Prenuptial Agreements

Freebie_Hunter_2

Pre-nups to me simply say: "I don't trust you" and "I'm not confident we'll last".

There are a FEW situations where perhaps pre-nups may be needed but otherwise it's just another way for people to create and/or work on peoples insecurities.

They're always saying on E-Bay, if you're not sure then dont buy - if it's too good to be true then it probably is.

Marriage is a choice. It's also something that people rush into far too easily and quickly. The quick and cheap fix of a registry office means you can get married for the price of a TV set.
Marriage unfortunately doesn't have the values it used to. Shame.
This is why the divorce rate is so high.
Bad, hasty choices.

So if you're considering a pre-nup, I'd say take a good look at your partner and your relationship. do you REALLY want to get married if you feel so insecure about losing your money?




(it all goes back to the £££!!)

Eyes_Wide_Open_3

Freebie_Hunter wrote:

Pre-nups to me simply say: "I don't trust you" and "I'm not confident we'll last".

Pre-nups to me simply say: "Who knows what the future may bring? All we do know is that one in two UK marriages fail, so let's not bury our heads in the sand - let's get difficult and sensitive financial issues out the way right now and get on with our lives together. But s h i t (why is this word censored?!) happens, people change their minds, they meet other people, they move on, yes I loved you but that was then this is now. So just in case things do go wrong, and we know that half of them do go wrong, the hard part's taken care of - we don't need to drag eachother though a bitter, expensive and destructive divorce battle over who owns what - everything's already taken care of in a sensible, civilised and adult way."

So marriage is a choice. But why be deprived of that choice just because you can't be (and NOBODY can be) certain it won't go wrong? You take that chance and you hope and pray everything works out. Half don't. But you don't get any brownie points for going out on a limb unprotected and losing half of everything you owned. All you get is screwed (oh I can say that word) by your ex and the legal system.

Oliver_3

I usually read the boards for tips but I feel so strongly about this that I felt inclined yo reply.
There has been no divorce in my family whatsoever. We have all married at different ages, been together for different amounts of times. My grandparents still hold hands.
We've all been through some s h i t as well, but we deal with it and work through it. That's what marriage is about. It's not a walk in the park, but it's as easy as you make it.
I guess I don't see marriage like some people, as a 'disposable' thing that you can just throw away when you're bored. Let's just sweep it up and put it away, thanks for the last 10/20 whatever years. Goodbye. Anyone who thinks that it may not last before they get married haven't gotten off to a very good start. Listen carefully to those vows, aren't you being a bit of a hypocrite when you say them if you feel like it may go wrong?
Life is full of faux-pas. Everything you do you take a chance on. But pre-nups are really just for guilty, paranoid and/or greedy people. It's a big poke in the eye. It's a 'well I'm alright Jack'. Look at catherine zeta jones. If her bloke cheats she gets so much money for his infidelity. Call that a decent marriage??!! Ha!
If someone wants to run off with your money then they will regardless. If you can't spot these money-grabbers then more the fool you. But to stoop as low as a 'pre-nup', all designed with the lawyers pocket in mind, is just the pits.
If both parties are happy with a pre-nup then so be it, but it really grates me when I hear people talk about being pressured into drawing one up, or someone whose bitter about a previous split saying that you're a fool if you don't have one. It starts the ball of mis-trust rolling before you've started.

Legal_Academic

I think the "story" about Michael Douglas' payment for infidelity is a mixture of tabloid journalism and folklore. English law does not support frivolous family agreements or the imposition of domestic arrangements, such as whose turn it is to wash up. Neither will it sanction financial penalties for disobeying marriage vows. Such clauses are unenforceable in English law.

I have to say that I am perplexed as to how one would know in advance that one's marriage will last, or spot partners who are likely to use the power of the law to prize their partner's possessions away years later. I have to admit that I am the same as half of the married couples in England who do not appear to know either.

I would imagine that those "money-grabbing" lawyers would much prefer clients without a pre-nuptial agreement, since their fees in a contested divorce are typically in the tens of thousands, as against their fee though the prenuptialagreements website of £350.

Incidentally, being pressured into signing a pre-nuptial agreement can invalidate it, and no pre-nuptial agreement is good for 10/20 years. Their main function is to protect previously acquired assets within the first several years of marriage.

november

Legal_Academic wrote:

I have to say that I am perplexed as to how one would know in advance that one's marriage will last, or spot partners who are likely to use the power of the law to prize their partner's possessions away years later.

