There’s also the “keeping family property inside the family” issue that many people have mentioned. Very few vows (even the ones that both people really, really mean) involve what happens to Great-Aunt Lucy’s rubies if the bride gets hit by a bus on her honeymoon.
It was required at my church, too. If neither person getting married had been married before, the couple had to go to at least 3 counselling sessions; if one of them had, it was a minimum of 6 sessions. In our case, all three of them were with our priest and she also brought up these issues, as well as end of life issues. I’m glad we did them, but when we talked with a lawyer, we learned specific things about how the law applies to our finances.
A marriage doesn’t have to end in divorce for these things to be important. For example, I have a 401(k) plan (retirement plan) from a job which I had before I met the gentleman. Because we haven’t contributed any joint funds to it or paid any joint bills out of it, if we die without having children, the money in it would go to my family and his family would have no legal claim to it under Pennsylvania law (this may vary depending on where you live in the US) unless I explicitly wrote something saying they do. As I said, I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of meeting with a lawyer at first, but I’m glad we did.
I’m recently married, to a woman who makes a *lot * (many multiples) more money than I do, and had substantial assets at the time of our marriage (compared to my complete lack of any kind of assets whatsoever). I would really, really liked to have had a pre-nup, as draconian as possible (meaning that it would specify that I got absolutely nothing should we divorce), mostly because I thought at the time it would give her peace of mind. I wouldn’t want there to be the slightest shadow of a doubt in the furthest reaches of her mind that the difference in our economic status had anything at all to do with my reasons for wanting to marry her.
She wouldn’t have anything to do with it. So I wrote her a letter. I’m not a lawyer, but I declared as clearly as possible that I waived any interest in any of her property or income or anything else in the event of a divorce, along with any right to support or alimony or maintenance of any kind. I signed it, and put it in the mail. I have no idea if she kept it or not. Still, should we ever divorce, no matter why, I wouldn’t take a thing from her.
Sure, I just don’t think that’s important - really - it’s only stuff. The wedding vows (“all that I have, I share with you”) are simply incompatible with the idea of pre-nuptial reservation of property. (They’re obviously also incompatible with the concept of divorce).
How can a person make the vow “all that I have, I share with you”, and mean it, when a certain portion of what they have has been held back?
To use your terms, sometimes what you have isn’t yours to share. You may have property, for example, that has been in your family for many generations, and it must pass to your lineal descendant, or if you have none, then to a sibling’s child. In that situation, your spouse wouldn’t have a rightful claim to it, even though she’s taken the same vows you did. It may just be “stuff”, but it’s not yours to give up if you wish to maintain harmony with your family.
I spent a fun-filled day a few months ago where the keynote speakers discussed these issues and how to mitigate them by various means. One of the things discussed was pre-nup agreements. The consensus was that they’re very useful if each party is coming into the marriage with a significant disparity of assets; if there is family property that must remain in the family; or if there is some other extramarital obligation that must be met, such as the need to provide care for a family member, or for children from a previous marriage. The speakers also advised us not to legislate every little detail; you don’t want a document that’s so iron-clad that it’ll fuck you (or someone else) later. There were horror stories of tightly-written pre-nups that failed to take into consideration special-needs children, for example. The couple ended up splitting up, the mother got custody and not nearly enough financial support to be able to care for the child.
Robin
OK. I have no experience of such riches, however, so it’s certainly not a factor in my own case, which is all I initially intended to talk about.
Replace:
“pre-nup”
with:
“a loaded gun in a glass case, kept on the nightstand, to be used only if you feel your spouse has gone psycho and is trying to kill you.”
Obviously, if both partners really mean their wedding vows, having such a glass case will cause no harm, right?
What’s your point? The situation requiring the case is a lot less likely than the one requiring a pre-nup, but I don’t see any harm in it besides that it’s weird.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
That’s rather surprising, since pre-nuptials are not allowed to account for children (you can’t prospectively sign away child support). I suppose you mean that in a wealthy family, the mother got what she had agreed to in the pre-nuptial, and the court-ordered child support was less than she wanted? I think that’s less of a pre-nup issue and more of an issue where you’d argue that the court didn’t take the father’s financial situation into account when ordering child support.
Another agreement.
And another illustration: Right now, I’m doing some legal research on a pre-nup that a client has signed. The parties drafted it themselves, and now that things are turning sour, our client is wondering whether the pre-nup can be enforced. The research results so far indicate that certain clauses of the pre-nup violate certain statutes in our jurisdiction; and courts have ruled that these statutes must take priority over what the parties agree to in the pre-nup–in other words, the parties cannot agree to ignore the statutes, as these parties did. (In legal terms, the parties cannot “contract out” of the statutes’ provisions.) Ironically, this pre-nup is going to raise all kinds of problems and cost a lot of money to figure out; and in the end, the courts will declare most of it invalid anyway–which is not the goal of having a pre-nup.
A pre-nup can be a good idea, but at the very least, check with a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. Don’t think that just because you agree on something that a court will see things your way regardless. Your pre-nup agreement just might end up creating more problems than it should have if you had good legal advice specific to your jurisdiction.
Fair enough, I probably am putting too much blame on our lawyers. There was a hell of a lot of bitterness on both sides. She was cheating on me for about the last six months before the separation and I decided to ramp up my drinking, yeah, I know, passive-aggressive bullshit, a marriage made in heaven.
