Rights and Obligations with Prenuptial Agreement

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 by: Jeffrey Broobin

Prenuptial agreements are like insurance policies. You do
the paperwork, and then hope you'll never need it. However, since half
of marriages end in divorce within the first seven years, you may want
to consider a prenuptial agreement before you walk down the aisle and
say, "I do."

Since you could later be engaged in a nasty, costly,
and emotionally draining divorce some day, you should consider a
prenuptial agreement as a precaution. Below we have given you some
information on what is in a prenuptial agreement and whether it could
be useful for you.

A prenuptial or ante nuptial agreement is a document
signed by two people who intend to be married. It describes their
rights and obligations should they get divorced. A prenuptial agreement
informs the court how they want their assets and property divided up.

Divorces become messy when parties cannot agree on the
distribution of property, such things as the house, the house, stocks,
and bonds and whether one party should pay the other alimony, now known
as "maintenance" in most states. Assume that the husband has $1,000,000
in his own name prior to the marriage. A properly drafted prenuptial
agreement can award that same $1,000,000 to him after a divorce,
notwithstanding what he does with the money, such as purchasing a home
in joint tenancy or shifting the money into other accounts. Without a
prenuptial agreement, the wife might be entitled to one-half of the
$1,000,000 or more, depending on the financial circumstances of the
parties at the time of the divorce. The prenuptial agreement is a
powerful and valuable tool that can favor the husband, protect the
wife, or serve both of them fairly. It is a question of circumstances
and intentions.

Candidates for prenuptial agreements used to be just
older individuals with huge estates that they wanted to protect from
gold diggers for their children from previous marriages. Since more
millionaires are born every day, the candidate pool is growing by leaps
and bounds. Now everybody has something to protect: an unpublished
author, the budding inventor, anybody with a lucrative profession or a
good idea. So, before you dismiss the idea of a prenuptial agreement,
assess your situation in life and your long-term future in deciding
whether a prenuptial agreement is right for you.

Consider at length the nature and extent of your
present and possible future assets. A prenuptial agreement can be a
very simple document running only a few pages that segregates each
party's assets owned before the marriage, or it can be a very
complicated document that runs dozens of pages because it deals with
income and assets acquired during the marriage, the payment of debts,
attorneys' fees, alimony/maintenance, and other financial matters. The
next hurdle is raising the issue with your intended spouse, a very
unromantic event. It helps to get it over with early. Perhaps you could
blame it on someone else, such as your parents who may want to involve
you in a family business, or possible business partners.

If you have no one to hold responsible, just be honest.
Tell your future spouse that you intend to be open, fair, and honest,
and the fact that you will be revealing all your assets is a sign of
trust. Assure your intended that he or she will be protected during the
negotiation procedure and in the prenuptial agreement, and stress that
the document is something you feel is necessary and wise before you get
married. The most important thing is to discuss it earlier instead of
later, so that the degree of pressure before the wedding is mitigated.

Couples do not usually break engagements because of
disputes over prenuptial agreements. In almost every instance, the
agreement is signed and the parties are married. It is also completely
appropriate to state that you will not get married without a prenuptial
agreement; case law has indicated that this will not invalidate an
agreement if made before the wedding.

The best way to avoid charges of duress or coercion is
to tell your future spouse early on that you want the prenuptial
agreement. Sometimes, such documents are signed shortly before the
wedding, but have been the subject of negotiation for months. A
well-drafted agreement will recite the fact that, even though it was
signed shortly before or on the wedding date, negotiations began much
earlier. It is for clauses like this that you consult experts.

Eventually, a prenuptial agreement will be fashioned so
that you and your future spouse both accept it. The terms may not be
what you initially envisioned and may not be what your intended would
want. But that is the nature of compromise.

Note that Legal Helper Corp. - http://www.legalhelpmate.com/prenuptial-agreement.aspx

- provides an easy-to-use, quick, and economical online method for creating Prenuptial Agreement (Premarital).

About the Author

Jeffrey Broobin is a free-lance writer on family and finance issues; his main goal is to help people during their complicated period of life.

Website: http://www.legalhelpmate.com

Email: : jeffreyb@legalhelpmate.com

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