You said what I was about to post.

When I separated from my children's father he got the house (we weren't married though) leaving myself and the children homeless. OK this was many years ago but still. I've ended up homeless with my children twice now due to not having a crystal ball. Money and separation does strange things to people no matter how loving and reasonable they are normally.

I now own my own house which had doubled in value before I met MrN. We intend to get married in another couple of years at the earliest (we'll have been together 5 then). A pre-nup to us would make sense. Its nothing to do with my being money grabbing. Its simply that while I could possibly (at a push) afford to reimburse MrN for any work he has paid for on the house giving him half of its value should anything go wrong would mean I would be homeless again as I would have to sell the house (I couldn't afford a mortgage on what it is now worth and its in the lowest price range round here). Should we separate and presuming the courts gave me a right to live here while the children grew up that would still make me homeless in my 50's. MrN says he is happy to ensure that doesn't happen and I am happy he says that. He didn't own a house before we met. Why would any reasonable person think I should sell mine if we split to pay him for an increase in equity that happened before we met? Why should I give him half if we marry? It was a struggle to buy it in the first place and I did so to give my children a good place to be bought up in not to risk giving away. I'm sorry but I don't want to give away half my previously owned wordly goods - its not sensible. Neither does he think I should and if he did I would smell a rat.

Romance is fine but there's no point in going round with your eyes closed or just assuming all will end up well. Once bitten twice shy I am and I think thats sensible. It in no way reflects on my feelings for MrN nor means that I shouldn't be marrying him in the first place and/or that I expect us to split up nor does it make me a hypocrite. Nor does it mean we are starting a 'ball of mistrust' - discussing all this is one of the reasons we are able to trust each other. Its also one of the reasons we believe our marriage will last - we are two mature people who can discuss difficult issues without argument and find we are in agreement.

Miroslav

I DO agree to a point. I guess it depends on each individual case.

All I know is, if I felt i'd been with someone long enough and I was the one with the money, IF I did a pre-nup, it wouldn't be so the other person got nothing, they would get something out of me, even if it's just for being part of my life and making me feel happy at some stage.

I wouldn't say, btw, if we didn't work out, you'd get nothing.

Maybe I'm too soft, my life is full of risks

Legal_Academic

That's a very decent approach, and one that is adopted by many couples where there is a disparity of wealth, including the couple in the case of K -v- K (2003) that paved the way for the English courts to recognise properly drafted pre-nuptial agreements.

I have copied their story below:

"He was a multi millionaire property tycoon in his 30s. She was a 26-year-old former model with two GCSEs.

With hindsight, their marriage never had much of a chance. Both were shocked to discover, a brief two months after they started seeing each other, that she was pregnant. She said she would have an abortion unless he married her. He didn't want her to get rid of the baby, but didn't feel ready for commitment. They went on a five-week, £30,000 holiday and agreed they would let the baby be born but get to know each other better before deciding whether to tie the knot.

That was before her parents were told of the coming event. Adamant that they weren't having their grandchild born out of wedlock, they pressured him to marry their daughter. Her mother put it starkly: agree to marry her or I will take her for an abortion.

Dad, a forceful character, held out a carrot to the reluctant bridegroom. Why not draw up a pre-nuptial agreement? Then if the marriage didn't work out, at least his future son-in-law's fortune wouldn't be at risk. All his daughter would get would be a home for herself and the child - to revert back to her ex-husband when the youngster was grown up - and a lump sum of £100,000 plus 10% per annum for each year that the marriage lasted.

The sumptuous wedding, the day after the agreement was signed, cost more than £82,000, and that didn't include the flowers. Ten months later, the wife consulted solicitors about a divorce. She was never to move into the house bought as a joint home.

In this landmark case on pre-nuptial agreements, the High Court largely upheld the agreement signed by the Ks, the ill-starred north London pair identified (as couples in divorce cash battles are) only by the initial letter of their surname.

The judgment has been circulating among the small group of family lawyers who advise well-heeled clients. The judge decided that Mrs K should have only the lump sum she was entitled to under the agreement - £120,000 - and that a home costing £1.2m, including furniture, should be provided for her and the couple's two-year-old son. Once the boy had grown up, the house would revert to the husband, in line with the agreement.

Legal academics see the case as highly significant because it sets out for the first time the questions a judge should ask in deciding whether to give effect to a pre-nuptial agreement. Did the party with most to lose - usually the wife - understand the agreement? Did she have legal advice? