HOLY SHIT!! :eek:
A Straight Dope First! Something I said actually makes sense to someone! :eek: 
Hey, thats kinda cool!
She said I was terribly handsome. Was that an insult?
Which would indeed be unacceptable to me as well. It should be our choice. May I add that your principled stand based on your understanding of the nature and values of marriage is due great respect. (And it goes again to my earlier parenthetical: it’s that pesky issue of what the heck do we mean by the word, “marriage”)
WhiteInk – OK, so who is now looking down the road and planning how best to screw the other party if things turn awry? (cheap shot, sorry, could not resist). What I said (look it up) was it’s OK to feel like blood and revenge. Did not say there is a right to get it. Different thing. In any case, some people keep presuming that the only format of the prenup is the absolute protection for the property and income of the wealthier-entering partner, and tough cookies for the other, no matter what. OTOH I can conceive of a prenup with a stipulation that if the break-up is for a wrongful cause, the guilty party will be penalized.
You already signed up to a pre-agreed scheme of division. You did that when you married. Rather than deciding with your spouse on the rights and responsibilities via a pre-nup, you chose the rights and responsibilities of the government’s one-size-fits-all scheme for division.
Family law works on an opt-out basis. When you tied the knot, you entered not only a marriage contract, but also a regime of legislation that sets out rights and responsibilities should you separate. The only way out of that regime is to opt out by way of a domestic contract such as a pre-nup.
You already signed up to a pre-agreed scheme of division. You did that when you married. Rather than deciding with your spouse on the rights and responsibilities via a pre-nup, you chose the rights and responsibilities of the government’s one-size-fits-all scheme for division.
Family law works on an opt-out basis. When you tied the knot, you entered not only a marriage contract, but also a regime of legislation that sets out rights and responsibilities should you separate. The only way out of that regime is to opt out by way of a domestic contract such as a pre-nup.
I see what you’re saying, but I made no such explicit choice; that the law intervenes in cases of divorce is simply none of my concern.
I think the question of the pre-nup is one that each individual assigns meaning to, and it’s a highly conjectural argument. I’ve seen quite a few posts by individuals with previous marriages and kids and such who want to protect their assets in the case of divorce, and that makes sense to me.
I also so a great deal of purpose in the pre-nup for people who get married with nothing in the way of assets, who simply want to have an amicable seperation.
Ultimately, my answer would be no. I doubt the issue would come up, since it involves a difference in views between the people involved. IOW, I wouldn’t be marrying someone who wanted a pre-nup anyway. I’m not a particularly materialistic person anyway, and would probably just take my clothes and such and leave everything else. As I said above, there are extenuating circumstances, like kids and such from a previous marriage that don’t come into play for me now.
IOW, I wouldn’t be interested in taking anything that belonged to my SO before the marriage, and anything which could be said to be inherently theirs afterwards. Probably wouldn’t be interested in taking much of mine, since most of my stuff is just “stuff” that I could pick up again later, and, in the event of a divorce, would probably not want to be immediately saddled with anyway.
So, for me, a person who failed to understand my nature to such a great degree wouldn’t be someone to marry. IMO of course, and YMMV.
Aw, c’mon gatopescado, you know you da’ man. I knew you had the power when you exposed that Slim Pickens-based troll not too long ago. That was awesome!
Here’s a question for religious folks (I have no idea what the answer is). Is it possible to have either a marriage before god or a church marriage without including the civil aspect? In other words, is it possible to get married without being brought into the civil regime that includes property division, support, etc.?
If the couple lived on a desert island where there was no civil regime (or church for that matter), then I think it could reasonably be argued that they could be considered married in the eyes of God simply because they had mutually consented to live that way.
For those Christians who live in the real world though, the mainstream doctrine (as far as I understand it) is that we are to comply with the local laws unless they are in conflict with God’s laws (and we could have a thousand threads on what that really means).
But it usually works the other way around here; that the law regards religious marriages as valid and binding - to many Christians this is useful in terms of tax breaks and the like, but otherwise fairly inconsequential.
It may seem like nitpicking, but issn’t it true that the civil regime regarding property division, support etc. is triggered not by the event of marriage at all, but by the event of divorce.
