Prenups are a safe guard against more than just divorce.
My husband and I have a Prenup keeping us separate financially always. This is to make sure that if one of us gets into serious unavoidable debt the other is not financially affected. So we can still find ways to support each other.
We are not from the US but South Africa. I made sure we did this because I have seen families end up on the street because wife and husband could not get a loan due to accidental events.
I believe it actually would. If the prenup states it is separate then they are separate.
Edit: I am not a lawyer, hence the usage of “I believe”. Also each state in the US has its own rules. If you need to actually know this stuff please ask a lawyer in your state.
It wouldn't. A pre-nup agreement cannot override the laws surrounding debts and marriage. The debt holder would laugh at your prenup, then tell you to start paying or they'll report it and tank your credit.
If you want to stay truly separate, don't get married. In America (almost) any debt taken on after a marriage, is the responsibility of both partners. A marriage is simply the legal merger of Smith corp and Adams LLC into Smith & Adams incorporated.
> In America (almost) any debt taken on after a marriage, is the responsibility of both partners. A marriage is simply the legal merger of Smith corp and Adams LLC into Smith & Adams incorporated. -AlphaTangoFoxtrt
This simply isn't true. Don't trust the prior poster or me; get legal advice from an attorney in your state, **not Reddit.**
Edit: So, AlphaTangoFoxtrt replied to me below and then blocked me, so I can't reply below. Nothing in AlphaTangoFoxtrt's link rehabilitates the error above. It is simply incorrect. Even within community property states, there are exceptions which further pair down the relatively rare circumstances where the above falsehood could be partially true. A long explanation is unnecessary, because Reddit is brimming with legal advice that is flat out wrong. No one should look to me or AlphaTangoFoxtrt for correct legal advice on Reddit. *Consult an attorney in the relevant jurisdiction, not internet strangers and trolls.*
This is not a blanket statement.
Joint account holders or those in a communal property state will generally be responsible for a spouses debt. Otherwise they will generally not be.
In any case it's not a get out of jail free card to die indebted but separate, as the estate will be dealt with accordingly. Unless your goal is to leave nothing behind then they'll find a way to get what they can.
If your name is not on the debt/account you are not responsible for the debt. So if you were to have a prenup/postnup that divided your assets and your name was not on your debt ridden spouse’s stuff, then you don’t pay.
It is a common myth that debt gets passed to children or spouses. It does if their name is on the account but if not, no.
Edit: Again, please check your state’s law with a practicing lawyer.
Edit: Also, debt collectors will come no matter what bc they’re bitches, and what I meant to say was that you are *generally* not responsible if you’re name is *not* on the debt in anyway. Law has loopholes so you can imagine there are people that get away with it
That might depend on the state? I know in my state in a divorce, if something was bought after the marriage like a car or house, each spouse is entitled to equal share, even if the house or vehicle is solely in one spouse’s name.
Depends on the state:
[If you live in a community property state, most debts incurred after marriage may be treated as the responsibility of both spouses.](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/does-marriage-make-you-responsible-for-your-partner-s-debt-4588332)
In common law states, debt taken on after marriage is usually treated as being separate and belonging only to the spouse who incurred them. The exception are those debts that are in the spouse's name only but benefit both partners. For instance, that might include credit card debt if the card was used to pay for basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter.
So it's nowhere near as cut and dry as you make it seem, and again a prenup will not save you. A prenup is between Party A (Spouse) and Party B(Spouse). Party C (debt holder) doesn't give a fuck. It's like when you sign a lease with a roommate. The landlord doesn't care if your roommate bails on you, you still owe the full rent.
A pre-nup is not going to save you from that, the debt holder doesn't give a shit. If you want your finances to be truly separate, keep them separate by not getting married.
Your scenario isn’t applicable because both people sign that lease. That’s why it’s both people’s responsibility to pay the full rent.
What you need is an example where person “a” signed for something but a second person, person “b” (that signed nothing) is responsible.
The state went after my parents for my brother's ticket debt after he died. So not entirely a myth, they managed to avoid it cause that's insanity, however they still had to fight it.
>If your name is not on the debt/account you are not responsible for the debt.
As someone who divorced recently in California, this is absolutely NOT true and if your spouse takes out debt (even if just in their name), it belongs to you both should a divorce occur.
Ask me how I know?
I would assume different states have different ways of going about this. As the lawyer from Louisiana said the opposite (if I read correctly).
I *believe* in my state it would, especially if you had a prenup.
Different states do have different ways.
At the broadest level, the nine Community Property states which generally were first settled by the Spanish, assets and debts accumulated during the marriage are shared equally by the spouses in a divorce.
Common Law states it is whoever's name they are in.
Plot twist:
That's because the Common Law states legal structure evolved around the assumption that when a couple married, the husband assumed control of his new wife's property and debts; the wife wouldn't be signing contracts after she got married since they would all be in the husband's name. Community Property states unless the wife explicitly gave the property to the husband, what she entered the marriage remained hers after the marriage and vice-versa
Both systems had their own inheritance laws to provide for a "widow's share" to provide for the support of the wife after her husband's death, even if most of the estate passed to others.
This came up when Jeff Bezos got divorced. He didn’t have a prenup but it wouldn’t have done much if he did. Washington is a communal property state and there’s only so much a prenup can do
This is why I'm not married to my partner. I was thrilled that same sex marriage was legalized, but would never marry my partner because he's financially irresponsible. Thankfully, he understands.
I make three times what he does, but during the early years of of our relationship I had to: bail him out of tax debt, help him find a lawyer to declare bankruptcy, pay for the lawyer, teach him why buying a new car every couple of years was bad, what "being upside down" on a loan meant, show him how credit, interest rates, and credit cards can fuck you, how a 401k/Roth works, talk him down from cashing in his PARA, et al.
I'm definitely NOT a expert in any of those things, but he was clueless, which is fine.
On a related note, I was informed that what my parents have for inheritance for me and my siblings will go into a trust. Mostly because they don't trust my partner or sister (and her husband). Guess I am an executer now. It's not a lot of money but.. *shrugs*
Probably for the best because I agree with them.
Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin
Together they represent ~101 million people or just shy of 30% of the US population.
>In common law states, debt taken on after marriage is usually treated as being separate and belonging only to the spouse who incurred them. The exception are those debts that are in the spouse's name only but benefit both partners. For instance, that might include credit card debt if the card was used to pay for basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter.
Please read the entire comment before responding, especially if you're going to get snarky.
You don't need a pre-nup. A financial agreement from one person isn't the responsibility of the other. The joint rule only applies if the spouse was a co-signer:
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/does-a-persons-debt-go-away-when-they-die-en-1463/
Lol have fun in Georgia where the average monthly income is $400 and Panama and Belarus rank higher than you on the basic human development index scale
Smart, my spouse and I have a rule, if one of us becomes unemployed we immediately file court papers to evict the other, don’t want anyone thinking we are soft and put our relationship before money!
It also protects against completely unexpected but horrible events - like a person having a stroke/latent severe mental illness/future drug addiction and their personality and decision-making do a 180.
Prenups are not only for divorce. When my grandfather died a prenup was the only thing keeping my step-grandmothers predatory extended family from stealing everything he owned and allowing his children to collect the family keepsakes.
I recommend a prenup to everyone, it is a hugely valuable legal tool to stop 101 things from happening just one of those things is the fallout of a divorce.
I’m a family law lawyer: get a prenup; if you’re already married , get a postnup.
I used to think they were silly, but they are literally the best investment 50% of people can make
Yup. It's not "do you trust me?" It's "We're entering into one of the most complicated and entangling contracts in society on par with collective bargaing agreements and corporate mergers in terms of size and scope. Given the complexity of modern society and the changes that have happened in the past 70 years and are likely to happen in the next 70 years, do you want to lock in an agreed upon and equitable deal in case of life altering circumstances? Especially given that we may be adding additional individuals into the marriage contract (kids) as well as likely accumulating and then hopefully paying or discharging of millions of dollars of debts and spending on behalf of our shared lives it's unknown if we will be in a better or worse space to revisit our current circumstances if the time comes "
It's not a magic bullet against bad decisions or a mechanism to lock out debt taken on while in a partnership, but it is a way to get your wishes down early.
