Love Don’t Cost A Thing...Or Does It?

The world swooned when Jennifer Lopez, the age-defying sweetheart of America’s music scene, rekindled her love affair with Ben Affleck after a 20-year hiatus. Known affectionately as ‘Bennifer’, the couple’s journey has been a rollercoaster of engagements, separations and, in early 2021, a surprise reunion which resulted in Las Vegas nuptials in July 2022 (sweetly documented from the Chapel’s toilet by Affleck on Instagram), closely followed by a multi-million-pound wedding party on a private estate in Georgia in August 2022. The world watched as Bennifer professed their love for one another yet again, declaring that this was the greatest love story never told (quite literally – check Amazon Prime, dear reader). The media was ablaze with images of the pair’s picture-perfect nuptials and her adoring fans could breathe a sigh of relief that Jenny from the Block had finally found her match. 

Chapter closed, or so we thought.  

Nobody is safe from the intense media scrutiny which overshadows a very public rekindling, not least Bennifer. In recent months, reports have emerged of irritation at award ceremonies, car door slamming and anniversaries spent apart which have amplified public speculation as to the status of the couple’s marriage. Independently wealthy of each other, questions arise (particularly for this writer) as to whether the pair took steps to protect their respective fortunes, or whether they too were so caught up in their own love story that they considered such a thing as a pre-nuptial agreement to be unnecessary. 

Such decisions are, quite rightly, private. But one can only speculate about how things might go for the couple if they do part company and whether Affleck, reportedly the ‘poorer’ of the two with a net worth of $150million as against Lopez’s $400million, might seek to claim a few of those ‘rocks that she got’. If the rumours turn out to be true, theirs was a short, childless marriage and a divorce is unlikely to make very much difference to either of their respective fortunes. Why, then, all the speculation about whether they entered into a pre-nuptial agreement and how that agreement might protect their assets? The media is rife with conflicting reports as to the reason behind the delay in announcing their rumoured divorce; are the lawyers pouring over the terms of their pre-nuptial agreement to thrash out the deal or is the absence of an agreement in the first place generating arguments as to the division of their assets, most notably the $60million Beverly Hills mansion they purchased in June 2023.  

This writer cannot opine on the protection afforded by a pre-nuptial agreement entered into in the US. Let’s imagine for a moment that Bennifer were based in England, and that estate in Georgia was instead a leafy mansion deep in the Cotswolds. Let’s also imagine that they own property all over the world (no imagination necessary) and that they entered into a pre-nuptial agreement in England to protect their assets on a global basis. Undoubtedly their marriage has an international element to it, so what should they have considered when entering into a pre-nuptial agreement? The following factors are all relevant:

• Enforceability of the agreement in a foreign jurisdiction. 
• Whether any process in a foreign jurisdiction needs to be undertaken to make the agreement enforceable (for example, having it notarised). 
• Whether there should be a choice of law clause (and if so, in favour of which country?).
• Whether there should be a single agreement that is compliant with the law of each relevant country, and whether the parties should enter into multiple or mirror agreements in each relevant jurisdiction. In which case, at what point do the terms of a mirror agreement come into force – on the parties relocating to that jurisdiction or on divorce proceedings being commenced there?
• Will the proposed financial provision in the pre-nuptial agreement be viewed by another jurisdiction as fair? In the UK, we quite often seek to ring-fence pre-acquired or inherited assets, whereas a foreign jurisdiction might permit the invasion of inherited wealth. 
• Taking advice from foreign lawyers is crucial, not least to avoid an argument later down the line that one or both of the parties to the agreement did not fully understand the implications of its terms.  

So quite a lot to think about for our Anglicised version of Bennifer. Meanwhile, the LA version continue to evade any public announcement whilst the pressure to put the endless speculation to bed builds. I, for one, hope they receive the time and space they need to part company with the grace and privacy that any couple deserves. 

People Magazine, less so…