Love, Marriage, and Pre-Nups
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Reader C has a great question about how to deal with her fiance, who wants her to sign a pre-nuptial agreement… should she sign a pre-nup, readers?
After 7 years of dating (since my junior year of college) and one year of being engaged, my fiance just brought them up. Both of us have advanced degrees but he's in finance and I work in public interest law. I am significantly less financially secure than him and will make significantly less in my career. But we've always functioned like a team. We've both made moves and career decisions for each other. He's my best friend.
But I'm really hurt. Our wedding is only a month and a half out and this feels very rushed to me. We both have said we would never get divorced (and after 8 happy years together, I truly believe we'll make it), but his phrasing is that “he analyzes risk for a living and he just wants to be extra secure that in the unlikely event of divorce, he is prepared.”
I think that even having a pre-nup opens the door to divorce and don't understand why if he says he doesn't believe in divorce that he'd request one. This feels like the biggest breach in our relationship ever.
Advice? Am I being ridiculous? Is he? How many corporette readers have pre-nupts (statistics I found said 5-10% of marriages but that includes second marriages and marriages with children from previous marriages where I think it makes more sense)? Can anyone help me get on board with this or am I right to be freaking out (after all, a pre-nupt can only hurt me)?
Interesting question. I've seen articles that say pre-nups are on the rise (even though the oft-quoted statistic that 50% of couples divorce isn't really true).
Personally, I come to pre-nups from the other side of things: even though I'm wildly in love, as well as Catholic and of the “divorce is not an option” mindset, I'm the one who brought them up with my husband, R.
I broached the subject with this little speech: Good Kat and Good R are marrying now, and we love each other and of course would want to take care of each other (or at least be fair to each other) even if something were to happen and if we were to divorce.
But — if we actually WERE to divorce, that would be a sea change (because we love each other so much right now and can't possibly imagine it!!) and, in that event, we'd probably be dealing with either Bad Kat or Bad R or both.
And my point was that if we really loved each other now, wouldn't it be a nice thing if Good Kat and Good R had agreed to the terms of the divorce — and not Bad Kat or Bad R, who probably would have hurt feelings and maybe a bit of blood thirst.
Furthermore, even though the pre-nup terms we discussed were very close to New York state law, something else I liked was that if the law changed, or if we moved to a new state, we wouldn't have to deal with new information — the terms of the divorce would always be a known quantity.
Another side of this discussion, of course, is the adage “don't marry someone you wouldn't want to divorce.” I think that's very true — but I will say that sometimes qualities that can be attractive to a person, such as competitiveness and determination, can turn against you, and turn hard. If you're up against that partner in a divorce, a pre-nup can be a great way to guard against an unfair divorce.
So I would look at the agreement your fiance is proposing (or the terms that he's proposing, if nothing is written yet) — are the terms fair to you? Are they what a loving mate would want you to have now, if things go sour in the future? It sounds like he's going to have a lot of assets (or already does) — what do you want of that?
It doesn't hurt to talk explicitly about how the situation would change if you have children, especially in the event you take time off from your career to stay home with them for a bit. (Which, no matter how strongly you think you know one way or another whether you'd like to be a working mom or not, can totally change once the baby arrives — some women find they just can't leave their little one; others can't deal with the drudgery of baby rearing.)
I recommend the book What to Do Before I Do 
to you, if only to think about all of the different things you should discuss.
Now, that said, R and I never actually got around to signing the pre-nup — it turned into a post-nup, which we intended to sign before we bought the apartment, but never quite got around to it. And now that we have a son… well, meh. (We always joke that everything we have is his now, anyway.)
Readers, what are your thoughts? Do you have a pre-nup? Would you be offended if your partner wanted one? What is your answer to Reader C's question: should I sign a pre-nup?
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Reader C, you are not being ridiculous. I think it’s a really big deal, and I think you have a very significant decision to make. Trust your instincts.
My husband and I have a prenup. When we got married he had been a practicing lawyer for about 6 years and I was finishing up my last year of law school. Husband has significant assets because both of his parents had already passed away; I have an interest in my dad’s company that has potential to be worth some money down the road. Husband said he wanted a prenup before we even got engaged.
