The Importance of Having a Prenup

By Amy E. Wong

One romantic evening, I began chatting up the idea of marriage with my boyfriend. He was, naturally, scared senseless. Then, after letting the idea sink in, he said, "Well, obviously, we'd get a prenup." That didn't sit well with me, and I began ranting about how "there should be more trust in the relationship." I remember pounding home my intentions, professing, "I would never, never, NEVER take anything from you!"

I'm romantic and a tad-bit temperamental. As illustrated above, a romantic evening with me can spin into a heated debate, and professions of undying love can easily be fanned into vitriolic flames. And I hate to admit it, but he was right. Perhaps a prenuptial agreement—as unromantic and distasteful as it seems—is not such a bad idea after all.

As I write, there are a few messy high-profile divorces pending, but the one that has my blood boiling is the split between Paul McCartney and Heather Mills. Here's a quick profile: The two got hitched on June 11, 2002, their kid was born on October 28, 2003, and they announced their "amicable" split on May 17, 2006. And—last but not least—according to Mills, McCartney turned down her offer to sign a prenuptial agreement.

This means that Mills can claim up to $400 million, a quarter of McCartney's estimated $1.5 billion fortune.

At first, the McCartney-Mills split seemed amicable, but now it's just plain ugly—with most of the ugliness, I might add, coming from the Mills party. Let me compare the tunes McCartney and Mills were singing immediately after and five months after their separation:

In May, McCartney wrote on his website, "It's been suggested that [Heather] married me for the money, and there is not an ounce of truth to this. She is a very generous person who spends most of her time trying to help others in greater need than herself."

Five months later, in October, The Evening Standard, a London newspaper, reported that Mills filed a 13-page petition with a London court. In the petition's transcript, Mills complains that McCartney called her "a nag," and then whines that her female bodyguard was withdrawn from her use after she "refused to go to [an] after-show party and instead dined privately at a restaurant." Mills was allegedly "forced to take a 30-minute walk back to the hotel, no taxi being available and the car driven by the female bodyguard having been withdrawn from her use by [McCartney]."

Sure, Mills is a cripple (and it's so un-PC to make fun of handicapped folks, but let's make this case an exception). However, contrary to being "generous [...] to those in greater need than herself," Mills is a self-pitying money-grubber who complains about being forced to cook, not being allowed to buy an antique bed pan, not having McCartney's "beautiful spare office in New York," and being forced to take a 30-minute walk. Perhaps Mills thought that when she married McCartney she would be so rich and pampered that she would never have to take another step again!

In regards to Mills' generosity, according to www.wikipedia.com, "Articles have also questioned the effectiveness of her charitable work in the Balkans, and she has also come under criticism from disabled people claiming she presumes to speak on their behalf."

In fact, it seems this former prostitute and porn model is not above sacrificing her own reputation in exchange for some cold, hard cash. She's done it before; what's to stop her from doing it again, especially when there's so much more to gain?

Mills has gone on a full-out campaign to besmirch McCartney's reputation, even at the expense of incurring the wrath of all Beatles and McCartney fans. In the transcript, Mills claims that McCartney "stabbed her with a wine bottle," "grabbed [her] by the neck and pushed her," "continued to use alcohol and to consume alcohol to excess," and "forbade her from having an operation because it clashed with his holiday plans and called her an 'ungrateful bitch.'"

I don't want to believe any of Mills' allegations, and I'm crossing all my fingers, hoping that this statement on www.wikipedia.com is true: "Heather Mills McCartney has been written about in several publications for alleged embellishments to her life story."

I've never been married, but horror stories like this one, and the disastrous Hollywood divorce stories below, are enough to make me wise up about the necessity of a fair prenup:

• Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise
• Amy Irving and Steven Spielberg
• Kenny Rogers and Marianne Gordon
• Kevin Costner and Cindy Silva