Remember: if love dies, money counts

Today's divorce rates have turned the 'until death us do part' phrase in traditional marriage vows into an anachronism. But it appeared to be given new relevance last week by two landmark cases, one involving footballer Ray Parlour and his ex-wife, Karen, and a second involving a high-earning accountant and his ex-wife.

Both judgments have opened up the possibility that high-earning spouses can be pursued for much larger chunks of future income. The practice has been for the courts to award maintenance to lower-earning former spouses according to what the man or woman needed to live on. Last week's judgments decreed that they could get considerably more, depending on circumstances.

Contrary to first impressions, the cases are not expected to tie estranged couples to each other for life as the courts said that the ex-wives' increased maintenance orders should be reviewed - with a view to making clean-break settlements - after set periods: four years in one case and five in the other. But several lawyers believe that the prin ciples established will have a lasting effect on divorce settlements - and not just for the super-rich.

There could be a 'trickle-down' effect for the salaried classes. Lawyers are already seeing increasing demand for pre-nuptial contracts over how income and capital will be split if the marriage goes wrong. Agreeing before marriage how finances should be resolved on a split seems distasteful, but as the stakes are raised, vouchers for a trip to the lawyers would seem a sensible addition to the modern wedding gift list.

'Should we be getting a fixed rate mortgage?' asked a colleague last week. Her bank, Lloyds TSB, had tried to persuade her husband that this was just what the couple needed 'because interest rates are rising'.

Yes, the base rate is on a rising trend - although the Bank of England left it unchanged last week - but it is not a foregone conclusion that a fixed rate is a good buy. It may not be long before fixes - which are based on wholesale money market predictions of future borrowing costs rather than the bank base rate - are falling. Indeed, there were signs of softening in the wholesale markets last week.

Lloyds says it only recommends fixes where they suit individual customers' circumstance, although my colleague was pretty confident this was not a suitable recommendation for her. Fixed rates are relatively expensive now and, while they offer predictability for borrowers on a tight budget, independent advisers are more enthusiastic about capped rates. Here, borrowing costs cannot rise above a certain level, but will fall when the base rate starts to slide again.

Fixes will start to become attractive when the wholesale markets are convinced that the general trend in rates is downwards; and brokers think we are not quite there yet. Last week's softening in wholesale rates reflected a view in financial markets that the general outlook for rates might not be as dire as feared a few weeks ago. This is because of signs that house prices may be weak ening. But the Bank of England will want to see a few more soggy sets of statistics before it feels confident house prices are under control. If your budget is stretched, by all means look to a fix, but don't assume it's the only loan in town, whatever a bank may say.