I like to think of the whole experience as really expensive marriage counseling. At the end of the day, I don’t think it was that necessary for us because we barely changed state law at all. It was a total PITA on so many levels: my attorney wouldn’t listen to what I wanted, the process is the only time my husband and I have ever fought, and it was so awful to be dealing with my fiance as an *adversary* while we were negotiating it. But I think they are really valuable because of the conversations they force you to have. There’s nothing like the financial document dump that’s required for the prenup to make everyone come clean about their financial history and get on the same page about planning for your financial future as a couple. If you can’t handle this conversation…you’re not ready to get married.
That timing is really awful though. You could spend 6 weeks trying to find good representation! It probably took us a good month going back and forth to finalize all the details in ours. The letter writer should talk to her finace and get him to be honest about why he wants a prenup, and why now.
You don’t plan on crashing your car into a tree, but you buy insurance and wear a seatbelt. Same deal.
My fiance and I don’t have a pre-nup yet, but we want one. We’ve been together for over 6 years, and I can’t imagine my life without him.
But… in the event that something ever goes wrong (and you can’t predict the future), I do want the divorce to be fair. He’s in biglaw, and I’m in marketing, so you can guess the gap in salary. Plus, he clearly has the advantage of knowing more about law.
Pre-nups (or possibly a post-nup, if we end up being like Kat), just lay the groundwork for a fair divorce. He’s even encouraging me to find my own lawyer to represent my end (which he’d split with me, since he doesn’t need to hire one), and I find that oddly romantic that he cares about protecting my future self.
I know two people who almost lost their pre-relationship property in relationship breakdowns. In both cases, the exes went after a settlement aggressively causing the other party to either sell their home or up their mortgage to fund a pay-out. In both cases the exes contributed nothing financially to the asset and the property owners were not rich by any means. A pre-nup if you have critical assets like your own home going into a marriage, is sensible I think.
My DH and I have a pre-nup. It wasn’t controversial for us. I inherited money that I wanted to protect, and both of us have parents who went through messy divorces. We took the pre-nup to what some might call an extreme. Whatever we had before the marriage is separate, and even the money we make during the marriage will also remain separate, unless we take certain steps to designate it as marital property. I wanted there to be as few ambiguities as possible if we did decide to split. If one of us has to scale back our careers after we have kids, it’s likely we’ll revisit these terms. I’m a little older than he is, and I met him after I got my degrees and started my career, so I think what we did was fair.
To everyone here, I suggest that you talk about pre-nups early in the engagement, whether you are inclined to get one or not, so the wedding eve surprise does not happen. Having the discussion should not be unpleasant. The time to take steps to protect each other is before the wedding, when you still love each other, and not if/when you are bitter and hate each other.
Because so many marriages end in divorce, I don’t think anyone should question people’s motives for wanting a pre-nup. If your fiance has or makes more money than you do, and you think he is unloving or distrustful or disloyal for wanting a prenup, then I think you should ask yourself whether you might actually want to marry him for his money.
I have always said when asked that the most important part of the pre-nup is the discussion of expectations and that you should have the discussion whether you sign the pre-nup or not and lay out those expectations, and shared ( hopefully) desires for your life together. I have a pre-nup, I am ashamed to say that I brought it up perilously close to the wedding date (after serious pressure from my family) and it was easier than planning the wedding itself because we had already talked and talked about what sort of a future we were planning so it was really just putting down on paper what we had already discussed. My husband was very gracious about the whole thing and I consider it a very tangible symbol of our respect for each other that we “put it in writing”.
That was my second marriage. My first marriage also had a pre-nup at my first husband’s insistence as he was older, had two children, and had been through a nasty divorce. That pre-nup was difficult to discuss. In the end, I signed it, against advice from my separate counsel because it would not cover me in the event we had children and I quit working. The divorce was a mess, but it would have been a lot messier without that pre-nup because he tried to come after my separate assets and the pre-nup shut that down fast. I shudder to think what would have happened had we not had a pre-nup.
I am a lawyer now and here’s what I’ve learned from negotiation lots of contracts since then:
1) you only need the contract when you NEED the contract, i.e. when things go horribly wrong, and
2) As goes the negotiation, so goes the relationship, i.e. if you are having difficulty talking and coming to a mutual understanding before you get into the relationship, then you are going to have difficulty talking and coming to any understanding after you get in the relationship. consider that carefully before you get into any relationship.
It doesn’t matter whether the relationship is a supplier agreement, a services contract, or a marriage.
