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if your FI ask you to sign a prenuptial...would you?

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Dancing Fire

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It'd leave a bad taste in my mouth.
As far as I see it, a marriage contract IS a contract.

Only want to get married once. If he doesn't trust me, why is he marrying me. And if he doesn't trust himself ... why is he marrying me?

Although, this is assuming that we come from a similar background financially. If he was wildly wealthy, particularly due to family money which had taken many generations to build up, and the contract still left me with a strong supportive base, I wouldn't be as insulted as I would be if he basically had 'come into money' while we were engaged, or we had built up a business throughout our relationship, and the contract was arranged to basically leave me with nothing, including walking away from business assets etc.

I don't see why I should raise (his / our) children, throw my support behind his career and his money-making choices, including putting any money of my own in upon marriage, including making lifestyle sacrifices and changes of my own, only to be left with a paltry portion of what was made during the marriage only... after all, is it not a partnership?

Usually, even in marriages where estates are divided fifty-fifty, women go on into financial difficulty, because their married lives have been a state of sacrificing their own skills and educational opportunities for the sake of their husband's. I am a perfect example, where all our money for self-development goes towards furthering my husband's career, and our business which utilises HIS skills. Should we break up, I'll still have the issue of childcare... and I'll probably have difficulty finding a well-paying position. Better be nice to him!
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Sure. Considering he''s got the student loans, and I have the inheritance. And he''d be the one to ask for one to protect me. Not to mention I''m sure we could get one for very cheap if not free. Doesn''t seem like a bad idea to protect everyone''s interests.
 
Date: 4/29/2009 2:17:35 AM
Author: LaraOnline
It'd leave a bad taste in my mouth.
As far as I see it, a marriage contract IS a contract.

Only want to get married once. If he doesn't trust me, why is he marrying me. And if he doesn't trust himself ... why is he marrying me?

Although, this is assuming that we come from a similar background financially. If he was wildly wealthy, particularly due to family money which had taken many generations to build up, and the contract still left me with a strong supportive base, I wouldn't be as insulted as I would be if he basically had 'come into money' while we were engaged, or we had built up a business throughout our relationship, and the contract was arranged to basically leave me with nothing, including walking away from business assets etc.

I don't see why I should raise (his / our) children, throw my support behind his career and his money-making choices, including putting any money of my own in upon marriage, including making lifestyle sacrifices and changes of my own, only to be left with a paltry portion of what was made during the marriage only... after all, is it not a partnership?

Usually, even in marriages where estates are divided fifty-fifty, women go on into financial difficulty, because their married lives have been a state of sacrificing their own skills and educational opportunities for the sake of their husband's. I am a perfect example, where all our money for self-development goes towards furthering my husband's career, and our business which utilises HIS skills. Should we break up, I'll still have the issue of childcare... and I'll probably have difficulty finding a well-paying position. Better be nice to him!
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this is an excellent point Lara - i have actually seen this happen first hand. The woman raises the children, does not have a career, and then 20 or 30 years later the man has been working, and she has to start the job search again....not really fair, is it? And is also probably part of the reason for alimony/child support in general.

Having said that, I would sign a prenup and wouldn't be too offended....but i may not have children either, who knows.
 
Date: 4/29/2009 2:21:21 AM
Author: FrekeChild
Sure. Considering he''s got the student loans, and I have the inheritance. And he''d be the one to ask for one to protect me. Not to mention I''m sure we could get one for very cheap if not free. Doesn''t seem like a bad idea to protect everyone''s interests.

Well... yeah! If we suddenly make a ton of money and my daughter gets a deadbeat boyfriend who looks like he''s ''trying his hardest'', I''ll bring up the issue of pre-nupts! heheheh
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Or I''ll just leave all the money to her kids!
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But, as we have no family fortune, it is not really an issue at this stage... marriage is about sharing a life together, and that has to include financial windfalls and disasters...

Has anybody got any opinions about whether pre-nupts change the behaviour of people within marriage, while the marriage still exists? For example, if all debts brought to the marriage remain one''s own, does it make it more likely that your partner will not be interested in working together to pay down those loans? If the pre-nup says that he gets all the shares, would that mean he would be more likely to stick all his money in shares?

That is a (purely theoretical!) problem I have with pre-nupts!
 