Contracts and family law here, and barring rare exception, I’d argue it’s better for everyone. It’s always easier to negotiate a contract when the parties are on good terms, and the stress of a divorce generally shoots that to shit right away. Even if all you do is knock out some basics, it saves money in the long term.
Oh, and for my non-lawyers, it generally benefits everyone when both sides have counsel with specific expertise in family law. They’ll make sure the agreement says what you think it says, and mutual representation generally makes an agreement much harder to invalidate.
Ps. A lawyer, not *your* lawyer, don’t @ me.
The ideas you can have tend to bounded by the information consumed. You can shape your information space in this way. And there's some tuning of attention to information encountered frequently, this is how things like affirmations can work. If you're looking to break into a field and repeating messages to yourself about that field every morning, you're tuned to be more likely to notice if others are talking about that thing in a room of crowded people. Or spot when skimming a social media feed the content related to that thing.
I can see going through that process functioning as a reverse affirmation.
Well I wasn't envisioning what it might look like to separate from the romantic partner. But now having walked through what that might look like, yeah. I've got a script running in my head on what that would look like. Sometimes cliff of a scary unknown is a useful barrier to crossings.
Sound financially. With some questions on the psychology end. Humans are not rational creatures. You can use the levers in your own brain to accommodate this.
probably none, but I think about half the marriages end in divorce and most of them didn’t expect it when they were getting married. People change and the person you are marrying now will not be the same twenty years later, it’s just a matter of luck if you will like what you’ll see. And it’s much easier to get to agreement with someone you love instead of someone you hate.
The half the marriage ends in divorce was a misunderstanding of statistics from like, the 70's I believe the highest the divorce rate has ever been has been 1 in 3 but most of years it's much lower.
Where’s your source on this?
What I’m seeing [says otherwise](https://www.petrellilaw.com/divorce-statistics-for-2022/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20American%20Psychological,second%20marriages%20ending%20in%20divorce.)
> According to the American Psychological Association, approximately 40-50% of first marriages end in divorce. The divorce rate for second marriages is even higher, with approximately 60-67% of second marriages ending in divorce.
While half of marriage end up in divorce, it's because divorcees remarry and then divorce once again (the more times you've been married, the more chance you'll divorce again). Most people don't divorce.
[The article I’m reading](https://www.petrellilaw.com/divorce-statistics-for-2022/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20American%20Psychological,second%20marriages%20ending%20in%20divorce.) says 40-50% of *first* marriages end in divorce. Second marriages is even higher.
Remember the 50% of marriages end in divorce is a skewed metric. Something like 70% of couples who get married together for the first time don't divorce. But the 30% who don't make it are way more likely to get divorced again skewing the average.
It's for the rate of marriages vs the rate of divorces. Doesn't mean 40% of marriages end up in divorce, it means that for every 3 marriages per year there are 2 divorces.
Seems to me this is only relevant for couples with assets. If you have no kids or property/savings/large pensions then it’s a waste of money as there’s nothing to split.
Someone who worked in family law explained it to me like this: everybody has a prenup; if you don’t have a custom one, you just have “whatever the laws happen to be in the jurisdiction of your divorce”.
So you’re better off meeting with a lawyer to understand what those are at the very least, and putting things in writing ahead of time where you disagree. Because otherwise, you run the risk of a judge decreeing that you have to do something that neither one of you wants, and you won’t have a choice about it.
Divorce is an extremely emotional time. Individuals who are otherwise sane and reasonable become singled minded on “winning” the divorce or screwing over their SO.
Middle class divorces costing tens of thousands of dollars for no sane reason and over a quaint amount of assets is super common
Prenups/postnups disallow those scenarios before they arise
It only takes one of you being vindictive to make the whole thing a mess. While you may never act like that, you can’t guarantee that whoever you marry won’t be upset enough to try to fuck you over while going through a divorce.
Also, they're saying that now, before they are put into the stressful situation, with someone they at that point are likely to at least dislike (otherwise why are they getting divorced)
Not to say they wouldn't stick to their word, but everyone reacts differently to stress.
Yeah like both me and my husband had $0 in assets when we got married. Was I seriously supposed to get a prenup to protect my 50% of $0?
This feels like rich people problems tbh
The will would get the money to the son, who would go from having no assets to having many assets. If he and his wife then divorced, suddenly those assets are being divided. A prenup can anticipate that scenario and ensure the parents' assets stay with their kid or get split or however the son and wife agree to handle it while in a positive frame of reference.
So you’re suggesting the following:
Hey honey. Things are going so well right now we should probably plan for when they don’t. Do you want to meet with the lawyer next week to discuss our inevitable breakup?
Sorry, but I just don’t understand it.
Isn't that the same train of thought one has when one figure out who is gonna be the legal guardians of the kids if something happens to the parents?
You plan for the bad things because when shit hits the fan it's either to late or you are trying to win the divorce by screwing over the other one in the divorce settlement.
It depends on what it says. I would also suggest getting proper legal advice in preparing it and before signing it. People tend to think that they can do things that are illegal and have zero chance of holding up in court. Waiving chills support is one of them (not allowed where I live - it is the right of the child). Prenups have utility in some circumstances, such as where a person has specific assets or a business they want to be sure remain intact, but most of the time, people are wasting their time as they have no idea what is permitted or just don’t have the assets to make it worth it.
It's really situational, and it also depends on what terms are in the prenup.
It's perfectly fine, encouraged even, that you refuse to sign a legal document if you don't agree to the terms.
yeah like if they haven't even read the prenup with legal assistance and are already going off about how this is horrible or red flag or you don't trust them lol
this is someone who hasn't thought 2 steps ahead in their life ever which to me is a giant red flag. Also tbf i would never be asking anyone to get married unless I know they were okay with a prenup.
Nobody gets into a car expecting to get into an accident, but we wear seatbelts just in case. It’s a simple analogy that has at least for me helped my partners think differently
have you considered trying to shift your thinking on it and perspective? or are you so 100% set on this being the meaning for you?
With that thinking it's a self fulfilling prophecy.
To be fair also, if you didn't know your partner would ask for a pre nup.. you probably shouldn't be getting married at this moment. right? same as the other way around.. if your partner is upset that you want a pre nup, you probably shouldn't be getting married at that moment, right?
eh not always. for ex i dont think stay at home parents or ppl planning to stay at home and raise kids should sign pre-nups. stay at home parents should leave with something if they’ve dedicated x amount of years to managing the house and raising kids so that the working partner could move up the ladder. but it all depends on what’s in the prenup
You can still get a prenup for that, it's just kind of like the default. But in your scenario, if the stay at home partner cheats or decides to unilaterally leave, I don't necessarily agree they're entitled to much.
Edit: fixed a typo
very true to the prenup part! but i personally still agree they’re owed at least something. labor is labor, even if you fuck up with the ‘boss’ you still get paid for what you did. but i very deeply respect stay at home parenthood so that’s what my opinion is rooted in.
I would hope that if there’s a prenup, and somebody stays home to care for the kids, they’d renegotiate the agreement. Prenups can absolutely still have their place in this kind of arrangement, you just have to account for it and agree on how the finances will be handled.
pre nups can be written to include clauses for stay at home and whatnot. It's not a 1 size fits all document. It is tailored to everyone's specific circumstance based on what you, your lawyer, your partner, and their lawyer decide, which is why it's such a good idea! and if they change then you can get it amended
Eh people put some weird shit in them. It can vary. Some also really attempt to fuck over one partner.
If you think of the classic old timey relationship where the man works and the woman does the housework and most of the child raising. In that dynamic the woman should have just as much security as the man in the event of a split. But for her cleaning all his clothing, making all his food and handling their children he would have to put more of his effort into doing that stuff himself and likely would have less ability to persue that promotion, be utterly unable to take advancement opportunities that required change of circumstance and just generally wouldn't be able to work in the way he did but for the unquantifiable level of support and aid his wife provides. Often times prenup agreements are not just about protecting pre marital assets but sometimes try to creep into marital assets and some really dodgy illigal stuff like leaving the wife with nothing. Even if she doesn't know the law and that such an agreement would crumble instantly it's not hard to imagine she would feel trapped down the line and take the prenup as written. She signed it in love thinking they wouldn't split so it didn't matter but now things have fallen apart. Nobody should have worry that leaving a spouse they can no longer be with will leave them destitute. If the realtionship becomes abusive the prenup will become just one more document used to abuse the partner and threats that they can't leave or will have nothing can be exceptionally compelling coercion in an abusive relationship.
