O Direito

Temos que ler direito, para saber direito o significado do Direito

The uncertain.

Like a thick tunnel full of empty space,
Or like a never ending cruel race,
The feeling is quite similar to that of guilt,
But as no blood has been spilled,
You fail to see why you feel so ashamed,
But there is no one else for you to blame,
Some may say that this is not a game,
It’s something you know you must fully engage,
It’s like a spontaneous fit of rage.
It’s like death arriving a bit too early,
It’s like life ending a bit too late.

The feeling that of not knowing what tomorrow brings,
Not in terms of the weather, though rain always comes in
Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring.
But when the time comes for you to spread your wings,
Where will you land?
Will it be land, air or sea?
Will I be someone, something or nobody?
Will you be my friend or my enemy?
Must I plan it out like a predetermined journey?
Or Shall I leave it to the Gods to surprise me?

The bird flies, the whale swims, the lion roars,
And what do I do?
I am clearly designed for some useful necessity.

I fear the uncertain.
But the uncertain must also fear me.
For if it didn’t it would have already surprised me,
With a tedious feeling of certainty.
But it hasn’t so it must have given up on that,
As I have already given up prematurely,
On the quest of knowing what tomorrow will bring,
A sunny, cloudy or rainy Spring
A cold summer with windy blows,
Tomorrow – Oh! Nobody knows.
Yet that is why we live so well,
Like a chronological spell.
Like someone who reveals a surprise that they weren’t supposed to tell,
Over-planning tomorrow is like thieving our spirit and invoking hell,
What will tomorrow bring if uncertainty vanishes,
The fact that I will die we already know,
But knowing the exact time of it is not something I’d really like to know!
For Death already knocks on Spontaneity’s door,
And beyond that I need to know no more.

How will I look? What will I do?
Will I be famous or a someone…
Who. Who?

I know this about the future.
It’s born and dies on the very same moment,
Time is an instrument for measuring things,
I’ve been measured-judged-assessed all my life,
So I’d like to skip this one. Thanks.
Let’s keep uncertainty in our vital equation,
Like a breath of fresh air,
Like unconstrained, mortal, fascination,
To live like there’s no other moment to spare,
Like now is the only thing that I know,
And I wouldn’t certainly dare
Worrying about tomorrow,
As it will make my ignorance grow,
For people only have one brain,
And of all multi-taskers that I Know,
I know this: that worrying usurps our brain power,
Like no other thing does.

Uncertainty is the very product of my prose,
The end of this poem nobody really knows,
So how about do a magic trick,
And make all following words disappear,
I think I’m going to end it right here.

Article 7 CISG and Good Faith: A summary of lecture delivered at the University of Bristol (November 2008)

For the full article email the author at lucasvelozo@hotmail.com

International commercial law is a vital ingredient for the healthy functioning of the global economy. The need for achieving certainty in international commercial law is a fundamental objective, but one that is necessarily counter balanced by the need to maintain flexibility in the system. The role of good faith in international commercial contracts poses a number of implications in the execution and enforceability of these contracts. Indeed, good faith acts as the moralisation agent of contracts and is taken into account by State judges or arbitrators at the different levels of the contractual evolution: establishment, performance and termination. This short essay will aim to dissect the issues pertinent in this area of the law and suggest a number of strategies in addressing the problems identified.

The main issue surrounding good faith in international contracts is the difficulty to ascertain a clear understanding of the obligation of good faith given the varying constructions and inherent ambiguities which surround the notion of this concept. Indeed, the task of reconciling morality and commercial law within the concept of good faith has been faced very differently in the various legal systems and this is the reason why the principle of good faith, although playing an important role in domestic laws, differs greatly in its scope and application depending on the legal tradition which governs a particular commercial transaction.

The contrast can best be exemplified by juxtaposing civil law and common law systems. While civil law systems recognise a general duty to negotiate and perform contracts in good faith, generally speaking the common law approach to good faith is considered to be less encompassing. Within the common law system, however, the rigidity to good faith by the English legal system is not completely shared by the United States (i.e. section 1-203 of the American Uniform Commercial Code). A significant example of a good faith requirement in a common law country can be found in the American Uniform Commercial Code where good faith is defined as meaning ‘honesty in fact in the contract or transaction concerned.’ These developments show a gradual tendency towards the concept of good faith finding favour across the common law world, although considerable differences still continue to exist among the various legal systems.

