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Why Meghan Markle didn't have to sign a prenuptial agreement

Photo credit: WPA Pool - Getty Images
Photo credit: WPA Pool - Getty Images

From Cosmopolitan

The royal family is rich. With cash in the bank, plus a lotta crown jewels and all those sprawling properties, they're estimated to be worth around £70 billion (!!). The family is so wealthy, marrying into it is something of a responsibility, and for that reason you'd assume the head honchos would do all they can to protect their assets.

Perhaps the most obvious way to do this would be to enforce prenuptial agreements for those marrying a royal, but interestingly this doesn't seem to be the case.

"I don’t think members of the royal family sign prenuptial agreements," Katie Nicholl, author of Harry: Life, Loss, and Love, told Town & Country earlier this year. "It’s commonplace with celebrity marriage, but this is not a celebrity marriage, it’s a royal marriage."

Photo credit: Samir Hussein - Getty Images
Photo credit: Samir Hussein - Getty Images

With Prince Harry being worth an estimated £30 million (anyone else's bank balance feeling quite... well, sparse?) cynics and naysayers may have advised him to request bride Meghan Markle to sign a prenup ahead of their May 19 wedding. But in keeping with the rest of the royal family (three of the Queen's four children have got divorced, and none of them are thought to have had prenuptial agreements) Meghan signed nada.

Some people might have thought that the royal family would have implemented prenups as a reaction to Prince Charles and Diana's divorce in 1996. In their settlement, Diana is reported to have received a lump sum of £17.5 million, plus an allowance for her private office, and the right to continue living in Kensington Palace with Princes William and Harry.

Photo credit: Tim Graham - Getty Images
Photo credit: Tim Graham - Getty Images

Alas, this wasn't the case - and William and Kate didn't have one either before they got married.

Royal expert and author of Prince Harry: The Inside Story Duncan Larcombe believes the lack of prenup may be because there's no direct threat posed to any of the royal family's most prominent residences because the Queen owns them all, so they wouldn't be classed as part of Harry's estate.

"You wouldn’t need a prenuptial agreement to stop Windsor Castle from being cut in half in the event they divorce," he said ahead of the royal wedding.

Photo credit: Max Mumby/Indigo - Getty Images
Photo credit: Max Mumby/Indigo - Getty Images

And then there's the fact that prenuptial agreements aren't technically legally binding in this country. As Sheppersons Solicitors explain, a judge would certainly consider it in a courtroom, but because royal divorces are handled outside the courts, it's basically irrelevant anyway.

Being optimistic, I'm mostly sure the reason Harry didn't ask Meghan to sign a prenuptial agreement is because he intends to be with her forever, rendering any form of prenup completely and utterly pointless. And that's what I'll continue to believe while they live happily ever after.

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