Date: 4/29/2009 2:25:57 AM
Author: violet3
i have actually seen this happen first hand. The woman raises the children, does not have a career, and then 20 years later the man has been working, and she has to start the job search again....not really fair, is it?

Yep, me too... best example... couple go into business together, (hotels) hire a book-keeper... husband runs off with book-keeper... wife leaves everything to him (easily pushed over or what?!!), and walks out in a fug, leaving him the house, the assets, everything...

Twenty years later, after raising her kids, she is still cleaning toilets in a shopping centre, but is managing to scrape together a loan from one of her sons to buy his old home... her ex-husband and the book-keeper have a multi-million dollar business which keeps the girl kids in new mercedes, and the boys (who have gone to work with dad in the booming family business) in pleasure boats!
 
Unless he comes from a particularly wealthy family where he is trying to protect their money, I don''t think I''d sign one. D and I are from a similar background and earn roughly the same (or we will when I qualify), so it''s not an issue for us.
 
E was convinced that we needed one
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, of which he got that idea from a talk radio men''s show. so sure, if E had a large inheritance, or i did, or we owned separate businesses, sure. but we don''t. we''re broke and i have school debt, which isn''t even very much. I had the fortune of talking to a para legal for a divorce lawyer and asked her advice, which she advised against (for us). The cost alone to hire separate lawyers would be more that what we have.
We have an action plan, if you will, regarding having kids, adopting, parent care, etc.

So no, without good reason, i would not sign one. and i would totally pull a Charlotte from SATC if i was put down only worth 1M. I''m worth alot more :)
 
No, I don''t like to plan for my marriage to fail. I can see it if either of us came from *very, very wealthy* families, but we were both poor college students when we met, so everything we have, we built together....
 
If either of us were bringing significant money or a business into the marriage then yes, I''d sign one. Alas neither of us have much, so we''re not worried about it.

Oh, and I believe inheritances and gifts are not considered community property. However, if you were to use said inheritance to buy a house, boat, car, or invest together, then that investment/house becomes a marital asset.
 
i''m repulsed by the whole idea of them and wouldnt sign one under any circumstance. what happened to "with this ring i thee wed, with my body i thee worship, and with all my worldly goods i thee endow"??? we say the words...how? with our fingers crossed? like "yeah - all my worldly good - but it''s a loaner"??

putrid.

and just for the record, when i got married, altho we didn''t have much, anything we DID have was mine, not my husband''s. he went on to have a stellar career, and that''s great. but when we first married, everything was mine, and i wouldnt have asked him to sign anything under any circumstance.

marriage is a tough gig - people need incentives to make it work - not easy ways out for when it doesn''t.

(stepping off soap box now)
 
Unless he was wealthy then no I would not.
 
Sure, with the CA no fault [50-50] why not, just paper.
 
Well considering I make twice as much as he does, I''d probably laugh and say "sure"

But there would have to be a clause in there that said if he ever got rich and famous, the contract is void
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I don''t see anything repulsive about them, and you don''t need to be from incredibly disparate backgrounds for prenups to be useful. They''ve been given a really bad name, but most aren''t of the "man keeps everything, woman gets nothing" variety. It''s basically a private contract that allows you to avoid, to the extent possible, the state''s default laws on division of assets, just like a will allows you to avoid being stuck with your state''s intestacy laws. And you can structure them however you want -- there''s no one-size-fits-all -- so you can do thing like insert provisions into a prenup in case one spouse dies, which doesn''t replace a will but can be helpful in supplementing it.

I just see prenups as a planning tool, basically the same concept as any other life- or estate-planning document. Take a health care directive, for instance. It''s something nobody ever wants to use, but there''s always a possibility I could get hit by a bus and not be able to make my own decisions about medical care, so I''m going to spell my intentions out clearly while I can. The fact of having one wouldn''t make me more likely to cross a road without looking both ways, but if something bad did accidentally happen, I''d be governed by the terms I knowingly chose, not by the government. I''m sure that having a prenup would change the way some people behave in a marriage, but that really depends on the person you''re marrying. My FI and I won''t approach marriage any differently because of it, but ours will deal mainly with procedural issues.

I guess I just see it as naive to assume that nothing bad is ever going to happen to me or my marriage. I think that the probability is low, but it''s never going to be 0% and I''m a planner by nature, so I want the gaps filled as best I can. There''s really no "right" answer, but I''m completely down with the idea of prenups.

