Greg Daly
A leading canon lawyer has warned that prenuptial agreements could invalidate marriages, as farmers have indicated their support for such agreements being introduced into Irish law.
Research from Macra na Feirme conducted at livestock marts over recent weeks has found that 72% of surveyed farmers believe prenuptial agreements should have a place in Irish law, with only 15% of those surveyed believing the agreements should not be legal.
The finding follows several years in which farmers have expressed concerns about family farms being split up in divorce settlements.
Fr Paul Churchill, judicial vicar of the Dublin Regional Marriage Tribunal and President of the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland, has, however, cautioned that marriages cannot be made on conditional grounds.
Problem
“The problem with that is that the Church both east and west considers any conditions laid down pertaining to the future as having an invalidating effect on the consent for marriage,” he told The Irish Catholic, continuing, “Marriage really should be unconditional.”
Adding that he believes the subject is a controversial one among civil lawyers, he said that he had found that couples planning to marry tend not to want such agreements.
“From my experience of talking to people, I think that many young people would actively be concerned if somebody was tagging some kind of condition on their consent to marriage,” he said, observing that couples want to be able to say their marriage vows “on the basis of trust in the other person”.
“The great problem of pre-marriage agreements is a building in the seed of distrust between the couples, and therefore undermining the very foundation under which many people go forward to marriage, which is one of total trust in the person who is their soulmate and partner for life,” he said.
The survey followed a Government decision last summer to set aside plans to place prenuptial agreements on a legal footing due to constitutional and other concerns.
Of the over 1,000 respondents, 67% of those aged over 65 supported prenuptial agreements having a legal standing, as did 83% of farmers aged under 34.