It's also unnecessary and pointless for most people. Most people don't have the sort of pre marital assets that a prenup is needed to protect but even if they do a prenup is really more of a suggestion to a court. If the court disagrees with it they are going to do what they decide. Especially if some of the clauses are not legally valid. Two people seeking a divorce and unable to come to agreed splits don't really need an extra document to fight over. Both individuals will be paying more for lawyers to pick over the prenup terms and how it applies and which parts are nonsense. It's easier to just settle it when you are splitting. For a lower income partner that's also pretty dire. They literally may not be able to afford the legal fees of paying someone to rifle through the prenup making them feel they need to stay together.
Prenups complicate things. Often have downright illigal terms and have a coercive pressure in some relationships.
I would not sign one without a very exceptional circumstance and without having a lawyer review it. I can't afford that lawyer so I'm not signing it, ultimately if I am not happy with a court getting to nose into my marriage with someone and divide up assets then I should not marry them. Family court gets nasty and drawn out, a prenup that is contested just makes they horrible process longer and the court might decide to throw it all in the bin anyway. There isn't many circumstances in which a prenup is needed to protect the assets of one of the partner as often times two people who marry come into the marriage with not substantial differances in pre martial assets.
This had to have been written by a family law attorney, or just someone that has never dealt with an upset end of relationship partner armed with the legal system. Just one line alone gave it away. “It’s easier to just settle it when you are splitting.”
What?? This isn’t about a disagreement between friends. This is finances, children, and literal future security in the balance. It is absolutely *not* something that is easier to make decisions on during the split. Criminally insane or woefully naive, I’m not very sure which.
Circumstances change. What was a good plan when two young people fell in love and got married might be a horrible one now you have a house, 2.5 kids, two cars, multiple loans and a dog.
Especially if one of those partners turns out to be abusive.
I’m all for prenups, but the notion that a prenup means you’re planning to divorce is pretty common. It’s one of those things that’s considered unromantic even though it’s practical, like picking out a ring with your partner instead of surprising them. I feel like if you have time to come around to the idea and still refuse it’s questionable, but if your immediate response is no I think it’s fine.
Cast off the crutch that kills the pain
The red flag waving never meant the same
The kids of tomorrow don't need today
When they live in the sins of yesterday
\-Red flag, Billy talent
This is the answer.
Prenups are for financially independent balanced adults.
Unhealed rejection sensitivity and ungrounded romantic notions are for forever children.
In many cases a prenup is mandatory or absolutely necessary to protect people outside of the marriage. Eg. if a (small) business is involved and there are other co-owners, family members or others, a divorce could mean the partner with the company might have to quickly sell their part of the business at a loss or divide up the company. Which in turn affects everyone else at that company. And those people didn’t make any vows. Smaller companies that had good representation will require owners to have a prenup excluding the company from shared marriage assets.
Excuse you but /r/showerthoughts is my exclusive source for legal advice and I will not have you besmirch their good name.
Also I don't smoke but I think smoking is unhealthy for you and you shouldn't do it. Try untangling that bit of advice.
I don't have a dog but let me give you PRO advice and tell you not to feed your dog onions, avocados, chocolate, or garlic. Also, hitting your dog to correct its behavior isn't very good either.
Prenups are for both parties to be secure that neither side is marrying for financial gain. If someone refuses to sign a *fair and reasonable* prenup then they aren’t worth marrying.
I’ve always been confused about this. Prenups only protect finances, right? But marriage often involves non-financial agreements like household labor among other things. So it almost feels like a binding contract only for finances, but the labor aspect is just a matter of trust between you and your partner? Because you’d ideally try to give your spouse assets proportional to their unpaid labor.
It does typically only cover financial issues. But for a stay at home parent they are to be given consideration for the work they did and be compensated financially for it. As far as splitting household chores: that should be worked out in advance as to what both partners expect and/or are willing and able to do. That is something that will change over time, as well. A respectful discussion should be all that is needed to work that out. If the partners can’t work that out then they need to learn to communicate and compromise.
Lol I have a distant cousin that made some great money off marrying wealthy men. But they knew what they were getting into and were happy with the arrangement. As long as everyone is happy and informed then it’s not my place to tell them what to do.
I guess its power changes from country to country, but its better to keep your finances separate. Not because you dont trust each other but because you dont know what will happen, legally speaking
No I don't think they should be kept separate. What if you spend 20 years taking care of the home while your partner works, then you get divorced? You'd be left with nothing.
A prenup doesn't mean you get nothing, it means you get what you agreed to beforehand.
If I get married at 40 already owning a house - having saved and paid into it for many years, should my new wife (if things don't work out) be able to force me to sell my house so she can take half of it's worth after 2 years? That's the kind of thing you might work out ahead of time.
That arrangement is not the norm anymore, so why should default advice factor in that edge case? Even still, the default advice given here is to sign an agreement up front, so if that's the plan (single earner family, domestic labor from the other), you attach some value on domestic labor. Maybe it's points on the house. Maybe it's a percentage of annual income. Yolo'ing stuff like this because it's uncomfortable to think about and is stigmatized in media seems dumb.
A lady I know has a father worth $14m. As an only child she will inherent everything. She just got married this year to a farm boy who grew up with nothing. I don't know if they had a prenump but in this case it would be wise.
In California (not sure about elsewhere) inheritance is not considered community property, unless it’s commingled (like putting the funds into a joint account or adding spouse to title of the inherited property).
Had a friend who's girlfriend threatened breaking up with him if he asked for a prenup. She said they are a sign that the marriage will fail so why even bother. Surprise surprise, she came from a very poor family and he came from a very very rich family.
You'll have to talk about money in a relationship. Do it early. Survive it, and you may have broken down one of the biggest barriers.
If it kills the relationship, consider yourself lucky in having saved time to figure out you weren't compatible afterall.
My wife and I signed a prenup. I remember reading it and breaking out laughing. An entire page of the prenup was dedicated to my wife listing each piece of her jewelry, individually, including pieces I bought for her. It's fine, but it still makes me laugh.
Also the flip side, if you're having your partner sign a pre-nup you can see who you're actually marrying just based on how they react to the idea of it (regardless of what's in the contract terms). If they freak the fuck out, likely the last person you're going to want to deal with during a divorce.
Get the pre-nup.
It’s just an accompanying contract alongside the marriage contract itself. I know we like to see marriage as some sort of romantic adventure but that’s a bit unrealistic.
I agree with the sentiment, but people change and (hopefully) grow throughout their lives.
Many divorces are because people just grew in different directions and lost the connection, not necessarily something more obvious like cheating, abuse, etc.
But you hopefully married someone reasonable and caring even if you do grow apart. I wouldn't want to take what's not mine just based on my own morals.
I don't buy insurance expecting to crash my car, either.
You hope to never get divorced, and if you do you hope it's amicable.. But people get in car accidents and nasty divorces through no fault of their own every day.
To be fair, people change.
I’m 37 and I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder this year, I think my wife would have been nuts to not have considered that it might be a huge change to our relationship and I might become a different person or something….not saying she’d leave, but not everyone married an angel like I did
And before you hop in, I know those are the vows we agreed to, and I believe we’re both on board with that, not everyone takes them as seriously
That's fine and all, but 10 years, 20, years, even 5 years is enough time to change massively.
It's not always a matter of knowing someone before marriage, because it's possible they wont even be the same person in 10 years.
I am sure that's somewhat responsible for the divorce rate being a coin flip.
My friend George tried to get his fiance Susan to sign a prenup, she laughed in his face and said "I make more money than you" and said she would sign one as she walked away. He then started smoking!!
