Premiership footballer Ray Parlour was yesterday ordered to give a third of his future income to his former wife, Karen, for at least the next four years.

In a ground-breaking legal victory, the Court of Appeal held that the part she played in his success entitled her to a reasonable share of what he earns as a result, presently about £1.2m a year.

The decision by three judges will mean that more people will want to make pre-nuptial agreements, according to one divorce expert.

The judges awarded Mrs Parlour £406,500 a year for herself, plus £12,500 for each of her three children, representing about 37 per cent of the Arsenal midfielder's income.

The award was in addition to a divorce settlement under which Mrs Parlour, 33, was given two mortgage-free houses worth more than £1m and a £250,000 lump sum.

Parlour, 31, had offered his former wife £120,000, including the children's maintenance, but this was increased to £250,000 in January by a High Court Family Division judge who described the offer as "thoroughly mean and unfair".

Yesterday, the appeal judges ruled that even this was not enough in the context of a high-earning husband whose income hugely exceeded the family's needs.

The court heard that as well as running the home and caring for the children, Mrs Parlour, a former optician's assitant from Romford, Essex, persuaded her husband to grow up and drop the hard-drinking "laddish" culture that existed among some Arsenal players.

Yesterday's judgement in her favour recognised that the player's income would drop when he reached his mid-30s and that she would therefore be under an obligation to save a substantial sum over the next four years to provide for the future.

Emma Hatley, a partner and divorce expert at the City law firm Withers, said: "It is certainly going to have a significant impact on people's attitudes towards divorce, and therefore marriage, and I am sure this will be another reason why more people will want to do pre-nuptial agreements."

Lords Justices Thorpe, Latham and Wall rejected argument that, in principle, the post-divorce income of a high-earning spouse should be split 50-50 in the same way as other matrimonial assets.

But they said that where a husband's income was far more than both needed to live on, the principle of fairness applied.

They stressed that their decision would not affect divorce settlements generally, which would continue to be assessed on the needs of the parties, and ruled out the idea that annual payments should continue for life.

They said that, even though a clean break ending all financial commitments might not be possible immediately after a divorce, it was something to be aimed at. In the Parlours' case, the prospects of a clean break would be reviewed after four years.

Till wealth us do part - Page 12