The attempt to resolve the divisions existing among the civil law and common law systems on the question of the principle of good faith was one of the most challenging problems faced by the drafters at the debates that led up to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sales of Goods (CISG).

The first sub-paragraph of Article 7 of the CISG states that:

“in the interpretation of this Convention, regard is to be had to its international character and to the need to promote uniformity in its application and the observance of good faith in international trade. “

As Bridge notes, “the application of this provision is something of a mystery.”[1] Whether the principle of good faith in Article 7 is relevant only as an interpretative tool of the Convention or if it is also relevant as a standard of behaviour for the contracting parties is a current legal issue in international commercial law.

Indeed, Professor Farnsworth’s opinion argues that “[Article 7(1)] does no more than instruct a court interpreting the Convention’s provisions to consider the importance of [good faith].”[2] Thus, it can be construed that Article 7(1) does not impose on the parties an obligation to act in good faith. The latter approach has been endorsed by the International Chamber of Commerce.[3]

Notwithstanding the language used in Article 7(1), the relevance of the principle of good faith is not limited to the interpretation of the Convention, as there are many provisions in the CISG that would be meaningless without recognizing a general duty to act in good faith (see Art 8(3) CISG).

Considerable disagreement over the interpretation of Article 7(1) exists not only among the literature but also among those judges and arbitrators who apply the CISG’s provisions. Once again, this confirms the difficulty in establishing and maintaining a ‘uniform sales code’ and in deciding disputes in a manner consistent with the spirit of the CISG. Thus, ‘the only thing that seems clear through all these competing arguments is that the uniformity sought by the CISG is definitely lacking with respect to the existence of a good faith obligation’.[4]

Although many decisions of domestic courts recognizing the good faith duty under the CISG are to be found in the major data banks on the CISG, their analysis leads to the conclusion that there is still a definite lack of uniformity in the interpretation of this rule of the Convention.[5] However, the CISG is arguably as flexible an instrument as any other law and its meaning can therefore change with time.[6]

It is argued that good faith under Art. 7(1) CISG ought to be more readily interpreted as a contractual duty in international commercial contracts. The trend, however, tends to suggest otherwise. The problem can be tackled at various levels:

First, a new Treaty could be drafted to replace the CISG in order to address the interpretative difficulties faced by Art. 7 CISG. The Unidroit approach to good faith in international commercial law could be adopted by such a treaty. Unlike the ambiguities of the CISG, there is no doubt that the Unidroit ‘Principles of International Commercial Contracts’ impose a general duty of good faith on the contracting parties.

Second, greater judicial cooperation via a global Judicial Cooperation Network could be established to promote judicial comity and the uniformity of the application and interpretation of Art.7 in international sales contracts. The European Judicial Training Network (EJTN)[7] illustrates how such an institutional model could produce tangible results in the resolution of transnational conceptual difficulties at judicial level.

Third, the current CISG could be retained and a Protocol issued so as to clarify, inter alia, the position of good faith within Art.7 CISG.

Fourth, the ICC could engage in stronger advocacy across all business sectors in order to establish a greater need to oblige parties to act in good faith.

Finally, and due to international law’s atypical nature, other related commercial institutions, such as the WTO could demonstrate greater collaboration in resolving difficulties in this area of international commercial law.

It is argued that the synergy of these recommendations will contribute towards achieving greater fairness and uniformity in international commercial law.

---

[1] Bridge, M. (2007), The International Sale of Goods: Law and Practice, Second Edition, Oxford: OUP.

[2] Farnsworth, E.A., ‘The Eason – Weinmann Colloquium on International and Comparative Law: Duties of Good Faith and Fair Dealing under the UNIDROIT Principles, Relevant International Conventions and National Laws’ (1995) 3 Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law 54-55

[3] ICC Award No 8611 of 1997

[4] Powers, P.J. ‘Defining the Undefinable: Good Faith and the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sales of Goods’ (1999) 18 Journal of Law and Commerce 349

[5] Komarov, A.S, ‘Internationality, Uniformity and Observance of Good Faith Criteria in Interpretation of CISG: Some Remarks on Article 7(1)’ (2005) 25 Journal of Law and Commerce 75

[6] M H Bonell, ‘Article 7: Interpretation of the Convention’ in C M Bianca and M J Bonell (eds), Commentary on the International Sales Law – The 1980 Vienna Sales Convention (1987) at p.83.

