After being dumped, I am completely for it. Perhaps I will change my mind with some convincing. A prenup says to me that the other person should love me for me, and I should love her for who she is. Let’s leave material possessions out of it. I especially feel vulnerable as a male. I’m so glad me and my ex were not common-law at the point of our breakup. I would have lost out, and really would have felt like a victim.
Err how does one answer that question yes or no?
Yes, I am for or against them.
Argh…Please vote yes if you are for them, and no if you are against them.
How can I edit the title?
Why do you feel “especially vulnerable as a male”
I reported it to a mod for that purpose. Anyway, I voted for them.
I’m not going to vote, 'cause I don’t really care. Any argument that can be made about ‘possessions shouldn’t matter, they should marry me for me so they should be willing to sign an agreement’ can be used, verbatim, for NOT having an agreement.
That said, a marriage IS a legal contract, that can be written to support and define exactly what that marriage is to the two people involved, and I think it’s a great thing.
But I personally don’t care one way or another.
I completely support prenuptial agreements. In an idea world, both parties wouldn’t need to be protected from each other by a contract; however, we don’t live in an ideal world. Bad things happen, relationships sour and people get bitter and vindictive.
If you have pre-marital assets or one person is more “valuable” than the other, there are many logical reasons to have a pre-nup. The only reason not to is that you would be more concerned about the emotional feelings than the logic.
Modern marriage is a legal contract. It would be ridiculous to miss out bits of that contract.
I don’t think marriage in general makes any sense at all, especially for a man. I am personally for banning hetrosexual marriage.
I changed the question to “Are you for prenuptuial agreements?”
Sometimes the cost of getting one drawn up isn’t worth what it would protect.
We my husband and I got married, our net assets were about $50. We didn’t have a wedding because the idea of paying even a couple hundred bucks to buy BBQ and beer for a party was beyond consideration. There’s no way the cost of paying a lawyer to draft a pre-nup to protect nothing would have been a good idea.
I feel more vulnerable because I feel men are more at risk for loss and for unfair treatment in the justice system when going through divorce. I would be happy to be proven wrong. I’d like to believe it’s not necessary.
When I was going through my breakup, I almost left a bed I purchased from my own account, amongst other things with my ex…I only demanded them back a few weeks later when it dawned on me she wasn’t offering a similar olive branch of any kind. It didn’t even have to be an economic branch. She didn’t even say “I would feel uncomfortable with you giving these things to me”. I felt like I was being taken advantage of. I can only imagine what a person would feel after having taken wedding vows, and having kids, only to have someone decide that they are leaving…and then expect the husband to maintain their standard of living. If I understand correctly courts can uphold this standard. Is this correct?
A prenup to me indicates a person cares for the other without desire for their possessions. I suppose the alternate argument is that one shouldn’t be planning for “if” the marriage doesn’t work…assuming a prenup indicates a person doesn’t truly believe in the marriage. Well I thought my last relationship was going to be forever…and so did my ex…until she decided it wasn’t. I’m glad I wasn’t married. I know the divorce rate and have heard enough negative stories to believe in “love conquering all”.
Okay rant over. Thinking about the future.
If you like the terms of the body of family law, then you don’t need a prenup. If you do not like some or all of the terms of the body of family law, then you can use a prenup.
Ignoring the simple fact that there are terms is the divorce equivalent of sticking your head in the sand.
It varies by state to state. I also think you are confusing two things–division of property earned during the marriage, and support afterwards.
Generally the state assumes that married couples own property obtained during the marriage together. The big exception, IIRQ, is an inheritance, which remains the property of the inheritor unless they mix it into the married estate. So if one person is a lawyer and the other is a frustrated artist, and they buy a house together, they own the house equally: it doesn’t matter who earned the money that paid for it. In a divorce, they would each get half. I think it’s very unusual for a pre-nup to differ from this standard.
The other situation is alimony–on-going spousal support. Generally speaking, alimony is awarded when you have the classic case of a woman who drops out of college to work and put her husband through med school, and then stays home and does the lions-share of domestic tasks so that he can donate 100% of his resources to developing his career. If he dumps her, she can’t support herself, because she opted to maximize his earning potential instead. If she’s young, the law usually allows for limited alimony–long enough for her to develop the ability to support herself. If she’s 58, that’s not really plausible, and the alimony may be longer (also, she probably is walking away with substantial marital assets.
So which of these do you think is a greedy spouse getting something she didn’t earn? Should, at the end a of a marriage, real property be prorated based on relative earnings? Should a woman that’s supported a man in his career for 30 years but never earned an income really be sent to the curb with nothing? Is being concerned that such a thing might happen really a matter of being “only interested in someone’s possessions”? Because to me it seems more like prudent behavior than unchecked greed.
My husband quit his job over a year ago when the baby was born. This works best for us. But thinking about stay-at-home parents has made me realize there is a real division in how people think about marital assets.
Group one thinks: “I make money and they make their money/stay home. Because I love them, I am totally, completely, and utterly happy to share 100% of what I make with them. If that love fell apart because they betrayed me, I wouldn’t want to share my money with them anymore, and it would gall me to no end if they continued to enjoy the fruits of my labor, things that were purchased with my money”
Group two thinks; in this economic unit, I have jobs/roles and my spouse has jobs/roles. Money shows up in the account. The economic unit earned it, and all member have an equal claim on it. It was never went through a phase where it belonged to only one person and was donated or contributed . If the economic unit dissolved, we’d each become our own units and would, for the first time, have to look at our own individual earning capacity.
I’m in group two. I don’t think of my paycheck as my money that I contribute. It’s not his, either. It belongs to the family, and always did. That, I think, is why a pre-nup is hard for me to wrap my head around. What would it even say?
Now, I can understand how a person with assets, especially assets they want to pass to a child from a previous marriage, might feel differently. But before the marriage there wasn’t anything worth having (literally), and after it’s equally both of ours.
Has been discussed on the board before… I have no objection to Pre-Nups and it’s something that can be evaluated and discussed based on real-world circumstances; as mentioned already there are cases in which a brief reasonable consideration may reveal it’s silly to bother. I can understand people who oppose them on principle; but there are those who would feel that even bringing up the subject is a deal-breaking personal affront, and they are not living in the same world as I am.
For very young couples with no assets just starting out I think they’re a terrible idea and an indication that they don’t trust each other and the marriage is doomed.
For older people who might, say, have children from another marriage and want to protect their kids’ inheritance, I can see how a prenup might be appropriate. Not so much in the sense “in case we ever get divorced, I want this, this and this” but in the sense of “if you outlive me, I want this, this and this to go to my kids upon my death even though you’ll be my surviving spouse.”
I am for them in nearly all circumstances. In fact, I feel they should be a legal requirement for marriage, honestly. Now, if the prenup just one sentence that says something about how they’ll split everything evenly, so be it.
Are there even jurisdictions where the classic marriage fraud scam could work? Like you know penniless guy marries billionaire fraudulently just so he can divorce her a week later and walk away with half her fortune? That is how I have always seen pre-nups framed as, a way to prevent basically scams. If something like that isn’t possible then what is a pre-nup even protecting against? Why should anyone walk away from a decades long marriage with nothing?
And again I ask…WHY especially for a man???