There have been months of rumours, gossip and shadowy innuendo about the state of Madonna and Guy Ritchie's marriage. It's over. It's not over. They're living separate lives. She's moving to New York with the kids. She's hired Paul McCartney's divorce lawyer. Any of which could possibly be true aside from one glaring statement which made its way into the press this week - the assertion that Madonna never made Guy sign a pre-nup before their Scottish wedding in 2000.

This I refuse to believe.

Madonna? Madonna, who earned US$40 million last year and sits at a respectable number 21 of 2008's Forbes list of the world's most influential celebrities? Madonna, who has an estimated net worth of $850 million? Madonna, who has been the physical embodiment of independence and female empowerment for over twenty years? I don't think so. Our Madge is far too savvy not to keep control of her humungous pile of assets.

Pre-nuptial agreements in real life are most certainly the exception rather than the rule. In Hollywood, they are the rule. There is no other rule. And while to me they seem cold, calculated, impersonal and almost expecting divorce, I don't have a Malibu mansion, a Manhattan apartment and earn $20m a movie. Regan and I could well have signed off on a pre-nuptial agreement, but what kind of assets would we have divvied up - my collection of nail polish and his bongo drums?

Forget about the famous. Even if you're rich, it seems a pre-nup is most certainly not a stupid way to go. We all know what happened to Paul McCartney when Heather Mills attempted to take him to the cleaners.

Donald Trump is the king of the air-tight pre-nup, which he publicly credits for keeping his property empire in such good nick after three marriages. Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson were on equal pegging in the fame game before they tied the knot - three years later, they'd called it quits and Jess had to split her 2005 earnings of $30m with Nick.

For four years in the eighties Steven Spielberg was married to actress Amy Irving. When they called it quits, the judge threw out a pre-nup written on a napkin, and awarded the soon-to-be ex-Mrs Spielberg a $100m settlement. You can bet your Academy Award he didn't make that mistake again.

And, famously, Roseanne Barr fired her lawyer when he dared suggest she get comedian Tom Arnold to sign a pre-nup before their marriage in 1990. Four years later, Tom walked away with $50 million of Rosie's cash.

It's not always about the money, although the cash is certainly a big deal. Huge deal even. Catherine Zeta Jones, who has gone on record saying that pre-nups are ?brilliant,' gets $3m for each year she stays married to Michael Douglas, with a $5m ?fling fee' should he be caught straying.

Katie Holmes (with help from her lawyer father) also gets a cool $3m each year that she's married to the Tommy Girl, up to ten years' marriage. After that, Katie takes half. Worth switching to Scientology for?

In a stroke of genius, Lynne Spears convinced her daughter Britney to execute a pre-nup with then-fiance Kevin Federline. Britney, giddy with lust and feel-good feeling, informed her mother, her agent and her lawyer that she wouldn't need one because she and Kevin were going to be together forever in a giddy blur of chip dust, frappucino syrup and Marlboro Lights (ok, that last part is mine).

And what happened two years later? The marriage is all over rover and, thanks to the pre-nup, Britney's millions got away relatively unscathed. If you can call twenty grand a month to your loser ex-husband until he dies or remarries relatively unscathed.

But along with money comes control, and it's often this that celebs end up quibbling over alongside cold hard cash, real estate, and fancy ass cars. Pets are a big part of pre-nuptial bargaining apparently. Even celebs' gardeners, babysitters and pool men have been divvied up in case of divorce.

One celeb couple (rumoured to be Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith) entered a clause in their pre-nup which stated that should the wife's weight go beyond 120 pounds, she would pay the husband $100,000 from her own funds. I've heard of a celeb wife fining the husband ten grand for every time he's rude to her parents. There's been everything from clauses limiting how much football a bloke can watch on a Sunday, to those including random drug tests with financial penalties for the wrong result. Apparently Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's has a drug and alcohol clause for the reformed addict.

Pre-nups - the contemporary curse sucking all the romance out of love, or a necessary evil for celebrities to cover their famous asses? You decide, and let me know below.