[7]See URL: http://www.ejtn.net/www/en/html/index.htm [29-09-2008]

Human Nature to Human Failure? (Comment)

"The United Nations says the world economy faces its worst downturn since the Great Depression" (BBC News, 1/12/08). It is apparent that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from it. It keeps repeating itself. And one would surely think that given modern technology, instantaneous forecasting methods, a plethora of data and economic indices, 'stronger' democracies and a shared sense of 'promoting peace, security and justice' (UN Charter), the world economy would be in safer hands nowadays than in the 1930s. Though all these developments have helped us to improve, the 'human system' is far from perfection. Indeed, it is human nature to experience failure. It goes without saying that the recent financial crisis has taught us many things; but perhaps the most important lesson can be reduced to just 5 letters: greed. Is greed one of the handful biological instincts that have survived from our bipedal ancestors or is it ultimately the product of an increasingly capitalised society?

Human greed has thrown us into a financial ratatouille. The greed to succeed has led us into a sea of failures. It's therefore quite clear that our human failure sprang from our very human nature - whether we learn how to 'trick' nature or accept it as an invariable biological eventuality remains to be seen.

Conserving The Evolving Constitution:

An Interview with the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords

Lord Strathclyde is currently Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords. A couple of years ago, the author interviewed Baroness Amos (then Leader of the House of Lords) with a view to finding out more about constitutional developments in Parliament (see Bento. L & Yusuf. G, “A Glance at The House of Lords with Baroness Amos” [2005] Obiter Dicta Spring Issue pp25-29). This article is, if you like, more of a continuation to that interview, though taken from the other side of the political spectrum.

Lucas Bento: What is your opinion on Labour’s House of Lords reforms?

Lord Strathclyde: Very modified rapture. Labour, as Tony Blair himself admitted, never really believed in bringing election to the House of Lords. Their only objective in 1997-9 was to reduce the potential voting strength of Conservatives and independent cross-benchers in order to enable Mr Blair to create enough peers to make Labour the largest party in the house. This he did.

No credible plan for reform was then put forward. Now, after long and relatively constructive discussion, the Straw plan comes some way to meeting the ideas put forward by Conservatives a decade ago, namely that all political members of the House should be elected directly by the people when reform eventually comes.

However, there are many points of difficulty still to be clarified in the Labour plans - how peers should be elected, what would happen to the Blairite "backwoodsmen" who would be left behind after reform, the costs of paying elected peers and so on.

There is a good deal of work to do, but our objective remains that both Houses should be made stronger. The executive is too strong in this country - and Parliament too weak.

Author’s Note: Wouldn’t electing the Lords politicise the chamber and thus undermine its primary role as a somewhat “neutral” revising camera? It is argued that one of the great advantages of the Westminster parliamentary system is the political balance between the relatively inexperienced - yet elected - Commons, and the overwhelmingly experienced - yet undemocratic - Lords. On the other hand, a superficial economic analysis of an elected – and politicised - House of Lords would stimulate competition in Parliament, thus increasing effectiveness and improving efficiency in the political system. Any constitutional imbalance resulting from the politicisation of the Lords would thus be brought back to a constitutional equilibrium, as effectiveness in Parliament ultimately means – one hopes – greater service to citizens and their rights.

Lucas Bento: In your opinion, what is the House of Lord’s role in British politics?

Lord Strathclyde: Few seriously advocate a unicameral system. The haste and arrogance with which governments legislate means that a revising filter needs to be put on ill-thought legislation - and that the Commons sometimes be asked to think again. That is the classic role of the Lords, which it evolved brilliantly in the 20th century after being stripped of parity of powers with the Commons. This goes along with its complementary role to the Commons of holding Ministers to account, providing a forum for debate on matters of national concern and rendering advice to government and nation.

It is a sobering thought that had it not been for the Lords since 1997, among other things, ID cards would now be compulsory, detention without trial would have been introduced (not just for terrorists), sex would have been legalised in every public lavatory, it would have been a crime for a comedian to make a joke about religion, the right to vote in secret at a polling station would have been abolished, the State would have the right to eavesdrop on all private e-conversation and trial by jury would have been restricted.

