‘This is an important victory for love,” says Katrin Radmacher, the beautiful
German heiress who last week made legal history when her pre-nuptial
agreement was recognised at the Court of Appeal in London.
“No longer will men or women have to worry that they are being married for
their money. This has been a very traumatic episode of my life and I am glad
that justice has been done.”
Radmacher’s joy follows a successful attempt to protect her substantial
fortune (estimates vary from £55m to £100m) from her ex-husband Nicolas
Granatino, a 38-year-old French banker turned Oxford research chemist. When
the couple separated in 2006, she assumed he would stick to the terms of a
deal signed before their 1998 marriage, in which both agreed to waive their
rights to claim against each other’s wealth in the case of divorce.
Her assumption was proved wrong: last year he won a £5.56m share of her
fortune in the High Court in London. Last week the ruling was overturned:
Nicolas’s share has been slashed to £700,000 plus housing and maintenance —
and a new precedent has been established.
The tussle, labelled the “case of the century” by divorce lawyers, has caused
a sensation well beyond legal circles. At its heart lies an elegant
40-year-old woman who dislikes publicity but who was happy to talk to me in
her hometown of Düsseldorf shortly before the ruling.
Katrin’s father, Dr Edmund Radmacher, inherited a chemistry company that he
transformed into a flourishing concern. Katrin, the youngest of three girls,
went to a state school and then a convent: “We had a simple family house. We
walked or cycled to school. My father went to work on a moped. He strongly
believes that if you raise children in too much luxury it affects their
character.” After school she studied international management.
Did she ever worry about how her inheritance might affect her relationships?
“No. I was raised to believe that money was not really something you talk
about. I didn’t worry about it until I thought of getting married.” After
working for her father in Germany, she moved to London with one of her
sisters and set up home in Chelsea.
She met her future husband at Tramp nightclub in the West End. “Nobody
introduced us. I was trying to get away from somebody who was chasing me and
I just grabbed a hand and it was his and we went dancing ... we exchanged
numbers. We were head over heels in love ... at least I was, so I assume he
was, and after seven months he proposed in the south of France. I thought I
had found the perfect man for me but, if I had to give advice, I would say
live with somebody first; that is when you find out how compatible you
really are.”
Nicolas was then a banker at JP Morgan, earning about $500,000 a year. As
Katrin has argued during her legal battle, he too stands to inherit a
substantial amount of money. His father is a former vice-president of IBM.
She has said his parents are worth £30m; he says £6m.
In 1998, five months after the proposal, they were married in London and
Verbier. The ceremonies were decorative and also, she thought, legally
watertight. The pre-nup conversation surfaced during the engagement: “I said
that I couldn’t accept my partner not signing a pre-nup because that is the
only way to make sure you are not being married for your money. It was never
a subject of tension. He said, ‘I would never take a penny from you anyhow’.”
They followed German practice, going four months before the wedding to a
lawyer who drew up the pre-nup and translated it for Nicolas, who does not
speak German. He has since claimed he didn’t understand what he was signing.
For a banker of his calibre that seems surprising. Indeed, last year’s High
Court judgment stated: “He understood the underlying premise, that he was
not entitled to anything if the parties divorced. In essence, he accepted
that he was expected to be self-sufficient. As a man of the world that was
abundantly clear.”
The story that follows is the slow disintegration of an ill-starred marriage.
Katrin became pregnant straight away and had her first baby in September
1999: “I had one week of very bad postnatal depression, which I hid because
I was scared they would take the baby away from me. Nicolas loved being a
father.” They moved to New York for Nicolas’s work, then back to London, and
Katrin had a second baby. A few months later, Nicolas and Katrin were in
couple’s therapy.
“I told Nicolas that I wasn’t happy. I wanted to save the marriage and tell my
children that I’d given it my best and tried what I could. We wanted a
different kind of life, a quiet family life with friends. He wanted to stay
in the city. I’m not a party girl and I wanted to be fit for the children in
the morning.” She had a housekeeper and then a nanny “as an extra pair of
hands”.