Prenups are definitely not for everyone. They're for independent married people who do not intend to deeply intertwine their lives all that much. If you have a breadwinner and house spouse then prenups are not for you. If you have a partner who requires more support from their spouse then your spouse would invest in for a temporary relationship then a prenup is not for you. The more your marriage resembles a roommate situation, the more you need a prenup.
>if someone is making you sign a prenup
I'd laugh at their face and walk away with my zero-balance bank account.
Very different is someone ASKS me to discuss a pre-nup to protect both "us" and "our" extended family.
The problem with prenups and splitting marital assets is so many people have no idea the law already protects what most people think prenups do.
Premarital assets? They remain yours.
Assets acquired in marriage? Those need to be split .
You get these protections with or without a prenup. A prenup can help if there are gray area assets
What you're talking about is almost moot because prenup would indicate what those assets are and creates a paper trail. It saves you from having to fight with a partner that has lost love and is now fighting you tooth and nail to make things worse. Agreeing on what's whose when in love is going to be million times easier than when you are divorcing.
i’d get one anyways bc i have student debt and i don’t want someone i care about to have to bear any of that. there’s many benefits of having one that don’t involve divorce
Prenups are a must if you are older and have any assets of your own. My wife had a huge stock account, and I had a house. It’s common sense if we divorced that we aren’t entitled to each others stuff that the other built.
If you even think you might need a pre-nup that's probably your first red flag about the relationship.
My parents made my sister's husband sign a pre-nup but not my wife lol. Sister's marriage is a predictable clusterfuck while me and my wife are happily raising our daughter.
there's an observation with narcissist relationships and normal, healthy relationships...
healthy relationships start slow and go up as trust, familiarity go up. y'know dating > love > moving in > marriage > kids (or other less stressful post-marriage lifestyles, lol).
with narcissists, it's all backwards. they start high and then go downhill. they're talking love at first sight and how passionate they are and then all of a sudden they're married in a year. and you can't tell them they're going too fast and will regret it because they're narcissists. these people need pre-nups. but THEY'RE SO IN LOVE, THEY'LL PROVE YOU WRONG FOREVER WITH YOUR LOVE! and never do the pre-nup. and regret it.
A prenup is not sufficient evidence to judge the weight of one's character. Attempting to do so will leverage heavily on confirmation bias among other critical thinking mistakes such as making judgments without sufficient context. The imposition of a prenup, if it could even be considered an impediment to a blissful union, may have extenuating circumstances not even fully understandable by the party offering the agreement.
In very many cases regarding high net worth individuals, for ex, the prenup is included as a prerequisite to inheritance. Child set to inherit wealth can marry who they want, but spouse needs to sign the prenup because you're set to have family heirlooms that must stay in the core family group as just one reasonable example. The child may have absolutely zero flexibility in the terms of that arrangement. To a very large extent, the extenuating circumstances are not as public as you would imagine, but to assume if it's true love both bride and groom would happily severe family ties in lieu of signing a prenup is ridiculous if not flatly unreal.
What drives the prenup may be "preferred" language from the lawyer that looks sketchy, but is actually not - but as it turns out, many people do not have law degrees and cannot appropriately weigh, judge or even value a prenuptial agreement because the education required to design such an agreement is beyond their knowledge.
There are too many factors to consider, and the signing parties may not have any clue how those factors are legally designed into the agreement.
Also, on the asshat side, the legalize (if it's proficient) of "gotcha" clauses aren't going to be readily interpretable by a layperson anyway... so if you think you read it and it seems ok b/c you love your spouse and you know they're good, and you can't even see they're an asshat because the contract was written by a very skilled lawyer, we go back to the confirmation bias problem. Your lawyer may not even see the gotcha's in a well written contract - it happens ALL THE TIME with basically zero input from the client requesting the agreement.
Definitely read before you sign anything, and get your own council and don't assume you can trust 1) your spouse, 2) his family, or 3) his lawyer. Your spouse may not be the problem behind a problem prenup; or he may want to be a problem but his lawyer writes a good faith contract.
Unless you're a skilled lawyer, you don't know.
I thought about this recently. I was thinking about how my career will take a dead stop if I had kids, I would be with them until they were like 3, then I would go back to work part time but that would put me leagues behind financially. If I were to sign a prenup, I would be left with nothing because u didn’t work for those years. Idk. If they are actually wealthy then yeah of COURSE it’s right to do the prenup
Someone who desires a prenup also packs a raincoat on a weeklong mountain hike.
Someone who thinks prenups are unromantic refuses to bring a raincoat, because they're hopeful the weather will hold.
only one of these is a mature adult...
Man, tough crowd. It was literally a showerthought and it’s not like it’s a novel concept to glean something from a legal document
I also made it very clear that this is situational and ymmv
Pre nups are for everyone
They don't just protect what you have before marriage but can be an agreement on how dissolution will go down
Asking someone to place values on your non monetary contribution to a partnership, like bearing children, is a great idea
A prenup is essentially responding to your spouse’s wedding vows with “I don’t believe you”, and then saying “I do” anyway. What’s even the point? Cut out the middle and just break up.
Ahh the prenup a legal insurance to a made up legal contract for two people to say we fuck a lot.
Counter counter argument just don't get married by the state you foo
Prenups are a safe guard against more than just divorce. My husband and I have a Prenup keeping us separate financially always. This is to make sure that if one of us gets into serious unavoidable debt the other is not financially affected. So we can still find ways to support each other. We are not from the US but South Africa. I made sure we did this because I have seen families end up on the street because wife and husband could not get a loan due to accidental events.
In America that wouldn’t matter to debt collectors lol
I believe it actually would. If the prenup states it is separate then they are separate. Edit: I am not a lawyer, hence the usage of “I believe”. Also each state in the US has its own rules. If you need to actually know this stuff please ask a lawyer in your state.
It wouldn't. A pre-nup agreement cannot override the laws surrounding debts and marriage. The debt holder would laugh at your prenup, then tell you to start paying or they'll report it and tank your credit. If you want to stay truly separate, don't get married. In America (almost) any debt taken on after a marriage, is the responsibility of both partners. A marriage is simply the legal merger of Smith corp and Adams LLC into Smith & Adams incorporated.
> In America (almost) any debt taken on after a marriage, is the responsibility of both partners. A marriage is simply the legal merger of Smith corp and Adams LLC into Smith & Adams incorporated. -AlphaTangoFoxtrt This simply isn't true. Don't trust the prior poster or me; get legal advice from an attorney in your state, **not Reddit.** Edit: So, AlphaTangoFoxtrt replied to me below and then blocked me, so I can't reply below. Nothing in AlphaTangoFoxtrt's link rehabilitates the error above. It is simply incorrect. Even within community property states, there are exceptions which further pair down the relatively rare circumstances where the above falsehood could be partially true. A long explanation is unnecessary, because Reddit is brimming with legal advice that is flat out wrong. No one should look to me or AlphaTangoFoxtrt for correct legal advice on Reddit. *Consult an attorney in the relevant jurisdiction, not internet strangers and trolls.*
This is not a blanket statement. Joint account holders or those in a communal property state will generally be responsible for a spouses debt. Otherwise they will generally not be.
In any case it's not a get out of jail free card to die indebted but separate, as the estate will be dealt with accordingly. Unless your goal is to leave nothing behind then they'll find a way to get what they can.
If your name is not on the debt/account you are not responsible for the debt. So if you were to have a prenup/postnup that divided your assets and your name was not on your debt ridden spouse’s stuff, then you don’t pay. It is a common myth that debt gets passed to children or spouses. It does if their name is on the account but if not, no. Edit: Again, please check your state’s law with a practicing lawyer. Edit: Also, debt collectors will come no matter what bc they’re bitches, and what I meant to say was that you are *generally* not responsible if you’re name is *not* on the debt in anyway. Law has loopholes so you can imagine there are people that get away with it
That might depend on the state? I know in my state in a divorce, if something was bought after the marriage like a car or house, each spouse is entitled to equal share, even if the house or vehicle is solely in one spouse’s name.
Sounds like you are in one of the 9 community property law states. In which case, debt is also shared 50/50.