That in itself makes the case for a strong revising chamber.

Note: Amidst the current financial malaise and the Executive’s inability to prevent or doctor it in any meaningful way, a prophylactic legislative solution to future banking crises may, ultimately, be devised not in the Commons, but in the Lords.

Lucas Bento: What are the constitutional implications of introducing ID cards in the UK?

Lord Strathclyde: This government has forgotten who is the employer and who is the employee in the relationship between government and citizen. Our historic freedoms were unconditional, restricted only by the duty not to break the law or to molest one's fellow citizens. The idea of an "entitlement" card without which a citizen's freedoms are potentially restricted and which gives the State power to log in one central registry and ever expanding record of people's private lives is, to me and millions of others, entirely repugnant.

Try getting your bank to do something without a telephone pin number and imagine the horror of dealing with a faceless State when you are ill, have lost your ID card and need health care.

The lunatic cost of this project should condemn it as ferociously as its constitutional faults. Instead of creating giant computer records of the vast majority of law-abiding people, resources should be concentrated on the areas of risk.

Lucas Bento: What other constitutional reforms would you propose?

Lord Strathclyde: Have we not had a surfeit of constitutional change from "New Labour" that have left confusion behind them right, left and centre? We even now have doubts about the honesty of our voting system thanks to Labour's firestorm of change. The humiliating rejection of John Prescott's "vision" of yet more politicians in regional government showed clearly what people think, given a chance of a say (as we have not had, thanks to the broken Labour and LibDem election promises, on further European integration), about many of these changes.

Britain was proverbial worldwide as a land of liberty with a stable, but evolving constitution. It did not deserve Mr Blair and Mr Brown's schoolboy chemistry set for change.

I think we need to proceed cautiously and not force further change recklessly. But what is clear is that we need action along certain specific lines - to strengthen Parliament and increase government accountability; to check the slide of decision-making away from our country into Europe; to reverse the centralising mania of the Brown-Blair years and give more room to local decision-making and to remember what Labour have forgotten - government is the servant and not the master of individual freedoms.

Note: Are we trying to change our constitution recklessly? It is argued that a constitution must reflect the characteristics of its constituent people. In searching for a new – or reformed – constitution, we ought maybe to firstly ascertain our British identity. We live in a time where British identity is being continuously questioned and reassessed. Perhaps we should set aside our political differences and consider the very fundamentals of what unites us: our Englishness. As a foreign national, I have no locus standi to claim what being English is really like, or what it should ultimately be. However, we all know that the English legal system is obsessed with organic growth in its case law. Indeed, it has a tendency of preserving and relying on the past in order to best shape its present (see stare decisis). Thus, in our unique legal system conservation and evolution go hand in hand. Perhaps our evolving constitution ought to be conserved a little longer, for the risk of changing it too quickly and getting it wrong may throw us into an unexpected and irreversible Orwellian future. The latter, one might argue, will recklessly change our constitution beyond repair.

A Short Essay on Feminism, War and International Relations

Introduction

It is undisputed that the current international political system is largely patriarchal and far from gynenocracy. Even the products of political processes, such as the Law, inherits the composition of its institutional parent. For instance, the law criminalising rape is drafted, in England and Wales, from a male standpoint, arguably suggesting, inter alia, a predisposed male propensity to violence.

In an increasingly interdependent world, the understanding of conflict is not only a core function of IR scholarship but also a fundamental necessity for the prosperity of humankind. Since the beginning of the 20^th century, the patriarchal - international - system has been heavily criticised by feminists. Furthermore, until relatively recently, the field of International Relations studied the causes of war and conflict with no particular reference to people (Burchill et al, 2001). However, gender analysis can reveal many answers to IR questions. For instance, gender analysis reveals that men and states, domestic and international violence, to be inextricably related (Burchill et al, 2001). In the same vein, Fukuyama (1998) argues that men are more prone to violence and more competitive than women. As violence, aggression and competition are manifestations of conflict – whether physical, political or economic -, evidence of the former implies the propensity of the latter. Indeed, a brief consideration of crime statistics reveals that the criminal population is heavily dominated by the male gene (see Global Report on Crime and Justice, UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention). Thus, it is arguable that ‘a truly matriarchal world would be less prone to conflict and more conciliatory and cooperative than the one we inhabit now.’ This essay will discuss whether the latter assertion is unfounded and consider the prospect of such a matriarchal world.