I suggest checking out A Practical Wedding. Hands down, best wedding website ever. The only one I still read after getting married 2 years ago. They have this post on pre-nups that may be interesting to you: http://apracticalwedding.com/2010/11/ask-team-practical-pre-nups/
Check it out. I have no advice but to point you to a bunch of wise women.
Dear OP:
Having skimmed the comments, it seems that very few address your questions about whether you are being ridiculous or freaking out. My answer: not at all. This is a hurtful, surprising and unnecessary thing for him to do maybe ever, especially at this time. You are utterly normal to feel upset by it. I don’t agree with all the people telling you to get a lawyer. I would ask him first what’s driving the issue exactly, and tell him it makes you feel uncomfortable since you’ve had such a good long relationship and look forward to a beautiful future together. Tell him you want to focus on the weeks leading up to your wedding, your love for each other, and positive things. That if there is a particular issue at heart stressing him out, you are willing to work through it and put pen to paper after the wedding.
I agree with others who have said each party brings intangibles at differnet times, and no agreement can capture/predict it all. One thing if he was megarich and you were a penniless golddigger without a job- but this isn’t that situation. My spouse and I are lawyers- we didn’t even get into it as we new our state law would split things if something happened but moreover: were highly excited to be together, don’t plan to divorce, and still don’t. Life’s too short too spend time on stuff like this unless there is a serious reason to do so.
Good luck and hope things smooth out soon.
CA Attorney – I got married toward the end of my 3rd year of law school. I had student loan debt [it was 34 years ago, so not nearly as high as more recent grads], and my income was going to at least start out substantially lower that my husband’s. He wasn’t rich, but had assets, I didn’t.
I proposed, we were getting married in 2 weeks, I wanted on a pre-nup. Met with a very nice, non-confrontational battle-ax family lawyer, and I insisted on a cockamamie formula – I would be responsible for paying off all of my student loans; we would each contribute to our living expenses in proportion to our relative incomes. The pre-nup also had a schedule attached of what property each of us brought to the marriage, and that it would remain our separate property, unless we we agreed otherwise during the course of the marriage.
When I got my first paycheck, we sat down with all of our monthly bills spread around, and did the math. My meager net income didn’t begin to cover my student loans and my % share of our expenses.
Of course, he didn’t force me to abide by an agreement I couldn’t have carried out. We got to a point where our incomes were about even, then in much later years, his had decreased while mine increases. Mind you, neither of us was ever bringing in a huge income. We also weren’t keeping score along the way. We did make wills not long after we married.
Ours was a long and incredibly happy and mutually supportive marriage (he died 2.5 years ago). True, we didn’t have children from previous relationships or with each other.
I had great love and trust and respect for my last husband, and he for me, and mostly I wanted to take responsibility for my own obligations that pre-dated our relationship.
To those of you who think that young couples without lots of assets who are just starting out don’t need/shouldn’t have a pre-nup: Your marriage may work, it may fail, if you don’t believe in divorce, your SO may walk out on you anyway and not provide for you in any way. You think it would be important when kids come along or jobs change or other financial changes happen. There will always be pressures that make it inconvenient to work on a post-nup, and then you might find your self in that surprised position, where you have the liabilities, responsibilities, less income because you were more supportive in ways other than financially, he dissipated assets, incurred debts etc., – one or all of the above. Your life will be wrecked. Yeah, you can hold your head up and feel that you’ve been the honorable one, but you’re still stuck.
So, when you’re young, you don’t know what’s going to happen along the way, and there’s no better time to plan and have an agreement than when you’re both in love, positive, and wouldn’t want to hurt the other.
Disclosure: I’m jaded, having had 3 earlier marriages, all failed, mostly no money issues [ #1 and #2 neither of us had enough to fight over]; #3 had assets I didn’t know about, he was very secretive, vigorously opposed any motions for support, accused me in his court pleadings of being a card-carrying member of NOW !!! etc. I didn’t get anything except some of my clothes and my own furniture, the latter mostly the worse for intentional wear and tear he’d done before he grudgingly and under legal pressure from his and my lawyers to return them to me. After that, I had never planned to marry again.
Sorry for the autobio and long post, but this really strikes a chord.
I would not have signed a prenup. I think it depends on how you view marriage, and that is a very personal choice so no one can decide for you. If you truly believe that you will stay married to this person no matter what, then you don’t need a pre-nup. If you think well I’d really like to stay married but who knows, life is uncertain, then you should think about one.
