Prenuptial Agreement Good or Bad

Lee Huffman, a travel reward credit card expert at BaldThoughts.com, signed a marriage contract with his wife Anna 10 years ago. If you started a business before entering into marriage and want to protect that asset in the event of divorce, a prenuptial agreement can do so. Often, the initiating party (or their lawyer) says, “You can just put the prenuptial agreement in a drawer and forget about it.” That`s not true. The prenuptial contract should not be forgotten and is probably legally binding as soon as it comes out of the drawer. Marriage is a mixture of a complex set of laws, customs, expectations and culturally based understandings. A prenuptial agreement will unexpectedly upset this balance and inevitably have unintended consequences. If the prenup was poorly formulated or if a party`s financial situation has changed radically since the agreement was first drafted, the result of a prenup may be unbalanced. Selfishness kills a marriage. Generosity makes it prosper. Your mediator can help you make the prenup less restrictive. You can describe an area of financial joint venture in marriage. When working with lawyers, don`t assume they`ll think about doing it without you asking them.

Most lawyers mindlessly use a standard version of scorched earth. I have seen many cases where the parties negotiate prenuptial agreements very close to the marriage and after the invitations are sent. This is not conducive to independent negotiations on a financial contract that can affect the next 50 years of your life. Even mediators can be insensitive to the power imbalance between the parties when helping clients negotiate a marriage contract. Mediators should be very aware that the agreement proposed by “both parties” can in reality only be the thought of one party and that the other party feels obligated even if it does not admit it. All motivations and feelings must be discovered and discussed before proceeding with mediation. “If someone wants to start a business with their family who doesn`t want to be a marital asset, or if someone wants to stop working during marriage but wants financial security to give up future career prospects – the parties can still enter into a remarriage contract if and when it makes sense to do so,” said Frawley and Pollock. “Because we know we all have great earning potential, we simply agreed that `what belongs to you, belongs to you, and what belongs to me is mine,`” Huffman says. In the unlikely event of a divorce, their agreement ensures that Huffman and his wife`s individual assets remain intact. However, marriage contracts can be very useful for people who are contracting a second marriage and have children from the first marriage. An agreement can balance the loyalty of one of the spouses to the new spouse and the care and loyalty of the spouse to the children of the first marriage. When the session started, I said, “Anyone who talks about a marriage contract is always considered the bad guy.

But I don`t see it that way at all. A friend of mine, clinical psychologist and financial planner Victoria Collins, put it perfectly: “Anyway, everyone has yellow stamp marriages in their heads. Making them open and explicit, while a difficult process, is a healthy way to solve problems and avoid problems on the road. “State divorce laws can solve the problems of income inequality and property inequality before marriage if and when spouses divorce. Avoiding a court at the expense of an agreement that makes it more likely that there will be a breakdown of the marriage may not be a reasonable compromise. Courts regularly apply prenuptial arrangements that give a spouse a fraction of what the spouse would “earn” under state law. This proves that the agreement reached years earlier in the marriage contract was unfair to this spouse. I have found in the last few years of my couple coaching and therapy work that not all people get married at the same time on their wedding day. Many people (especially men, and especially those who have been damaged by previous marriages) tend to marry (and trust) slowly over time. I am convinced that if Mark and Ellen have stayed together, they will trust each other more and trust their relationship more than when they drafted their marriage contract. When it comes to money, as in all matters, patience and compassion are the cornerstones of progress in marriage.

Divorce laws are fair. That is why they were developed. Trust them (and your goodwill and sense of fairness to each other) to do the right thing at the time of divorce. Don`t rely on a number of financial arrangements made years before the marriage that can be completely disconnected from the actual facts at the time of divorce. Trust that by renouncing the prenuptial agreement, you have made your marriage stronger and more likely. A marriage contract is a written legal contract between you and your partner that is concluded before the marriage. It may include details such as: When you establish a prenup agreement, you and your partner will each want to consult a lawyer. Each lawyer will endeavor to provide advice on the terms of the contract and how it may affect you, your assets and your family in the event of a divorce. In my legal practice, I receive a steady stream of potential clients who want marriage contracts. These potential clients read about them in the media and are told that they are crucial for someone who is about to get married. Some of them are advised by their accountants, business partners, lawyers and/or family members to get one. The parties fight in court over marriage contracts; Marriage contracts in themselves do not eliminate legal disputes.

The final step in addressing this issue with Mark and Ellen was that they took steps that allowed them to fill the void in their two views on the marriage contract. As they continued to practice empathetic communication at home and with me, Mark came up with several ideas on how he could help Ellen feel more cared for: give her money now to make her feel better supported financially and emotionally, make arrangements in his will to take care of her in the event of her death, and so on. All of this seemed to reassure Ellen and calm her fears that her desire for a marriage contract indicates that he didn`t trust or love her. She said she could honor Mark`s need to see his children well cared for by accepting the arrangements he wanted to make for their financial security before they got married. An agreement helped them maintain the best interest in their children from previous relationships and their individual financial successes from their careers. Ellen reflected Mark`s pain that his divorce arrangement gave his children half the money he had planned. She then pondered her statement that he did not intend to remarry, but that he was willing to marry her because he loved her and wanted to make her happy as long as there was a previous financial agreement. The next step was to teach them some communication skills so they could begin to understand each other`s perspective on the marriage contract. I`ve found that Harville Hendrix`s mirroring technique can benefit almost any couple by helping each partner get rid of their own emotional agenda and perspective long enough to enter each other`s world with empathy and compassion.

Ellen and Mark were both willing to learn the simple “mirror steps” to clear their minds of their own thoughts; listen to their partner`s words (say in small pieces to remember); repeat what he said, using the same words as much as possible; validation of their partner`s point of view on this matter; and empathize with what their partner might be feeling. .