Discussion

The study of international relations focuses principally on how states – not people - interact. However, states are constituted by people and it is only logical to analyse the world today in terms of the individuals that constitute it. Gender analysis can therefore shed light in the shadows of understanding the origin of conflict in our civilisation. Thus, ‘feminism is the research posture of many locations, illuminating important relations and practices darkened by the long shadows of official IR (Sylvester, 2002, at p.269).

Fukuyama argues that violence and the coalition building is primarily the work of males. He gives examples of Bosina and the Holocaust, arguing that these were, and quite rightly, largely perpetrated by men. ‘It would seem, then, that there is something to the contention of many feminists that phenomena like aggression, violence, war and of intense competition for dominance in a status hierarchy are more closely associated with men than women’ (Fukuyama, 1998). A world run by women would follow different rules, it would appear, and it is toward that sort of world that all postindustrial or Western societies are moving.

However, he continues, ‘the problem with the feminist view is that it sees these attitudes toward violence, power, and status as wholly the products of a patriarchal culture, whereas in fact it appears they are rooted in biology.’ By comparing the human race to Chimpanzees, Fukuyama makes contention that violence is innate to males - it is in effect, genetic. Thus ‘what is bred in the bone cannot be altered easily by changes in culture and ideology’ (Fukuyama, 1998).

The argument then takes a prospective look and considers whether a truly matriarchal world could ever exist and whether it could in effect doctor the conflict propensity in the world. ‘Despite the rise of women, men will continue to play a major, if not dominant part in the governance of postindustrial countries, not to mention less-developed ones (Fukuyama, 1998). Feminists, however, argue that more women need to be brought into the domain of international politics as leaders, officials, soldiers and voters. Indeed, only by participating fully in global politics can women both defend their own interests and shift the underlying male agenda. Furthermore, Fukuyama contends that women are less likely than men to see force as a legitimate tool for resolving conflicts.

In the past 15 years, the US has participated – or assisted - in over 10 armed conflicts in the world. As the world military hegemon, it is essential to consider the US in our analysis. Thus, Fukuyama predicts that increasing female participation will probably make the US and other democracies less inclined to use power around the world as freely as they have in the past. However, if gender roles are not simply socially constructed but rooted in genetics, there will be limits to how much international politics can change. This in effect means that a feminized international world order may still have to use masculine policies though not necessarily through masculine leaders, as it will still have to deal with those parts of the world run by young, ambitious, unconstrained men. Fukuyama does, however end on an optimist note, arguing that ‘by accepting the fact that people have natures that are often evil, political economic and social systems can be designed to mitigate the effects of man’s baser instincts.’

Despite Fukuyama’s argument’s attractiveness it has nonetheless been criticised. Firstly, Ehrenreich (1999) argues that ‘men hate war.’ Indeed, the male appetite for battle has always been far less voracious than either biologically inclined theorists of war (like Fukuyama) or army commanders might like (Ehrenreich, 1999). Indeed, modern armies are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit men leading to the touting of its vocation fringe benefits. Secondly, there is evidence to suggest that there is no difference between the propensity of being violent by males or females: ‘In laboratory studies of human aggression, where the use of physical aggression is controlled and the possibility of escalation of violence is eliminated, there is little difference in the frequency of aggression in males and females (Ferguson, 1999).

Third, and more relevant to the issue at hand, it should not be assumed that the male monopoly on warfare has been as eternal and universal as Fukuyama imagines. For instance, archaeology suggests that ‘Russian’ women warriors were a common finding in the second millennium B.C (Ehrenreich, 1999). More recently, women in the past two centuries have more than sufficiently demonstrated their ability for collective violence such as eighteenth and nineteenth bread riots and revolutionary uprisings. This however, is not the same as to suggest that women perpetrated international conflict. However, women have served as terrorists and in an era where the latter is increasingly an international problem, it could be argued that women do participate in, and perpetrate, the international War on Terror. Furthermore, examples such as Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi demonstrate women’s capability to be involved at the top of the hierarchy of manufacturing warfare. Fukuyama, however, argues that these were exceptions. Indeed these women may have been forced into male posturing because there are so few female leaders. If there were a critical mass of women leaders or if nation-state sovereignty gave way to international law, the argument goes, international relations would include less interstate competition and more global cooperation (Jacquette, 1999).