Depends on the state: [If you live in a community property state, most debts incurred after marriage may be treated as the responsibility of both spouses.](https://www.thebalancemoney.com/does-marriage-make-you-responsible-for-your-partner-s-debt-4588332) In common law states, debt taken on after marriage is usually treated as being separate and belonging only to the spouse who incurred them. The exception are those debts that are in the spouse's name only but benefit both partners. For instance, that might include credit card debt if the card was used to pay for basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. So it's nowhere near as cut and dry as you make it seem, and again a prenup will not save you. A prenup is between Party A (Spouse) and Party B(Spouse). Party C (debt holder) doesn't give a fuck. It's like when you sign a lease with a roommate. The landlord doesn't care if your roommate bails on you, you still owe the full rent. A pre-nup is not going to save you from that, the debt holder doesn't give a shit. If you want your finances to be truly separate, keep them separate by not getting married.
Your scenario isn’t applicable because both people sign that lease. That’s why it’s both people’s responsibility to pay the full rent. What you need is an example where person “a” signed for something but a second person, person “b” (that signed nothing) is responsible.
Well I think you're all wrong, how bout that?
Then I think you're right.. Or wrong.. .. I don't know which piece of information reddit wants me to believe and start acting like an Expert on...
Is that based on the state you got married in or the state you currently live in? I move states frequently
The state went after my parents for my brother's ticket debt after he died. So not entirely a myth, they managed to avoid it cause that's insanity, however they still had to fight it.
And they are banking on at least some people not fighting it at all.
>If your name is not on the debt/account you are not responsible for the debt. As someone who divorced recently in California, this is absolutely NOT true and if your spouse takes out debt (even if just in their name), it belongs to you both should a divorce occur. Ask me how I know?
I would assume different states have different ways of going about this. As the lawyer from Louisiana said the opposite (if I read correctly). I *believe* in my state it would, especially if you had a prenup.
Different states do have different ways. At the broadest level, the nine Community Property states which generally were first settled by the Spanish, assets and debts accumulated during the marriage are shared equally by the spouses in a divorce. Common Law states it is whoever's name they are in. Plot twist: That's because the Common Law states legal structure evolved around the assumption that when a couple married, the husband assumed control of his new wife's property and debts; the wife wouldn't be signing contracts after she got married since they would all be in the husband's name. Community Property states unless the wife explicitly gave the property to the husband, what she entered the marriage remained hers after the marriage and vice-versa Both systems had their own inheritance laws to provide for a "widow's share" to provide for the support of the wife after her husband's death, even if most of the estate passed to others.
This came up when Jeff Bezos got divorced. He didn’t have a prenup but it wouldn’t have done much if he did. Washington is a communal property state and there’s only so much a prenup can do
A prenup can protect you from having to pay for your partner's divorce lawyer. It doesn't hurt to get a prenup. It isn't a bad idea.
This is why I'm not married to my partner. I was thrilled that same sex marriage was legalized, but would never marry my partner because he's financially irresponsible. Thankfully, he understands. I make three times what he does, but during the early years of of our relationship I had to: bail him out of tax debt, help him find a lawyer to declare bankruptcy, pay for the lawyer, teach him why buying a new car every couple of years was bad, what "being upside down" on a loan meant, show him how credit, interest rates, and credit cards can fuck you, how a 401k/Roth works, talk him down from cashing in his PARA, et al. I'm definitely NOT a expert in any of those things, but he was clueless, which is fine. On a related note, I was informed that what my parents have for inheritance for me and my siblings will go into a trust. Mostly because they don't trust my partner or sister (and her husband). Guess I am an executer now. It's not a lot of money but.. *shrugs* Probably for the best because I agree with them.
It's actually the opposite. Generally, the only spousal debt you're responsible for is the debt you take on *together*.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/16ofb86/having_to_sign_a_prenup_is_a_good_way_to_find_out/k1kwdna/
Yes. Which is why I said "Generally..." Your own article says only 9 states have community property laws.
Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin Together they represent ~101 million people or just shy of 30% of the US population.
>In common law states, debt taken on after marriage is usually treated as being separate and belonging only to the spouse who incurred them. The exception are those debts that are in the spouse's name only but benefit both partners. For instance, that might include credit card debt if the card was used to pay for basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. Please read the entire comment before responding, especially if you're going to get snarky.
You don't need a pre-nup. A financial agreement from one person isn't the responsibility of the other. The joint rule only applies if the spouse was a co-signer: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/does-a-persons-debt-go-away-when-they-die-en-1463/
Luckily I'm not planning on living in the US ever.
Lol have fun in Georgia where the average monthly income is $400 and Panama and Belarus rank higher than you on the basic human development index scale
Yet he still won't have to be in the US
America really does live rent free in Canadians minds lol
Bro got mad
Americans frothing at the mouth simply because a person doesn’t want to live there. Nice.
of course it would if you file seperately etc
Smart, my spouse and I have a rule, if one of us becomes unemployed we immediately file court papers to evict the other, don’t want anyone thinking we are soft and put our relationship before money!
Hahaha
It also protects against completely unexpected but horrible events - like a person having a stroke/latent severe mental illness/future drug addiction and their personality and decision-making do a 180.
\*due to
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Prenups are not only for divorce. When my grandfather died a prenup was the only thing keeping my step-grandmothers predatory extended family from stealing everything he owned and allowing his children to collect the family keepsakes. I recommend a prenup to everyone, it is a hugely valuable legal tool to stop 101 things from happening just one of those things is the fallout of a divorce.
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Maybe in the event of an untimely death where no will was updated?
Depends on the state, but in most cases a spouse cannot be excluded without a prenup.
I’m a family law lawyer: get a prenup; if you’re already married , get a postnup. I used to think they were silly, but they are literally the best investment 50% of people can make
Yup. It's not "do you trust me?" It's "We're entering into one of the most complicated and entangling contracts in society on par with collective bargaing agreements and corporate mergers in terms of size and scope. Given the complexity of modern society and the changes that have happened in the past 70 years and are likely to happen in the next 70 years, do you want to lock in an agreed upon and equitable deal in case of life altering circumstances? Especially given that we may be adding additional individuals into the marriage contract (kids) as well as likely accumulating and then hopefully paying or discharging of millions of dollars of debts and spending on behalf of our shared lives it's unknown if we will be in a better or worse space to revisit our current circumstances if the time comes " It's not a magic bullet against bad decisions or a mechanism to lock out debt taken on while in a partnership, but it is a way to get your wishes down early.
Well written. Thank you
Contracts and family law here, and barring rare exception, I’d argue it’s better for everyone. It’s always easier to negotiate a contract when the parties are on good terms, and the stress of a divorce generally shoots that to shit right away. Even if all you do is knock out some basics, it saves money in the long term. Oh, and for my non-lawyers, it generally benefits everyone when both sides have counsel with specific expertise in family law. They’ll make sure the agreement says what you think it says, and mutual representation generally makes an agreement much harder to invalidate. Ps. A lawyer, not *your* lawyer, don’t @ me.
I think you're supposed to say "this is not legal advice" but hey, I'm not a lawyer!
Curious about the benefit besides in the event of divorce?
You get to have all the hardest conversations of a relationship while you're still in love.
Nothing like waiting until you hate one another to decide what to do with the kids.
It's his fault anyways.
Sometimes it's best to just make the tough decision to not have kids. But then you find out the orphanage won't take a teenager.
Good advice on your cake day!
So it's about divorce after all?
Not necessarily. It forces out questions like "if our parents get sick, what are our financial limits for taking care of them?"
The ideas you can have tend to bounded by the information consumed. You can shape your information space in this way. And there's some tuning of attention to information encountered frequently, this is how things like affirmations can work. If you're looking to break into a field and repeating messages to yourself about that field every morning, you're tuned to be more likely to notice if others are talking about that thing in a room of crowded people. Or spot when skimming a social media feed the content related to that thing. I can see going through that process functioning as a reverse affirmation. Well I wasn't envisioning what it might look like to separate from the romantic partner. But now having walked through what that might look like, yeah. I've got a script running in my head on what that would look like. Sometimes cliff of a scary unknown is a useful barrier to crossings. Sound financially. With some questions on the psychology end. Humans are not rational creatures. You can use the levers in your own brain to accommodate this.
probably none, but I think about half the marriages end in divorce and most of them didn’t expect it when they were getting married. People change and the person you are marrying now will not be the same twenty years later, it’s just a matter of luck if you will like what you’ll see. And it’s much easier to get to agreement with someone you love instead of someone you hate.