Property division is triggered by divorce but I know when my husband and I were living together before we got married there were a lot of problems combining our lives. Joint bank accounts, having both names on our lease, being listed as drivers on eachother’s car’s insurance policies all required grand hassles that vaporized the second we had a marriage certificate. And there was no way to make him beneficiary of anything and I could not cover him under my health insurance.
I have nothing against pre-nups. Assuming that there was nothing objectionable in the document, I would sign it without further consideration. I think that pre-nups should not contain any new information if a couple has discussed in depth how they view money and relationships. If there is new information, it is a sign that they don’t know each other as well as they thought which is better discovered before the marriage than after.
As for people’s comments about betrayal, please note that many pre-nups include clauses that detail what changes if one party cheats on or otherwise harms the other.
What I don’t know is if I would suggest a pre-nup. I know that if I had kids or substantial assets, I would. However in my relatively asset-free life, I would not be as concerned. I’ll have to think about this further.
The trigger would be divorce or separation, depending on the statutes in question. The marriage provides the right to avail one’s self to such statutes.
I don’t understand what you’re saying here; is it that marriage makes divorce possible and therefore anyone getting married tacitly acknowledges divorce as a possible future option?
I think prenups are generally a bad idea.
DH and I married at 21. We had dropped out of college. Had no assets. What did we need a prenup for? Dividing our vintage Ramen in our Ramen cellar?
When you get married, your lives are joined with each other’s. Barring a really good reason I think prenups are saying “we both know this is only gonna be for a while so let’s cover our asses.”
I can’t think of any situation in which I would sign one. If the man I was going to marry trusted me so little that he was already looking out for #1 in the divorce, there shouldn’t be a marriage to begin with.
That is the kind of point I’ve been trying to make (and again, I’ll acknowledge that POV is significantly important here):
In my opinion:
If neither of us had any assets, a pre-nup is irrelevant.
If one or both of us had significant assets, the consent to enter into a binding union expects/implies the full merger of those assets.
If the full merger of assets is considered too great a risk, marriage would be the wrong choice.
Not quite. It’s more along the lines of this: marriage is one law of many that together comprise the family law regime. These various laws are intertwined. The rights and obligations that a person has under the overall family law regime will vary upon the circumstances, with marriage being one of the circumstances.
Here is an example from where I live (please note that YMWV, so don’t anyone rely on this).
A couple live separately for a few years and have a baby, then they break up. Custody, access and child support apply, but spousal support and property division do not apply.
A couple live together for a few years and have a baby, then they break up. Custody, access, child support and spousal support apply, but property division does not apply.
A couple marries and have a baby, then they break up. Custody, access, child support, spousal support and property division apply.
In each of the above examples, there are two people who are a couple who have a child. If the couple is married, then property division under the family law regime applies. If they are not married, then property division does not apply, even if they live together and raise a child together. In other words, substantive property rights accrue to married parties by virtue of their marrying.
These property division rights would not be exercised if the parties never separate or divorce, but there is a difference between having rights and exercising rights. Getting married creates the property division rights; and separating triggers the exercising of those rights. The only way to get married without accruing such rights is to make a pre-nup that waives those rights.
I think that what it comes down to is that either a couple recognize that there will be rights upon marriage and try to sculpt these rights to fit their preferences by way of a pre-nup, or a couple recognize that there will be rights upon marrigage but do not care about what those rights are on the assumption that they will never need to exercise those rights.
I think that this is true. Divorce may never be an option to you, but a marriage involves two people and in many states you do not need consent of your spouse to divorce them. You cannot control the actions of another, even your spouse. You can mitigate the risk - by having good judgement when you marry and good luck - maybe even reduce the risk to nearly non-existant, but it is not foolproof - at least not in this country. By marrying, you risk divorce. When you love, you risk having your heart broken.
Although I can see where a pre-nup is not the right choice for you.
Know what irritates me? When people call them “prenuptual agreements”. It’s one of those words, like “expresso” instead of “espresso” that lots of people seem to mispronounce.
I hadn’t even noticed I was doing that, but I will avoid it in future.
I see it, although I still maintain that the risk is either worth taking or it isn’t; seeking to modify the consequences of the risk is equivalent (in my view) to modifying the union.
That and my belief that statistics are descriptive, not prescriptive - that 1/3rd of marriages end in divorce does not make mine only a two-thirds certainty.