The beautiful wife of a millionaire Long Island real-estate mogul got a judge to rip up her prenup -- a rare, precedent-setting decision that could influence countless marriages to wealthy people.

Elizabeth Petrakis, 39 -- sometimes acting as her own lawyer -- got a an appellate panel last month to toss the agreement she signed with Peter Petrakis, 41, four days before their lavish 1998 wedding.

The prenup stipulated that Peter, who parlayed a string of smoke shops into a $20 million commercial real-estate empire, would keep everything in his name if they split up.

But Elizabeth argued for seven years that Peter coerced her signature, threatening to call off the wedding even though her father had already paid $40,000 for the reception.

I find this horrifying. If she didn't want to get married under a prenup, she should not have signed it. It's not coercion to present someone with a contract (although I will allow that waiting until a few days before the wedding was a high-pressure tactic). Via Mangan's: Prenups no longer valid?.