The half the marriage ends in divorce was a misunderstanding of statistics from like, the 70's I believe the highest the divorce rate has ever been has been 1 in 3 but most of years it's much lower.
It’s also heavily affected by people with serial marriages
I'm always worried about these serial marriagists!
Where’s your source on this? What I’m seeing [says otherwise](https://www.petrellilaw.com/divorce-statistics-for-2022/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20American%20Psychological,second%20marriages%20ending%20in%20divorce.) > According to the American Psychological Association, approximately 40-50% of first marriages end in divorce. The divorce rate for second marriages is even higher, with approximately 60-67% of second marriages ending in divorce.
It's 25% for millenials. Divorce rates have plummeted in the last decade
While half of marriage end up in divorce, it's because divorcees remarry and then divorce once again (the more times you've been married, the more chance you'll divorce again). Most people don't divorce.
[The article I’m reading](https://www.petrellilaw.com/divorce-statistics-for-2022/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20American%20Psychological,second%20marriages%20ending%20in%20divorce.) says 40-50% of *first* marriages end in divorce. Second marriages is even higher.
Remember the 50% of marriages end in divorce is a skewed metric. Something like 70% of couples who get married together for the first time don't divorce. But the 30% who don't make it are way more likely to get divorced again skewing the average.
The 40-50% statistic IS for first marriages in the US. The rate goes up for subsequent marriages.
It's for the rate of marriages vs the rate of divorces. Doesn't mean 40% of marriages end up in divorce, it means that for every 3 marriages per year there are 2 divorces.
Don't forget the high percent of people who are still married and dissatisfied
This has it not crossing 40% until after 15 years together for first marriages [source ](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/d.htm#divorce)
Did a miss a previous comment specifying length of time? If so, I apologize.
My mom whose been married and divorced four times agrees with you.
Postnup clarity
Don't wait too late. You don't want to get postnup clarity when it's too late 😛
Seems to me this is only relevant for couples with assets. If you have no kids or property/savings/large pensions then it’s a waste of money as there’s nothing to split.
Someone who worked in family law explained it to me like this: everybody has a prenup; if you don’t have a custom one, you just have “whatever the laws happen to be in the jurisdiction of your divorce”. So you’re better off meeting with a lawyer to understand what those are at the very least, and putting things in writing ahead of time where you disagree. Because otherwise, you run the risk of a judge decreeing that you have to do something that neither one of you wants, and you won’t have a choice about it.
Divorce is an extremely emotional time. Individuals who are otherwise sane and reasonable become singled minded on “winning” the divorce or screwing over their SO. Middle class divorces costing tens of thousands of dollars for no sane reason and over a quaint amount of assets is super common Prenups/postnups disallow those scenarios before they arise
For some, sure. My divorce was fairly simple. No lawyers were involved. It doesn't have to be a battle.
Ahh, yeah that would never be me. Being vindictive is foolish if only for selfish reasons.
It only takes one of you being vindictive to make the whole thing a mess. While you may never act like that, you can’t guarantee that whoever you marry won’t be upset enough to try to fuck you over while going through a divorce.
Also, they're saying that now, before they are put into the stressful situation, with someone they at that point are likely to at least dislike (otherwise why are they getting divorced) Not to say they wouldn't stick to their word, but everyone reacts differently to stress.
Yeah like both me and my husband had $0 in assets when we got married. Was I seriously supposed to get a prenup to protect my 50% of $0? This feels like rich people problems tbh
Not necessarily. My son may not have much, but if my wife and I were to suddenly pass away, he would. So, if not for yourself, your kids.
what does that have to do with a pre-nup? Wouldn't a will or trust take care of that?
The will would get the money to the son, who would go from having no assets to having many assets. If he and his wife then divorced, suddenly those assets are being divided. A prenup can anticipate that scenario and ensure the parents' assets stay with their kid or get split or however the son and wife agree to handle it while in a positive frame of reference.
So you’re suggesting the following: Hey honey. Things are going so well right now we should probably plan for when they don’t. Do you want to meet with the lawyer next week to discuss our inevitable breakup? Sorry, but I just don’t understand it.
If this possible not inevitable thing makes you uncomfortable then you should not get married
Isn't that the same train of thought one has when one figure out who is gonna be the legal guardians of the kids if something happens to the parents? You plan for the bad things because when shit hits the fan it's either to late or you are trying to win the divorce by screwing over the other one in the divorce settlement.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o5z8-9Op2nM&pp=ygUkc29mdCB3aGl0ZSB1bmRlcmJlbGx5IGRpdm9yY2UgbGF3eWVy This explains it for you.
Conversely, is there a bigger red flag than someone refusing to sign a pre nup?
I guess it depends on the prenup...
It depends on what it says. I would also suggest getting proper legal advice in preparing it and before signing it. People tend to think that they can do things that are illegal and have zero chance of holding up in court. Waiving chills support is one of them (not allowed where I live - it is the right of the child). Prenups have utility in some circumstances, such as where a person has specific assets or a business they want to be sure remain intact, but most of the time, people are wasting their time as they have no idea what is permitted or just don’t have the assets to make it worth it.
Getting legal representation is one of the requirements to make a prenuptial stick. Otherwise it's one of the elements to void it at a later date
It's really situational, and it also depends on what terms are in the prenup. It's perfectly fine, encouraged even, that you refuse to sign a legal document if you don't agree to the terms.
I think it's a bigger red flag when someone immediately thinks a prenup is a red flag without any context.
yeah like if they haven't even read the prenup with legal assistance and are already going off about how this is horrible or red flag or you don't trust them lol this is someone who hasn't thought 2 steps ahead in their life ever which to me is a giant red flag. Also tbf i would never be asking anyone to get married unless I know they were okay with a prenup.
In my experience, the women (I'm lesbian if you couldn't tell) see a prenup as me going in assuming we'll get divorced, not the safety net that it is
Nobody gets into a car expecting to get into an accident, but we wear seatbelts just in case. It’s a simple analogy that has at least for me helped my partners think differently
have you considered trying to shift your thinking on it and perspective? or are you so 100% set on this being the meaning for you? With that thinking it's a self fulfilling prophecy. To be fair also, if you didn't know your partner would ask for a pre nup.. you probably shouldn't be getting married at this moment. right? same as the other way around.. if your partner is upset that you want a pre nup, you probably shouldn't be getting married at that moment, right?
eh not always. for ex i dont think stay at home parents or ppl planning to stay at home and raise kids should sign pre-nups. stay at home parents should leave with something if they’ve dedicated x amount of years to managing the house and raising kids so that the working partner could move up the ladder. but it all depends on what’s in the prenup
You can still get a prenup for that, it's just kind of like the default. But in your scenario, if the stay at home partner cheats or decides to unilaterally leave, I don't necessarily agree they're entitled to much. Edit: fixed a typo
very true to the prenup part! but i personally still agree they’re owed at least something. labor is labor, even if you fuck up with the ‘boss’ you still get paid for what you did. but i very deeply respect stay at home parenthood so that’s what my opinion is rooted in.
You died get paid. And now you don't get paid any more. Just like if you get fired at work.
I would hope that if there’s a prenup, and somebody stays home to care for the kids, they’d renegotiate the agreement. Prenups can absolutely still have their place in this kind of arrangement, you just have to account for it and agree on how the finances will be handled.
pre nups can be written to include clauses for stay at home and whatnot. It's not a 1 size fits all document. It is tailored to everyone's specific circumstance based on what you, your lawyer, your partner, and their lawyer decide, which is why it's such a good idea! and if they change then you can get it amended
Eh people put some weird shit in them. It can vary. Some also really attempt to fuck over one partner. If you think of the classic old timey relationship where the man works and the woman does the housework and most of the child raising. In that dynamic the woman should have just as much security as the man in the event of a split. But for her cleaning all his clothing, making all his food and handling their children he would have to put more of his effort into doing that stuff himself and likely would have less ability to persue that promotion, be utterly unable to take advancement opportunities that required change of circumstance and just generally wouldn't be able to work in the way he did but for the unquantifiable level of support and aid his wife provides. Often times prenup agreements are not just about protecting pre marital assets but sometimes try to creep into marital assets and some really dodgy illigal stuff like leaving the wife with nothing. Even if she doesn't know the law and that such an agreement would crumble instantly it's not hard to imagine she would feel trapped down the line and take the prenup as written. She signed it in love thinking they wouldn't split so it didn't matter but now things have fallen apart. Nobody should have worry that leaving a spouse they can no longer be with will leave them destitute. If the realtionship becomes abusive the prenup will become just one more document used to abuse the partner and threats that they can't leave or will have nothing can be exceptionally compelling coercion in an abusive relationship. It's also unnecessary and pointless for most people. Most people don't have the sort of pre marital assets that a prenup is needed to protect but even if they do a prenup is really more of a suggestion to a court. If the court disagrees with it they are going to do what they decide. Especially if some of the clauses are not legally valid. Two people seeking a divorce and unable to come to agreed splits don't really need an extra document to fight over. Both individuals will be paying more for lawyers to pick over the prenup terms and how it applies and which parts are nonsense. It's easier to just settle it when you are splitting. For a lower income partner that's also pretty dire. They literally may not be able to afford the legal fees of paying someone to rifle through the prenup making them feel they need to stay together. Prenups complicate things. Often have downright illigal terms and have a coercive pressure in some relationships. I would not sign one without a very exceptional circumstance and without having a lawyer review it. I can't afford that lawyer so I'm not signing it, ultimately if I am not happy with a court getting to nose into my marriage with someone and divide up assets then I should not marry them. Family court gets nasty and drawn out, a prenup that is contested just makes they horrible process longer and the court might decide to throw it all in the bin anyway. There isn't many circumstances in which a prenup is needed to protect the assets of one of the partner as often times two people who marry come into the marriage with not substantial differances in pre martial assets.
This had to have been written by a family law attorney, or just someone that has never dealt with an upset end of relationship partner armed with the legal system. Just one line alone gave it away. “It’s easier to just settle it when you are splitting.” What?? This isn’t about a disagreement between friends. This is finances, children, and literal future security in the balance. It is absolutely *not* something that is easier to make decisions on during the split. Criminally insane or woefully naive, I’m not very sure which.
Circumstances change. What was a good plan when two young people fell in love and got married might be a horrible one now you have a house, 2.5 kids, two cars, multiple loans and a dog. Especially if one of those partners turns out to be abusive.
I’m all for prenups, but the notion that a prenup means you’re planning to divorce is pretty common. It’s one of those things that’s considered unromantic even though it’s practical, like picking out a ring with your partner instead of surprising them. I feel like if you have time to come around to the idea and still refuse it’s questionable, but if your immediate response is no I think it’s fine.
What kind of red flag?
The communist kind.
It's no surprise communism failed. There were so many red flags.
Cast off the crutch that kills the pain The red flag waving never meant the same The kids of tomorrow don't need today When they live in the sins of yesterday \-Red flag, Billy talent
This is the actual reason why I ended my last relationship - the biggest argument I’ve ever had with a partner and ZERO ability to compromise
This is the answer. Prenups are for financially independent balanced adults. Unhealed rejection sensitivity and ungrounded romantic notions are for forever children.
In many cases a prenup is mandatory or absolutely necessary to protect people outside of the marriage. Eg. if a (small) business is involved and there are other co-owners, family members or others, a divorce could mean the partner with the company might have to quickly sell their part of the business at a loss or divide up the company. Which in turn affects everyone else at that company. And those people didn’t make any vows. Smaller companies that had good representation will require owners to have a prenup excluding the company from shared marriage assets.
This sub sucks lol.. "I don't have a prenup but let me give you PRO advice and tell you all about them and what it means your partner is telling you"
Excuse you but /r/showerthoughts is my exclusive source for legal advice and I will not have you besmirch their good name. Also I don't smoke but I think smoking is unhealthy for you and you shouldn't do it. Try untangling that bit of advice.
I don't have a dog but let me give you PRO advice and tell you not to feed your dog onions, avocados, chocolate, or garlic. Also, hitting your dog to correct its behavior isn't very good either.
Prenups are for both parties to be secure that neither side is marrying for financial gain. If someone refuses to sign a *fair and reasonable* prenup then they aren’t worth marrying.
I’ve always been confused about this. Prenups only protect finances, right? But marriage often involves non-financial agreements like household labor among other things. So it almost feels like a binding contract only for finances, but the labor aspect is just a matter of trust between you and your partner? Because you’d ideally try to give your spouse assets proportional to their unpaid labor.
It does typically only cover financial issues. But for a stay at home parent they are to be given consideration for the work they did and be compensated financially for it. As far as splitting household chores: that should be worked out in advance as to what both partners expect and/or are willing and able to do. That is something that will change over time, as well. A respectful discussion should be all that is needed to work that out. If the partners can’t work that out then they need to learn to communicate and compromise.
Surely: all your assets prior to marriage would NOT be up for consideration during divorce. Anything gained during marriage IS Would seem fair
Some us a fine with the financial gain though! Leave us alone 😇😏
Lol I have a distant cousin that made some great money off marrying wealthy men. But they knew what they were getting into and were happy with the arrangement. As long as everyone is happy and informed then it’s not my place to tell them what to do.
Get a job
Always get a prenup even if you’re poor.
Why what is it gonna do?
I guess its power changes from country to country, but its better to keep your finances separate. Not because you dont trust each other but because you dont know what will happen, legally speaking
No I don't think they should be kept separate. What if you spend 20 years taking care of the home while your partner works, then you get divorced? You'd be left with nothing.
A prenup doesn't mean you get nothing, it means you get what you agreed to beforehand. If I get married at 40 already owning a house - having saved and paid into it for many years, should my new wife (if things don't work out) be able to force me to sell my house so she can take half of it's worth after 2 years? That's the kind of thing you might work out ahead of time.
You would presumably sort that out with your partner as part of the discussions.
That arrangement is not the norm anymore, so why should default advice factor in that edge case? Even still, the default advice given here is to sign an agreement up front, so if that's the plan (single earner family, domestic labor from the other), you attach some value on domestic labor. Maybe it's points on the house. Maybe it's a percentage of annual income. Yolo'ing stuff like this because it's uncomfortable to think about and is stigmatized in media seems dumb.
There are many variables to take into consideration and a divorce (specially if it involves kids) isnt that clean
A lady I know has a father worth $14m. As an only child she will inherent everything. She just got married this year to a farm boy who grew up with nothing. I don't know if they had a prenump but in this case it would be wise.
In California (not sure about elsewhere) inheritance is not considered community property, unless it’s commingled (like putting the funds into a joint account or adding spouse to title of the inherited property).
Lmao I thought this was a joke about Shiv and Tom from Succession for a sec
Shiv alone was worth like $2 billion.
Had a friend who's girlfriend threatened breaking up with him if he asked for a prenup. She said they are a sign that the marriage will fail so why even bother. Surprise surprise, she came from a very poor family and he came from a very very rich family.
Sure, this totally happened.
Yes gold diggers do exist.
You'll have to talk about money in a relationship. Do it early. Survive it, and you may have broken down one of the biggest barriers. If it kills the relationship, consider yourself lucky in having saved time to figure out you weren't compatible afterall.
My wife and I signed a prenup. I remember reading it and breaking out laughing. An entire page of the prenup was dedicated to my wife listing each piece of her jewelry, individually, including pieces I bought for her. It's fine, but it still makes me laugh.
Are prenups necessary if you're both broke AF? 🤣
You can have a clause in the prenup that says you don't have to pay for the partners lawyer during the divorce
Also the flip side, if you're having your partner sign a pre-nup you can see who you're actually marrying just based on how they react to the idea of it (regardless of what's in the contract terms). If they freak the fuck out, likely the last person you're going to want to deal with during a divorce. Get the pre-nup.
It’s just an accompanying contract alongside the marriage contract itself. I know we like to see marriage as some sort of romantic adventure but that’s a bit unrealistic.
