Do You Dare to Keep Your Property Separate When You Get Married?

Few experiences in life are more painful than lengthy divorce battles, where a judge must decide how to divide the couple’s marital property. This is a major reason why so many people hesitate to get married. Relationships are difficult, anyway, and so are finances. It is another reason why young people are embracing prenuptial agreements whereas their parents would have balked at them. The old generation used to think that prenuptial agreements were only for people whose wealth made them so distrustful of other people that they assumed that their marriages were doomed to fail before they even started. Of course, this is a narrow view. Prenuptial agreements do not necessarily conflict with spouses’ vows to take care of each other in their time of need. Every prenuptial agreement is unique; you and your fiancé get to decide which of your property will be separate and which of it will be marital, which assets you can inherit from each other, and what each spouse gets if the marriage ends in divorce. You should sign a prenuptial agreement if your views on any of these matters differ from state law or if you do not want to leave it up to a judge’s interpretation of equitable distribution. If you are wondering whether you need a prenup, you probably do, and for help deciding on its terms and wording, contact a Boca Raton prenuptial and postnuptial agreement lawyer.

Keeping Your Property Separate Can Help You Keep the Peace in Marriage and Divorce

A Palm Beach County couple divorced in 2008 after 22 years of marriage. They disagreed over whether to interpret the prenuptial agreement in its plain language meaning, and years later, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that they should. In the prenup, they agreed that any property acquired during the marriage is the property of whichever spouse’s name is on the title to it; an asset is only marital if both spouses’ names are on the title. Without the prenup, state law would consider all the property the couple acquired during the marriage marital property, regardless of which spouse’s name was on the title.

The Court Cares Whether You Signed a Prenup, Not Whether It Was Wise to Do So

A prenuptial agreement is a legally binding contract between individuals, and the courts will enforce it as such. You can argue that the prenup is unconscionable, but the courts are unlikely to refuse to declare a prenup unenforceable just because they don’t like it. In this case, the wife was 18 years younger than the husband, and she owned far less separate property. The court ruled to enforce the prenup, but in other cases, the courts have refused to enforce prenups when they determined that the parties signed them under coercive circumstances.

Contact Schwartz | White About Prenuptial Agreements

A South Florida family law attorney can help you draft a prenup that you are sure you want to sign and that the court will be willing to enforce.  Contact Schwartz | White in Boca Raton, Florida about your case.

Sources:

scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=16912192142878326106&q=divorce+palm&hl=en&as_sdt=4,10&as_ylo=2015&as_yhi=2025

scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11582324129401635202&q=divorce+palm&hl=en&as_sdt=4,10&as_ylo=2015&as_yhi=2025