Lara, if your friend had a prenup, she probably would have been in a much better position when her husband ran off because (assuming the prenup was fairly structured) she wouldn''t have lost out on everything even if she didn''t push for her fair share at the time -- it already would have been set out and legally binding. Although I think Australia disfavors prenups and usually doesn''t enforce them, am I correct?
 
Agree!!
 
Date: 4/29/2009 8:37:01 AM
Author: steph72276
No, I don''t like to plan for my marriage to fail. I can see it if either of us came from *very, very wealthy* families, but we were both poor college students when we met, so everything we have, we built together....

Agree with steph,
I forgot to quote before
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Date: 4/29/2009 8:37:01 AM
Author: steph72276
No, I don''t like to plan for my marriage to fail. I can see it if either of us came from *very, very wealthy* families, but we were both poor college students when we met, so everything we have, we built together....
Ditto to this....
 
As someone who married a man who built his business/career prior to being involved with me my answer is yes, I would have signed one if he had asked. He didn''t, so it was a non-issue, but I would have understood if he had wanted to protect his assets that I should have no right to (and if I were the one who entered the marriage with assets I would feel the same).

Prenups and child support are seperate issues. Prenups cannot preclude child support or visitation.
 
It depends I think. If FI had a lot of money and a lot of assets, I would understand that he was just being smart and trying to protect them. If FI had no significant savings or assets and we made similar salaries (pretty much the situation I''m in) I would not be very receptive to a prenup. If he had nothing to lose from a divorce, it would seem like he was just preparing for our marriage to end, if you know what I mean.
 
Date: 4/29/2009 8:39:17 AM
Author: Hudson_Hawk
If either of us were bringing significant money or a business into the marriage then yes, I''d sign one. Alas neither of us have much, so we''re not worried about it.


Oh, and I believe inheritances and gifts are not considered community property. However, if you were to use said inheritance to buy a house, boat, car, or invest together, then that investment/house becomes a marital asset.
Hudson i think that is the same here for WA (i could be wrong) which once i pointed out, the prenup talk was gone!


Octavia - i think you are right as well. it does have a bad name associated with it, due to miss-education about it. i thought it was awful until i was reminded of a couple who both had their own business (successful) and realized how much would involve trying to split that up in court. I just don''t like it when the advice is given out to men and woman to do it without having proper education about it (ie, the talk radios here in WA).
 
I''d sign one.

Better to arrange everything while feeling lovey-dovey and being convinced it''s just going to be a useless piece of paper than when both people are (potentially) making decisions out of anger. Less room for vindictiveness to affect the outcome and lifestyle of one or both partners, and possibly a quicker, smoother resolution.
 
Date: 4/29/2009 2:25:57 AM
Author: violet3

Date: 4/29/2009 2:17:35 AM
Author: LaraOnline
It''d leave a bad taste in my mouth.
As far as I see it, a marriage contract IS a contract.

Only want to get married once. If he doesn''t trust me, why is he marrying me. And if he doesn''t trust himself ... why is he marrying me?

Although, this is assuming that we come from a similar background financially. If he was wildly wealthy, particularly due to family money which had taken many generations to build up, and the contract still left me with a strong supportive base, I wouldn''t be as insulted as I would be if he basically had ''come into money'' while we were engaged, or we had built up a business throughout our relationship, and the contract was arranged to basically leave me with nothing, including walking away from business assets etc.

I don''t see why I should raise (his / our) children, throw my support behind his career and his money-making choices, including putting any money of my own in upon marriage, including making lifestyle sacrifices and changes of my own, only to be left with a paltry portion of what was made during the marriage only... after all, is it not a partnership?

Usually, even in marriages where estates are divided fifty-fifty, women go on into financial difficulty, because their married lives have been a state of sacrificing their own skills and educational opportunities for the sake of their husband''s. I am a perfect example, where all our money for self-development goes towards furthering my husband''s career, and our business which utilises HIS skills. Should we break up, I''ll still have the issue of childcare... and I''ll probably have difficulty finding a well-paying position. Better be nice to him!
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this is an excellent point Lara - i have actually seen this happen first hand. The woman raises the children, does not have a career, and then 20 or 30 years later the man has been working, and she has to start the job search again....not really fair, is it? And is also probably part of the reason for alimony/child support in general.