I don’t have a prenup w/my DH, and I don’t think either of us would have considered it at the time.
Were I to do it all over again with what I know now (I’m in law school), I would totally do it, with a provision to revisit the agreement after a certain amount of time and/or in the event that we had kids.
I recommend that the OP check out this article:
http://www.americanbar.org/publications/gpsolo_ereport/2012/march_2012/premarital_agreement_issues_checklist.html
Slightly off topic, but illustrative. My parents had an arranged (technically semi-arranged since they met several times and approved it) marriage. My Dad was in the U.S. and is a few years older than my mom – and was making bank (for the 70s) as an executive at a big engineering firm. My Mom was India, was accepted to a U.S. residency, but had no other assets. She had a several month gap between moving and the start of residency and had no skills other than a then-useless M.D. should anything happen. She’s also, bless her, a total princess, who never paid a bill, balanced a checkbook, or boiled a pot of water. Different culture, different time, but very similar to the two-professional relationships many of us are in now.
So after they got married my Dad handed my Mom a fairly large amount of money (certainly enough to support her for some time), and told her to open her own bank account, give him absolutely zero access, and make sure she would always have financial independence from him and could leave anytime she wanted to. Note, divorce is very much not an option in our religion, and there is only one family member who has in the history of this giant and large family ever gotten a divorce (ironically a cousin living in India who spent his life sniffing in disdain at his liberal, spoiled, American and British cousins who have dated and married throughout the rainbow). My Dad isn’t a lawyer, but apparently at some point, and at his insistence, they had a post-nup agreement while my Mom was earning very little when she off ramped to be home more with me and my brother. Dad also taught Mom about money management (and for that matter housecleaning, though they almost always have had household help) – so that she could support herself if need be someday.
My parents share everything (banking, house)- with two exceptions. After 35+ years of marriage, my father still insists that my mother have some of her own money, just in case, which is sacred and he will never touch. It may be sexist (and at many times my M.D. specialist mother made a good deal more than my father), but my Dad believes that women, particularly women with children, no matter how educated are usually in a weaker financial position when things go wrong. The other exception is the business – while my Mom is a shareholder and will inherit his shares upon his death, my Dad always kept the business finances separate, did not invest marital savings (he started it with a golden parachute) and would not put the house up for any business loans or lines of credit because he never wanted to put his family at risk.
My parents actually have the best marriage I’ve ever seen, even better than my own very happy marriage. They are partners in every way – they both made sacrifices for each other’s careers. They’ve both played the corporate spouse. They’ve both built financial wealth – but more importantly they’ve done good. Their kids are done grad school and have careers. And they are the two most in love, romantic, silly, disgustingly cute people you will ever meet (and yeah, I did need some brain bleach after I figured out what my parents deep into their 60s did – just eww :p). They’re both still working (they love their professions), but they are more romantic and in love now than when they were first married. Or, as my Dad says, your 60s are like your 20s, just way better with less responsibilities and more money.
YMMV, but an extremely practical stance on planning served them well.
In the event you’re following up on this thread–thanks for sharing such a sweet story.
I have a pre-nup, and I’m the one who brought it up with my now husband. He said he was fine with it and didn’t view it as hurtful (hopefully he was telling me the truth). That said, I broached the subject early in our engagement, but both my husband and I are attorneys and are well-acquainted with the concept. It is possible that your fiance didn’t mention it previously because it didn’t occur to him until later on, given that this is not something he deals with on a regular basis.
Like Kat and some of the other commenters, our pre-nup essentially mirrors our State’s current laws, with few exceptions for inheritance and monetary gifts from parents. Personally, I have no emotional response to the subject of pre-nups, but that may be a result of my own life experience. Both of my parents have been married and divorced multiple times. The same is true for my husband. I view it as an insurance policy. I hope I never have to use it, but I like knowing its there.
Well, I must say I’m very heartened to see that such a concentration of lawyers is on the whole supporting the need for a prenup :-). The worst cases I’ve ever seen of people doing absolutely horrible things to each other in a separation has been.. lawyers, playing badly-shod cobblers to the bitter end.
My own experience (not a lawyer, not with a lawyer) has been financially devasting once, I think mostly because I was not married, and so the thought of a contract didn’t even cross my screen as I jeopardized my entire financial future for the person I trusted. Wrongly. Don’t do as I did :-).
I just saw that you posted this same question to Carolyn Hax. I hope you find a good answer.