As you approach your marriage, you and your spouse should seriously consider using a prenuptial agreement. Despite their complicated reputation, prenuptial agreements offer crucial protections that may be much more difficult to create later on in the marriage. Of course, creating a prenuptial agreement means communicating very clearly and honestly with your future spouse, which many people find difficult.
Realistically, whether you and your partner get divorced in a year or remain married until one of you passes away of old age, a prenuptial agreement is incredibly useful. Some people object to these agreements, believing that they are merely the legal tools that selfish people use to make divorce easy, or they may believe that creating a prenuptial agreement means that a couple doesn’t truly love each other. These are reasonable fears, but they don’t account for the many other opportunities .
Once you understand your partner’s objections to a prenuptial agreement, you can choose how to frame the conversation. Does your partner know that prenuptial agreements help you protect certain property from creditors? if one partner has debt, a creditor can come after any marital property satisfy that debt. Using a prenuptial agreement, you can protect your spouse’s property from creditors as his or her own and not your mutual property.
This is only one aspect of creating a prenuptial agreement that protects and strengthens relationships. In order to create a prenuptial agreement that holds up in court well, both partners must have a reasonable understanding of each other’s finances. You can use the creation of the agreement as an opportunity to discuss sensitive financial issues in a neutral, supportive environment, possibly saving yourself some future heartache in the process.
Source: Brides.com, “Here’s How to Start That Prenup Conversation,” Jaimie Mackey, accessed Nov. 24, 2017