Prenups don't work. Source?

BlockNotDo · 2017-11-15T16:51:27+00:00

I'll let others answer your exact question, but I'll answer another. What are prenups even designed to do?

If you are independently wealthy prior to getting married, a prenup has a chance of being beneficial. Say you own a business, own a house, and have a couple million dollars in other investments; your net worth is $5,000,000. You can design a prenup to protect that $5,000,000 in the event that the marriage falls apart. Depending upon the circumstances, the prenup may or may not actually be effective in doing that.

But say you get married, and the business continues to grow. In the next 10 years, it has grown to the point that your net worth is now $40,000,000. That $35,000,000 increase in value is typically going to be looked at is value attained during the marriage, and the prenup isn't going to protect that. The $35,000,000 is just as much your wife's as it is yours. Only the original $5,000,000 is protected. The theory is that, absent the wife's contribution to the relationship, you wouldn't have been able to spend as much time on your business and it wouldn't have grown to $40,000,000.

By the same token, if you get married while you're still paying off student loans, renting an apartment and driving a 2002 Buick LaSabre, there isn't really anything to be protected in the prenup. You get married, your career takes off, you have a couple kids and the wife stays home to care for them. You do a little investing and accumulate a couple hundred thousand dollars.

That's all marital assets - it belongs to both of you equally regardless of who worked to earn that money. Plus, she gave up her earning potential based upon the contractual agreement that you would work to support her. So she gets (at least) half of everything accumulated during the marriage, plus you've got to continue to support her after the marriage ends - possibly for the rest of your life.

MotherFuckin-Oedipus · 2017-11-15T23:35:31+00:00

More often than not, the people I see lambasting premarital agreements don't have one nor do they fully understand what they can do.

Here's a post detailing just some of my agreement.

They're not guaranteed, of course, but they're not useless, either. It is worth noting that they're heavily dependent on state laws, though.

Title	Prenups don't work. Source?
Author	General_Fear
Upvotes	4
Comments	7
Date	November 15, 2017 4:12 PM UTC (8 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/7d542b/prenups_dont_work_source/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/prenups-dont-work-source.1174220 https://theredarchive.com/post/1174220

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