Eight justices dismissed the appeal. Lady Hale, the only woman on the panel, would have varied the order so the husband kept a home for life.
Her reasons matter, and she set out why she wrote separately at paragraph 137. An agreement like this one, she said, has a purpose:
“the object of an ante-nuptial agreement is to deny the economically weaker spouse the provision to which she – it is usually although by no means invariably she – would otherwise be entitled”
She then made the observation this case is still known for. There is, she wrote, “a gender dimension to the issue which some may think ill-suited to decision by a court consisting of eight men and one woman”.
Her own test, at paragraph 169, reads almost like the majority’s. The difference is that hers refuses to start from a presumption:
“Did each party freely enter into an agreement, intending it to have legal effect and with a full appreciation of its implications? If so, in the circumstances as they now are, would it be fair to hold them to their agreement?”
Lord Mance thought the two formulations would rarely differ in practice. Lady Hale replied that she “would prefer not to take that risk”. Her closing line at paragraph 195 is the most quoted sentence in the case: “Marriage still counts for something in the law of this country and long may it continue to do so.”
What Radmacher v Granatino means for your own agreement
In practice the case cuts both ways. A well-made agreement is now very hard to shake off. Equally, a missing signature on an advice certificate will not win a case on its own.
Four practical points follow from the judgment itself.
- Understanding beats paperwork. The question is what you knew, not which forms exist. That is paragraph 69.
- Timing is about pressure. Sign days before a wedding and you invite the argument that somebody felt pressured, so build in a real gap.
- Needs are the live battleground. Most challenges that succeed are needs cases, not disclosure cases.
- You cannot sign children away. Nothing in an agreement binds a judge on what children reasonably require.
If you signed abroad, the position is more layered. The agreement in this case was German, drawn under German law, and that did not stop an English court applying English principles to it. Our guides to expat prenuptial and postnuptial agreements and to prenuptial and postnuptial agreements in Germany go into that.
What we see in practice
A client arrived convinced her agreement was worthless. Nobody had given her independent advice, she had never seen a list of her husband’s assets, and she had signed a document written in a language she read only haltingly.
None of that was the real issue. The real issue was whether she had understood, at the time, that she was giving up a claim on everything he owned. She had, and she said so in her own first account of it.
What eventually moved her case was nothing to do with the signing. It was that she had stopped working to raise the children, while he had carried on earning. That is a compensation argument under paragraph 81, and it is a far stronger one than any complaint about missing advice.
The lesson repeats. People challenge the paperwork because the paperwork is visible, yet the argument that works is almost always about what has happened to them since.
Shared by Hannah Overton, family law specialist. Details changed so nobody can identify the client.
Radmacher v Granatino and Prest v Petrodel compared
Both cases are Supreme Court decisions that shape what you walk away with after a divorce. They attack the problem from opposite ends, though.
This case concerns an agreement you made. Prest v Petrodel Resources Ltd [2013] UKSC 34 is about assets your spouse holds through a company, and it decided that a family judge may not simply look through a company because the case is a divorce.
| Radmacher v Granatino (2010) | Prest v Petrodel (2013) | |
|---|---|---|
| The question | How much weight does a marriage agreement carry? | Can a family court reach assets held by a company? |
| The answer | Hold the parties to it, unless that would now be unfair | Not by ignoring the company, only by proving a trust |
| Who won | The wife; the husband’s appeal failed | The wife; seven properties sat on trust for the husband |
| The statute in play | Section 25, Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 | Section 24(1)(a), Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 |
| What it means for you | What you signed matters, and so does what has changed since | Non-disclosure has consequences, but you still need the legal route |
Read together, they describe the two ends of a financial case. One decides the weight of your own promises, and the other decides how far a judge can reach for the money.
Common questions about Radmacher v Granatino
Is Radmacher v Granatino still good law?
Yes. The Supreme Court decided it in October 2010 and no later decision has displaced the paragraph 75 test. Parliament has not legislated on marriage agreements either, so the case remains the leading authority in England and Wales.
Who actually won Radmacher v Granatino?
The wife. The husband appealed and lost at paragraph 123, which left the Court of Appeal’s reduced award in place. He kept provision for his role as the children’s father, but not long-term provision for himself.
Did the husband have a lawyer when he signed?
No. The notary offered to postpone the signing so that he could take independent advice, and he declined. He then had around four months before the wedding and did not seek advice in that time either, which the Supreme Court recorded at paragraph 92.
Does Radmacher v Granatino make a marriage agreement binding?
No. Paragraph 2 states plainly that the parties cannot oust the jurisdiction of the court. A judge keeps the statutory power to make whatever financial order fairness requires, although a sound agreement will usually be decisive in practice.
Does missing disclosure kill an agreement?
Not automatically. Paragraph 69 asks whether each party had the information material to the decision they were making. Where someone understood what they were giving up and did not care about the precise figures, missing disclosure may change nothing.
Does Radmacher v Granatino apply to agreements signed after the wedding?
Yes. The court said at paragraph 75 that the same proposition applies to both ante-nuptial and post-nuptial agreements. Lady Hale added at paragraph 171 that a court may still attach rather more weight to an agreement made when separation was already in view.
Does it apply in Scotland or Northern Ireland?
No. The decision is an English and Welsh authority on section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. Scotland treats these agreements differently, and the judgment itself notes at paragraph 3 that the English approach differs from Scots law.
Worried your agreement will not hold? Talk to a specialist
If somebody has told you that your agreement settles everything, or that it is worthless, neither statement is safe without looking at your facts. The paragraph 75 test turns on what you each knew then and what has happened since.
We will read your agreement, tell you honestly where it is strong and where it is weak, and set out your options before you spend anything on a court application.
![Prest v Petrodel [2013] UKSC 34: What It Really Decided](https://www.kabirfamilylaw.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Prest-v-Petrodel-1024x572.jpg)
![Radmacher v Granatino [2010] UKSC 42: What It Decided](https://www.kabirfamilylaw.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Radmacher-v-Granatino-1024x572.jpg)