The only way we could get back at each other was to go after each others assets before marriage. A pre-nuptial should have at least solved some of our issues. For example she went after my mutual funds and money market accounts and I responded by going after half of the equity in the house. Fun times.
I have no evidence that her lawyer suggested this to her or not though. And for the inevitable question, why I stayed while I knew she was cheating? A funny thing called love. Yep, I still loved her. 
Well, first of all, not everyone’s vows include that particular language, and second, the prenup doesn’t have to include clauses that conflict with that agreement.
As for the wedding vows being incompatible with the concept of divorce–it’s perfectly normal for legal contracts to specify what happens if one party decides to back out of the agreement. Does that suggest that the people who sign the contract don’t really mean to honor it?
AIUI, the man was trying to “bimbo-proof” his assets. The mother got what she was entitled to under the agreement, but that wasn’t nearly enough given the needs of the child, who I’m guessing was unplanned for. I went back over my notes from the seminar, and it turns out that in bimbo-proofing his assets, pretty much all of it was tied up in various trusts intended for his other kids, with little, if any, available for the care of this other child. He ended up dissolving a trust intended for his nieces and nephews to fund a new one to pay for the care of the special-needs child.
The intent of this turned out to be an object lesson in why wiggle room is a Good Thing.
Robin
Well, I concede that one scenario is more likely than the other, but the premise behind a prenup is:
“just in case you turn out to be a money-grubbing, irrational, vindictive jerk, l want to be protected”
the basic premise behind a loaded-gun-in-a-glass-case is:
“just in case you turn out to be a psychotic, crazy person that wants to murder me in my sleep, I want to be protected”
Both rely on assumptions that I’d argue aren’t healthy for a marriage, and underscore a lack of trust.
Meh, it is all about perspective I suppose. To me a prenup is two people agreeing to protect one another in the event of an emotional catastrophe. It is about respect, not a lack of trust. Go through these boards and find all the threads about divorce and ask those people if they meant their vows and trusted their spouses when they got married and whether or not they wish they had a prenup in place during their divorce. Preparing for the fact that sometimes things change proves to me a man is responsible and the fact that my boyfriend and I have talked about how we both would want a prenup despite our lack of physical possessions doesn’t make me trust him less, it makes me love him more.
That’s a strange way to look at it. In our culture today, as Mangetout expresses, we prefer the simplicity of ignorance when it comes to the marriage contract.
Why not make the agreement explicit and specific, with eyes open?
And why not make it a living agreement, updated annually as circumstances change so that we can make informed decisions along the way? When one spouse stays at home with the kids and an income disparity is introduced, why not put the long term consequences right out in the open? The more money the higher-earning spouse makes, the greater their debt to the lower earning spouse grows (should they split). Why not be explicit about that before making such important decisions?
Instead, we seem to prefer to layer marriage, a profoundly life-altering contract, under a gauze of goodwill, lest we jinx it. Odd.
Bolding mine. I thought the primary purpose of a prenup (at least for the person who makes more money) is to protect the self at the expense of the other.
Is there anything other than “it’ll make our divorce cleaner, assuming one/both parties will try to mess it up” that causes you to believe that it protects both parties? I’m not well read on the subject.
I’m Catholic. They don’t allow for pre-nups in Catholic marriages, or so I was told.
I’m fine with that.
Would have been a deal breaker for me. Perhaps if she had proposed something simple I might have gone along with it but I don’t believe we can successfully plan for what is going to happen 20 or 30 years down the line. No thank you, I don’t need to start a life together with a preplanned “exist strategy”. And I was the only one bringing assets into the marriage. That said, I did take the precaution of getting to know the person I intended to ask to marry me, before the wedding!
For those talking about strokes and serious changes of personality; do you really write that stuff down? “If you get mentally ill and can’t work then you get nothing in a divorce…?” I’m hoping that my wife will take care of me when that happens, not kick me to the curb. I certainly intend to take care of her if necessary.
It is protecting yourself but not at the expense of your spouse. It allows you to set down basic rules about who gets what and how things should be handled in a horrible situation so you don’t have to try to figure that out when you are so angry you want to stab someone or so sad that you don’t ever want to get out of bed again. You are protecting yourself but you are also protecting your spouse from any anger or vindictiveness you may one day feel.
It is kind of like divorce insurance. People have insurance for all sorts of things, from basic home and auto to more intricate things, like key employee coverage. Hell, people are talking in CS about what to do if a zombie infestation were to take place while they are at work vs at home! People are making *more than one *plan to defend themeselves against zombies but making a plan for a basic guideline of what would happen in the event of a divorce is unhealthy? Is having disability insurance wrong too because thinking that you might someday lose both of your arms in an unforseeable accident is morbid?
A prenup isn’t saying that you figure the odds are good that someday you will leave one another, it is saying that should something happen you are both prepared. It allows you to make the hard decisions when you aren’t emotionally raw instead of ending up in an unforseeable situation and having to think these things through when all you want to do is curl up in bed and cry yourself to death. You are insuring that you have a basic level of protection in case of an extreme emergency, like parachutes on an airplane or a fire extinguisher in your kitchen.
I am an insurance agent so thinking about things like this comes second nature to me. A lot of people don’t want to think about the bad things that could happen and feel like they lead happier lives working on prevention of those kind of things or just ignoring what they don’t think they could change. I feel safer knowing that prevention and insurance/prenups/disaster plans go hand in hand. YMMV.