However, it could be argued that even if women are innately less violent, they are plenty violent enough to call into question Fukuyama's claim that more female political power would mean more peace (Pollitt et al, 1999). Indeed, women abuse and kill children, mutilate the genitals of little girls, commit infanticide and cruelly tyrannize daughters, servants, and slaves.

When speaking of gender one is also speaking of biology. Thus the claim that a truly matriarchal world would be less prone to conflict calls for a biological contradistinction. However, as Kroeber (1999) argues, it is a large step from what may be biologically innate leanings toward individual aggression to ritualized, socially sanctioned, institutionalized group warfare. Arguably, wars start not in biology (instinctual male aggression), as Jacquette (1999) argues, but in realpolitik i.e. a state’s need to defend itself from outside threat (or to further their interests in foreign land). The argument therefore follows that women’s pacifism is relatively a modern phenomenon and cannot thus be biological, or genetic (Pollitt, 1999).

Wars are manufactured at the political level, and thus control of political power naturally monopolises control of warfare. In a democracy, political power should ideally lie in the hands of the electorate. Thus, Fukuyama argues that war and foreign policy are determined by voters, who will be disproportionately female and therefore antiwar. However, it is more than clear that wars are not decided at the ballot box (Pollitt, 1999). Indeed, American women have had the vote for nearly 80 years and this arguably has not precluded American foreign policy to be as militarily active as it has been.

A possible fatal blow to Fukuyama’s assertion that a matriarchal world would be less prone to conflict is there is no empirical evidence of large-scale, long-term social structures that have been created and maintained exclusively or even largely by females. Indeed, until very recently, and still in many states, women were prohibited from combat roles, which in turn made it impossible for them to rise to commanding levels in their state’s armed forces. The overworked myth of matriarchy notwithstanding, we do not have good examples of groups of women engaged over generations in creating and sustaining public organizations such as armies, religions, police forces, or even international businesses (Tiger, 1999).

Women are already, however, involved in cooperative mechanisms in the resolution of conflict or promotion of peace. For instance in the Phillipines women initiated peace zones to protect their children from recruitment by the militias and the army. Thus, the involvement of women in peace negotiations leads to ensuring a peace agreement that builds lasting peace at all levels (United Nations Development Fund for Women, “Women At The Peace Table, 2000).

Conclusions

Gender analysis provides a novel platform to understand international relations. It may be the case that women are less prone to violence because society has, over time, conditioned them to be so. A totally polarised dispersion of power in the world, such as truly patriarchal or truly matriarchal, is more likely, if anything, to generate more conflict as the struggle for power would be exacerbated. It is therefore safe to conclude that it is necessary to promote women to higher political, economic and military positions so as to provide a balance in the execution of international policies that will, eventually, affect international relations, and, hopefully, the prevention of conflict and promotion of interstate cooperation.

Pre nupts Revisited: A New Approach

Money can indeed buy love.



Pre-nuptial agreements are probably the last thing a loving couple wants to think about before walking the aisle.

In the interests of simplicity, convenience, and security, I propose a system of pre-nuptial notice. Essentially, all single adults can apply for the Pre-Nuptial Registry and serve notice of their intention to limit the exposure to share their personal assets in the event of divorce. Essentially, a person (A) that had issued such notice to the Registry would bind the whole world (and thus, any prospective partners). So if A (having served such notice) starts a new relationship with B and consequently marries B, the latter is deemed to know - by virtue of the Registry's entry i.e. A's notice - that in the event of divorce between A and B, A will only have to share his personal assets with B to the extent contained in the Registry's notice.

A can always delete the notice at any point pre, during or post the relationship. A can also amend the terms of the notice.

The notice, however, is subject to overriding orders by the court in, say, cases where children are involved.

The advantage of the system is essentially that it gives people the opportunity to avoid the awkward position of saying: "Hey, d'you wanna marry me? But errr....Let's sign a pre-nup first!". How unromantic. Thus, B can always apply for a registry search and read the terms of A's notice - and make plans accordingly.

Any views?