Prenuptial agreement in Germany: a subjective aspect

The increasing interest in concluding prenuptial agreements and the growing body of jurisprudence related to rendering them invalid update the need to improve family law contracts. The purpose of the study is to reveal the subjective aspect of the prenuptial agreement that is widely evaluated by the German courts to control the subject matter of the agreement. For example, the subjective aspect includes economic and social inequality of spouses characterized by the big age difference, different life experience, differences in vocational education, the pregnancy. In the opinion of German lawyers, this aspect does not go beyond the freedom of contract established by the German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch) and is intended to protect the parties to the agreement from discrimination and violation of moral standards. In addition, it does not affect the personal relationships between spouses; in particular, it does not regulate the non-property relations of the parties to the agreement. Besides, German Civil Code like the Russian Federation Family Code regulates only the property nature of prenuptial agreements. The author concludes that it is necessary to identify the subjective aspect of the prenuptial agreement in Russian legal matters.