Having said that, I would sign a prenup and wouldn''t be too offended....but i may not have children either, who knows.
Yes, it''s really unfair how women''s rights have been eroded in the past forty years or so in this regard. In the 1960''s the idea somehow gained credence that raising children was ''doing nothing'' and that stay at home mothers and housewives were parasitical. Easy divorce came in at this time too. It used to be that marriage was protection for women (and children too) because the state acknowledged the fact that in return for the woman giving up her most valuable earning years to bear and raise children, she ought to have security. The ''rights and privileges'' that people are always talking about nowadays that come from being married (the ones that remain) are all in acknowledgement of the fact that most women are going to have children and thus will not be operating on a level playing field with men even if they do choose to have careers outside the home. An acknowledgment that their contributions as child-bearers/child-rearers have value to society and so they should not be chucked out into the cold.
I tend to think that pre-nuptials are obnoxious as used nowadays and are mostly useful to people like Donald Trump, who wants to trade in a wife every six or seven years and trade up, the way other people do with cars, without having a financial penalty. I would be very suspicious of someone who wanted me to sign one. Even in the case of old family money, I would be distressed at the lack of trust. I do have two friends who married into huge amounts of money--I''m talking not millions, but hundreds of millions of dollars. Neither was asked to sign a pre-nup. Both were very carefully picked though. I mean, both the husbands were very sure that these were women with the right values and not gold-diggers, something that they were very aware existed. When you have hundreds of millions of dollars you are taught to carefully choose all your friends, because people will try to use to you and it''s something you have to be very guarded about. Both have been happily married for twenty-five years and over. Neither couple has a flashy life-style at all.
I do think that in the case of RE-marriage, especially after death of spouse, you need not a pre-nup but a very good will. It happens all too often that Mr. X and Mrs. Y, both widowed, get re-married, Mrs. Y dies intestate and everything she has to goes to Mr. X and when Mr. X dies it goes to HIS heirs, that is, his children and Mrs. Y''s kids get nothing. Sometimes not even sentimental family heirlooms that are not valuable to Mr. X''s kids financially or otherwise.
 
I would not sign one nor ask then FI to sign one. He wouldn''t have anyway. (See Whitby''s post.)

I absolutely agree that they are a GREAT idea for remarriages where kids/grandkids are involved. The scenario Black Jade described above is right on.
 
Even being in the legal profession, pre-nups strike me the wrong way. If you''re willing to give your heart and soul to someone and enjoin yours with theirs, I can''t imagine saying "Oh but, sign this so I can protect myself from you if and when things go awry." I think it does a disservice to marriage as we know it and discounts the very relationship. If the man/woman you''re about to marry is so concerned with their assets and money that they cannot trust the very person they''ll be spending their life with, then their priorities are in the wrong place.

My view may be a bit skewed, as I plan/hope on never getting divorced. But I would say those accepting of pre-nups are probably more likely to be open to divorce as well.
 
As others have said, if he came from a wealthy family and had their interests to protect, then yes I would...but I wouldn''t be left out in the cold, believe you me.
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I''m no fool.

However, I''ve known FI since I was practically fresh out of HS, and he was a kid himself with nothing. He managed to buy a home by himself, but other than that, everything we have now, we got together. So, if he asked me to sign one tomorrow, I would say no.
 
this is a sorta funny issue for me, since I''m a matrimonial lawyer and also engaged...

I personally don''t see anything wrong with signing a fair pre-nup (of course I don''t--part of my firm''s practice is to draft them, naturally!), but knowing what I know about the law in my state and the amount of money he and I have (nothing) and have the potential to make (slightly more than nothing, but not so disparate)--and any inheritance I have will be in my name alone, so it will be separate as long as I choose at that time to keep it separate...

regardless, though, my dad wants me to get one. he said he wouldn''t go to a cobbler who didn''t have shoes, lol--gotta love my dad.
 
We discussed it before we got married. Had one of us had actual assets, I think we would have. But we both came into the marriage with old cars, student loans, and less than $1000 in savings to our names, it wasn''t worth it!

I would have, though!
 
Being in the business, I have worked with lots of couples who had prenups. My own husband had a successful business when we met.He was also a widower with 2 children. He never asked me to and I wouldn''t have anyway. I feel the same way as Whitby does about this. If he didn''t trust me to do right he shouldn''t marry me.Of course I also think you shouldn''t marry someone unless you love his kids.
 
As long as it was a fair one-sure. In this day and age they aren''t just to protect men either...
 
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