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Learn to Love the Prenup
Signing on this dotted line could safeguard your financial future.
by Corinne Asturias
A happily prenupped and married woman named Melissa describes a best-case scenario: She and her husband talked about their prenup even before they announced their engagement. “That was ten years ago,” she says. “At the time, a friend of mine said, ‘That’s the most loveless thing. It’s so cold.’
But we were grown-ups who had some of our own stuff outside the marriage as well as our own careers, and we really married for love. We didn’t have any craziness, and we essentially agreed that what’s yours is yours, what’s mine is mine. I always say that, God willing, we’ll never have to refer to it—and we never have.”
Prenups should be thought of as living documents, though. Women end up raising kids instead of developing a career, the struggling author becomes a best-selling screenwriter, a business grows or busts. Some things won’t become clear until later in the union.
Attorneys advise couples to revisit the agreement and update it as necessary. “As people change, the prenup should change,” says Altman. At some point, she adds, after you’ve been happily married for 25 years, you can tear it up.
Call me a hopeless romantic, but that sounds like a worthwhile goal.
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1 Marriage Without Monogamy: Part Two // Feb 29, 2008 at 11:31 am
[…] because we’ve decided to do so without getting legally married (see Marriage Without Monogamy), a prenuptial agreement is obviously out of the question. And yet neither one of us likes the idea of building a life […]
2 Kristi // Feb 14, 2007 at 8:40 am
Recently divorced with a prenup. This document allowed my husband to cheat on me with 3 different women (that I know of - if there’s 3 rats, there’s probably 10) for over 3 years and because of the prenup - he was not responsible for alimony! I wish I’d been more forthright in what was necessary to be included in the document.
3 Anonymous // May 23, 2006 at 11:16 am
I am 22 female and agree very strongly to having a pre nup. I would compare it to wearing a seatbelt for saftety, not that you plan for a wreck or even want one but, the future is unknown. I also believe an indiviual should be secure enough to know that a paper doesn’t make the relationship but, the indiviuals apart of it. If someone loves me they are marring me not MY ASSETS!!! -VMS