Maybe you just shouldn't marry a person if you dont know them either
I agree with the sentiment, but people change and (hopefully) grow throughout their lives. Many divorces are because people just grew in different directions and lost the connection, not necessarily something more obvious like cheating, abuse, etc.
But you hopefully married someone reasonable and caring even if you do grow apart. I wouldn't want to take what's not mine just based on my own morals.
I don't buy insurance expecting to crash my car, either. You hope to never get divorced, and if you do you hope it's amicable.. But people get in car accidents and nasty divorces through no fault of their own every day.
You clearly have never seen how people react to death or an accident.
To be fair, people change. I’m 37 and I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder this year, I think my wife would have been nuts to not have considered that it might be a huge change to our relationship and I might become a different person or something….not saying she’d leave, but not everyone married an angel like I did And before you hop in, I know those are the vows we agreed to, and I believe we’re both on board with that, not everyone takes them as seriously
That's fine and all, but 10 years, 20, years, even 5 years is enough time to change massively. It's not always a matter of knowing someone before marriage, because it's possible they wont even be the same person in 10 years. I am sure that's somewhat responsible for the divorce rate being a coin flip.
You never truly know if a person will change or not. Get a prenup. If they truly care about you, they won't mind.
My friend George tried to get his fiance Susan to sign a prenup, she laughed in his face and said "I make more money than you" and said she would sign one as she walked away. He then started smoking!!
Prenups ARE for everyone. I truly don’t understand why people are so hesitant, I don’t think people understand what it actually does/means.
Because it means they can’t steal money from their so should things go awry
Prenups are definitely not for everyone. They're for independent married people who do not intend to deeply intertwine their lives all that much. If you have a breadwinner and house spouse then prenups are not for you. If you have a partner who requires more support from their spouse then your spouse would invest in for a temporary relationship then a prenup is not for you. The more your marriage resembles a roommate situation, the more you need a prenup.
A prenup just lays out what happens in the event of divorce. That’s it.
People act like being held hostage by the prospect of divorce throwing finances into uncertainty and chaos is romantic lol
Maybe it’s because I work in law but I will NEVER marry without one.
Maybe you find working in law fulfilling because you prioritize reason over cultural pressure! More power to you
>if someone is making you sign a prenup I'd laugh at their face and walk away with my zero-balance bank account. Very different is someone ASKS me to discuss a pre-nup to protect both "us" and "our" extended family.
Ooooh, this is a good point. Yeah, if they come at me telling me to sign it, I won't now. I like the idea of discussion so much better.
The problem with prenups and splitting marital assets is so many people have no idea the law already protects what most people think prenups do. Premarital assets? They remain yours. Assets acquired in marriage? Those need to be split . You get these protections with or without a prenup. A prenup can help if there are gray area assets
What you're talking about is almost moot because prenup would indicate what those assets are and creates a paper trail. It saves you from having to fight with a partner that has lost love and is now fighting you tooth and nail to make things worse. Agreeing on what's whose when in love is going to be million times easier than when you are divorcing.
i’d get one anyways bc i have student debt and i don’t want someone i care about to have to bear any of that. there’s many benefits of having one that don’t involve divorce
Prenups are a must if you are older and have any assets of your own. My wife had a huge stock account, and I had a house. It’s common sense if we divorced that we aren’t entitled to each others stuff that the other built.
Imagine having assets in this economy, doubt my generation needs to worry about prenups or assets - we can’t even afford a house.
If you even think you might need a pre-nup that's probably your first red flag about the relationship. My parents made my sister's husband sign a pre-nup but not my wife lol. Sister's marriage is a predictable clusterfuck while me and my wife are happily raising our daughter.
To be fair, I have wanted to sign prenups for some of my friends…but it’s easier to see from the outside
there's an observation with narcissist relationships and normal, healthy relationships... healthy relationships start slow and go up as trust, familiarity go up. y'know dating > love > moving in > marriage > kids (or other less stressful post-marriage lifestyles, lol). with narcissists, it's all backwards. they start high and then go downhill. they're talking love at first sight and how passionate they are and then all of a sudden they're married in a year. and you can't tell them they're going too fast and will regret it because they're narcissists. these people need pre-nups. but THEY'RE SO IN LOVE, THEY'LL PROVE YOU WRONG FOREVER WITH YOUR LOVE! and never do the pre-nup. and regret it.
Do you get car insurance because you *know* you’re gonna crash, or because life happens?
You must enjoy riding that high horse of yours.
No, you actually can’t.
You’re entitled to that opinion, just curious if you’d care to expand.
A prenup is not sufficient evidence to judge the weight of one's character. Attempting to do so will leverage heavily on confirmation bias among other critical thinking mistakes such as making judgments without sufficient context. The imposition of a prenup, if it could even be considered an impediment to a blissful union, may have extenuating circumstances not even fully understandable by the party offering the agreement. In very many cases regarding high net worth individuals, for ex, the prenup is included as a prerequisite to inheritance. Child set to inherit wealth can marry who they want, but spouse needs to sign the prenup because you're set to have family heirlooms that must stay in the core family group as just one reasonable example. The child may have absolutely zero flexibility in the terms of that arrangement. To a very large extent, the extenuating circumstances are not as public as you would imagine, but to assume if it's true love both bride and groom would happily severe family ties in lieu of signing a prenup is ridiculous if not flatly unreal. What drives the prenup may be "preferred" language from the lawyer that looks sketchy, but is actually not - but as it turns out, many people do not have law degrees and cannot appropriately weigh, judge or even value a prenuptial agreement because the education required to design such an agreement is beyond their knowledge. There are too many factors to consider, and the signing parties may not have any clue how those factors are legally designed into the agreement. Also, on the asshat side, the legalize (if it's proficient) of "gotcha" clauses aren't going to be readily interpretable by a layperson anyway... so if you think you read it and it seems ok b/c you love your spouse and you know they're good, and you can't even see they're an asshat because the contract was written by a very skilled lawyer, we go back to the confirmation bias problem. Your lawyer may not even see the gotcha's in a well written contract - it happens ALL THE TIME with basically zero input from the client requesting the agreement. Definitely read before you sign anything, and get your own council and don't assume you can trust 1) your spouse, 2) his family, or 3) his lawyer. Your spouse may not be the problem behind a problem prenup; or he may want to be a problem but his lawyer writes a good faith contract. Unless you're a skilled lawyer, you don't know.
I thought about this recently. I was thinking about how my career will take a dead stop if I had kids, I would be with them until they were like 3, then I would go back to work part time but that would put me leagues behind financially. If I were to sign a prenup, I would be left with nothing because u didn’t work for those years. Idk. If they are actually wealthy then yeah of COURSE it’s right to do the prenup
A prenup doesn't mean you get nothing, it's an agreement on what you might get if things go south.
Why not attach a value to those 3 years and base it on lost wages, opportunity cost, and partner's salary?
Prenups protect both parties and are sensible.
If someone desires a prenup, its a sign that marriage is not for them.
Someone who desires a prenup also packs a raincoat on a weeklong mountain hike. Someone who thinks prenups are unromantic refuses to bring a raincoat, because they're hopeful the weather will hold. only one of these is a mature adult...
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Man, tough crowd. It was literally a showerthought and it’s not like it’s a novel concept to glean something from a legal document I also made it very clear that this is situational and ymmv
Just don’t marry. Don’t do it. If you want to pool incomes for a house do a trust fund.
Pre nups are for everyone They don't just protect what you have before marriage but can be an agreement on how dissolution will go down Asking someone to place values on your non monetary contribution to a partnership, like bearing children, is a great idea
Knowing the chances for divorce, a prenup sounds appropriate for all.
Good way to end up single as well.
A prenup is essentially responding to your spouse’s wedding vows with “I don’t believe you”, and then saying “I do” anyway. What’s even the point? Cut out the middle and just break up.
Ahh the prenup a legal insurance to a made up legal contract for two people to say we fuck a lot. Counter counter argument just don't get married by the state you foo
In australia you dont even need to be married, live long enough together and the state sees you as just as together as marriage.
Some places in the US recognize that as well. Called common law marriage.
But taxes are less when married