The subject is one that I enjoy talking about, because there are so many misconceptions about pre-nuptial agreements. Most people think they are only for the rich; but they aren't. As I say in the article, more and more couples are waiting until later in life to get married, and that means they each bring more personal property into the marriage than younger couples. These assets may not be in the seven-figures, but they include such things as retirement savings, personal inheritances and business ownerships that, without a pre-nuptial agreement, would be massed together with the marital estate - making your personal property vulnerable in any number of ways.
The article quotes the situation of a young businessman that vividly illustrates this point:
Eric Brotman, a financial planner ... is in the process of drawing up a prenup with his fiancee. It's his second marriage, her first. Brotman says the prenup will exclude his business from the marital pot. That way his business won't be at risk of being liquidated if the marriage collapses.
"My clients and employees and all their families could suffer by my having marital problems," the 34-year-old says. "I can't let that happen."
Let's face it - marriage may well be a union of the hearts, but it is also a union of bank accounts. When couples marry, they create a legal relationship between one another. There are many financial advantages to marrying - this is how the government encourages people to marry instead of just living with one another - but if those marriages end, by divorce or even death, the legal relationship you have with your spouse may create unplanned financial fallout.
Who needs such fallout when you are going through the emotional trauma of a divorce, or mourning the death of a spouse? In many respects, a pre-nup is the practical way of avoiding at least some of the unpleasant realities. Couples who get a pre-nup, in my opinion, are doing the responsible thing - helping the person they love most by removing some aspects of the thing couples argue about most: money.
This is not to say, of course, that negotiating a pre-nup is part of the romancing process. It isn't, of course, a very romantic topic. But couples who realize that their decision to marry is also a financial and property decision, show themselves to be the kinds of practical and level-headed people whose marriages will withstand the various storms married life may bring.
In other words, far from being proof that a pre-nup anticipates the dissolution of a marriage, couples who get one may, in fact, never need it.