Is there any sort of secular Cana class resource these days? Some great list of pre-marriage discussion topics.
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If you happen to know anyone who attended a pre-Cana class, you might be able to get the list of questions. DH and I went on a camping trip before we got married (LONG ago), and went through the questions on our own as part of the trip. If there are some questions with a more religious component, it still might be worth discussing viewpoints.
It can be a good idea to at least consider a prenup. In our case, we didnāt have one. Hās income was lower than mine when we married. He had some rental real estate, I had some savings. The only debt was mortgages on the rental real estate.
We started our family shortly after we married and I stopped out of my career to raise our kids awhile. I did re-enter the job market much later at a hugely decreased income.
We have been together nearly 36 years and thoroughly comingled our assets.
No idea when S will do if he marries
. Heās been dating the same woman for many years. I believe neither has debt and he has significant savings.
My niece is getting divorced after they paid off all of the significant debt her H brought into the marriage. They were married over 15 years.
My daughter and her husband considered the split based on down payment but ultimately decided against it. They split all the costs evenly and her and our main concern was that she get her equity back. They are on the 2nd house now and it gets more complicated because again a portion of the down payment is her money but her husband Carrieās more of the monthly costs and a lot of sweat equity.
Other kid is paying taxes for the first time married and having to figure out who is responsible for what a,Lunt of estimated taxes and taxes due. All things that can be done but it takes time.
My kid who got divorced had extensive premarital counseling. This was on top of being together 7 years. Not sure how much it helped.
My MIL gave us a marriage encounter weekend as an engagement class. Sort of like pre Cana but itās a weekend long event instead of stretched out over weeks. It was āinterestingā.
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Regarding costs, if they are in a community property state, all income the couple makes is presumed to be owned 50:50. Fifty percent of my salary is my husbandās, and vice versa in our community state. So unless they have a prior separate property agreement, it does not matter that one of them makes more and pays a bigger portion of the costs. Not sure how sweat equity is treatedā¦ not a divorce or estate planning attorney in their state. 
My H and I have been married almost 32 years and together for 38 years. We did not have a pre-nup as neither of us had assets or debts when we married. When H sold his family home in Bermuda after his mom passed away several years ago all of that money went into our regular investment account. I asked H if he wanted to keep this money separate and he said no. Iām an accountant and have always taken care of the bills and H has always had a higher salary than me, but we have always considered everything to be ours. I know this may not work for everyone especially if one comes into a marriage with significant assests or debt, but itās worked well for us.
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Good article.
When there is a business that one spouse is a partner or an owner of, a prenup can protect EVERYONE involved. It is actually selfish and unfair to the other partners and the employees of that business NOT to have a prenup. Split the economics any way the spouses-to-be think is fair, but not having a prenup risks a forced sale of the business in a divorce, which could negatively impact the partners and employees of the business. Honestly, once a business becomes successful, a post-nup can also be a good idea for everyone that might be affected.
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My son called me about this last week. He is getting married to a wonderful young woman who has a very responsible job at one of the big tech companies. So she gets a very good salary and a slug of stock and has other such jobs. My son co-founded a venture-backed startup a couple of years before he met her. He was in a LT relationship with someone who didnāt seem like a great life partner for him. I set up a dynasty trust for him, to which he sold his stock for a promissory note. The terms of the trust list as beneficiaries my son, his progeny and a qualified spouse, defined as someone to whom he is currently married. So, a former spouse would not be a beneficiary. The trust is not allowed to be used to satisfy creditors of my son and specifically prohibits the trustee from payments in case of divorce without the assent of a third party called a protector. My understanding is that when there is a liquidity event, the trust will pay roughly $2 MM into his account. [The potential issue here is that his shares are much more likely to be worth $0 or $100+MM than $20 MM so if there is a liquidity event, the $2 MM will not see like a lot.]
This is not completely airtight as a judge could try to include the shares in the marital estate even if the trust canāt deliver them.
In all other senses, they are comparable. She makes a bit more in terms of current income and her stock grants are relatively liquid (probably vest over four years, but she already has slugs of stock from other tech companies). They will be sharing expenses and combining various accounts.
While she would be willing to sign a prenup, he did not want to do it. I thought the trust gave him enough protection on the shares and the rest could easily be split amicably. So, I thought it was OK to skip the prenup.
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Prenup is an insurance. It doesnāt just apply to the current situation but what may be in the future.
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A good article on the topic of this thread:
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While it seems like it could be a good idea initially, things can get complicated quickly. If she puts in more on the down payment, but then chooses to step back in her work to care for the kids, and he is essentially making all the mortgage payment so that his āinvestmentā soon outpaces her down payment, should she still get more equity?