“Nicolas was very ambitious at the time. He always said he wanted to become a
billionaire ... but he wasn’t happy in his job. We had three different
therapists before we found one we both liked. We went every week for three
years.”
As time went by Katrin became more and more disillusioned with her husband. In
2003 he decided to do a PhD at Oxford. She was supportive: “I wanted him to
be happy and I knew he didn’t like his job.”
On holiday in the Turks and Caicos at Easter 2006, however, something happened
that made Katrin think she had had enough. She won’t be drawn on the detail:
“It’s not something I want to see in print. But I knew then that it wasn’t
the kind of relationship I wanted for the rest of my life.” She waited for
the next therapy session and “I said what he did and that for me there was
no future in the marriage”.
Between Easter and October they lived in a £7,000-a-month London flat (he is
still there when he’s not in Oxford), together with the children, the
divorce on the table: “A nightmare. He decided to be home 24/7. When I asked
for the divorce I offered him a flat identical to the one we were in, plus
some money. Initially he seemed to go along with that. Then it became clear
he had no intention of moving out.” As no one would budge, Katrin slept on a
mattress between the children’s rooms “because he refused to move out of the
bedroom”.
Both sides were communicating about the divorce via their lawyers’ letters,
which were arriving at the same flat. Nicolas hired Fiona Shackleton, who
had represented the Prince of Wales and Sir Paul McCartney. Katrin was
receiving advice from her lawyers to go ahead and file for divorce in
London: “It had never crossed my mind that a contract between adults would
not be binding in England. There is a different mentality there.” Nicolas
refused to move out of the flat; when Katrin found another flat for herself
and the children she had to go to court to get permission to move. When she
was obliged to leave without her furniture, it began to dawn on her that the
prenup could be in jeopardy. She was already paying for everything because
he said that he had run out of funds.
Nothing was ever enough for Nicolas: “I bought him a car because after the
Madrid bombings he said he didn’t want to take the train to Oxford. I
pointed at the BMW 5-series; he pointed at the 6-series and a Bentley. So I
went for the 6-series. He had a lot of things that I would consider too
expensive for me. It was always Loro Piana; cashmere, then baby cashmere,
then vicuna in all colours. I bought him a watch from Breguet for our
engagement. He wanted a more expensive one; I got him a £40,000 one. Then he
pointed at the £150,000 one ... That is not how I have been raised.”
In a year, after they split up, he spent more than £100,000 on holidays.
“Unrealistic and unbridled extravagance, given his new life as a man who can
only earn £30,000pa gross,” declared Mrs Justice Baron, the judge
at the initial hearing last year.
Nicolas started to file ancillary relief proceedings. He asked for £10m.
Initially, he was awarded £5.5m. “Until I actually had it in writing, I
thought the prenup would stand,” says Katrin. “Maybe it was wishful
thinking. I don’t know. My father asked me what I thought would happen and I
said, ‘No, daddy, he wouldn’t do that. We have children together. He
wouldn’t do that’. I was wrong.
“Signing a prenup is a free choice. Even in Germany there are limits — a
mother with four children is not going to end up without a roof over her
head. She will be provided for, but not in a castle. There is no presumption
that parents need to have similar lifestyles.”
Now Katrin and Nicolas are no longer speaking. He picks up the children from
school on Friday and drops them off on Monday (he has them alternate
weekends and half the holidays) so they don’t have to see each other. Katrin
lives in Monaco: “The children can spend most of the year outside. I don’t
have to worry about them. Everybody knows each other.”
In the meantime, couples across Europe should take note of this case. Their
fortunes may depend on it.
© The Condé Nast Publications Ltd
Catherine Ostler is editor of Tatler. The full version of this interview is
in the August issue of Tatler, on sale Thursday July 9
