An Insurance Plan for Your Marriage
Drafting a prenuptial or antenuptial agreement is the best way to protect your assets during a marriage, and can make any potential divorce proceedings far less painful later on. The fact is that not every marriage lasts forever, and putting protections in place when you are more likely to agree is going to serve you well if something should go wrong.
A prenuptial agreement is no more a guarantee that your marriage won't last, than having car insurance is a guarantee that you'll wreck your car. It's only a guarantee that if something goes wrong, you are prepared.
Not Just For the Rich
Many people have the misconception that only rich people could ever use a prenuptial or antenuptial agreement. This is a common misconception, when in fact these agreements can be useful for people who:
- Have any significant assets or investments, including existing retirement accounts to protect
- Want to have child support and child custody issues already agreed upon
- Want to protect their family property or inheritance
- Have been through a previous painful divorce and don't want to go through a similar ordeal
- Want to protect themselves from debt
- Don't want to risk a contentious divorce later on
The Security of a Contract
Without any sort of clear contractual agreement in place, everything acquired during marriage is owned by both parties, regardless of who earned income or who ran up debt. During your marriage you are equally responsible for the financial status, whether good or bad, of your partner, and without a firm agreement the court is unlikely to rule otherwise.
However, courts generally see prenuptial and antenuptial agreements as binding contracts, which means it's very hard for the court to ignore the terms of that contract. This gives partners the opportunity to make important decisions about their future when they are in the best position to agree, from where their kids will go to school to how the finances are split.
Contact me at the law office of Carucci Butler, LLC, to help you begin drawing up an agreement that can secure a reliable future for you, your family and your children. Just as you want a will in place to secure your estate for your children, you should consider hiring a lawyer to draft a prenuptial agreement to secure your assets in the event of unforeseen difficulties.