What if the one that made the down payment also has college debt that the two work to pay off? Should that debt be deducted from her āshareā?
While prenups can be a good idea and yes kids should protect any inheritance to some extent, once you are married money becomes co-mingled and often one spouse earns more than the other. Not sure that a prenup is really going to capture the complexities of money, kids, homes, debt and other financial issues once married.
I have also seen friends who spent a ridiculous amount of money getting divorced when it made no sense. He was totally uncooperative. But also have a friend I believe was cheated out of her fair share, because she wanted out and not to fight. Fortunately, she has since remarried and is OK, but for a while her finances were very tight while her ex was doing very well and he could have easily picked up more of the kid costs.
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A good one does. Absolutely. The only things my state does not allow to bargain for in a prenup are child support and custody. Those are off-limits.
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If you have any divorced friends (usually women) living in a āmarital mausoleumā (every real estate agent knows what those areā¦ a high value house that the occupant cannot afford to live in) you will agree with BunsenBurner!
The wife fights and fights and fights to ākeep the houseā and the husband āgenerouslyā agrees. He walks away with the actual assets (401K, company stock, investment portfolio) and āgivesā her the house. Takes six months for her to realize how much it costs to heat, cool, maintain the house. Then the property tax bill. Then lawn services, snow removal/exterminator. Then the water heater goes.
She then realizes that the only way out of the financial hole is to sell the house- minus the HELOC she had to take last year in order to pay the real estate taxes.
Whatās particularly egregious in these cases are the situations where the wife worked to put the husband through professional/grad school. Heās got his orthopedic surgery practice; sheās got a house. Heās a partner in a white shoe law firm; sheās got a house. Etc.
Iām sure there are situations where the genders are reversed- itās just that the people I know happen to be women who fight tooth and nail to keep an asset which costs LOTS of money to maintain, and the men walk away with appreciating assets, a partnership share in a high value profession, no house (but thatās what rentals are for) and enormous financial flexibilityā¦
Put me in camp prenupā¦
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@blossom - I saw that happen so many times. Just in my prior suburban neighborhood I knew of at least 4 women (and one man) who insisted on keeping the large house with disastrous financial results. Mostly the person who kept the big house ended up working a job or multiple jobs to keep up the house expenses while having very little time for to actually keep up the house itself, let alone time for the kids. It was not good.
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I think when thereās children involved itās very hard for you the parent wanting to uproot them even more than has already happened. I think it has a lot to do with keeping the same school and friends that they had before the divorce. Especially when itās not the choice of one of the parties.
Itās pretty awful all around.
I am privy to some divorce negotiations. No infidelity just incapability. One problem is that they were living a lifestyle they couldnāt really afford. And that medical practice, not worth anything either.
Real estate as in expensive homes (plural). Probably not as good of a money maker than saving in the stock market.
Medical practices have changed a lot over the years. Most physicians work for a corporation, just like a lot of other white collar employees. No one wants to own a private practice either. And once the physician is no longer a part, itās basically worthless. Lots of debt, some old equipment and the only person who drives the bus is the actual physician.
The old days of multiple physician private practices are going the way of the dinosaurs. Thatās not every specialty but many.
And plenty of people continue to spend even when they shouldnāt. Always thinking there will be time to make up the difference.
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But @blossom how would a prenup necessarily help that situation? If the assets accumulated during marriage are divided evenly (house value minus mortgage, plus 401Ks, savings) and the wife chooses to take hers in the form of the house, how would the prenup envision that? In that scenario, the wife is not being well advised.
My point in my previous post was not that one could not write a pre-nup to protect those complexities, but does it make sense? How does a document prepared prior to marriage capture the complexities of co-mingling finances with two people working with different levels of salary and different levels of at-home responsibility? Especially if the divorce takes place after many years of marriage and several children. Even if one partner came in with a larger bank account, arenāt the financial decisions made during marriage based on the assets both bring to the table (leaving aside someone holding onto a separate account with grandpaās money).
When we inherited money from our parents, we used it for the family. We didnāt keep it separate from each other. And we inherited much more from my DHās family than from mine.
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Same for us re: inheritances. Essentially nothing from my side, several moderate amounts on Hās. Sure glad he saw it as āoursā not āhis.ā
Iāve always thought pre-nups make sense when one party enters the marriage with a huge inheritance or other big assets (real estate) for example and wants to protect those holding separate from marital assets acquired during the marriage.
Never applied to us because we both had zilch before getting married.
People automatically assume that a prenup is about assets. In the Atlantic article I linked above, the emphasis is on debt, not assets. I know a person who was stuck with close to $500K of their spouseās medical bills when their spouse tragically died after a rescue gone wrong. That astronomical bill? Marital debt.
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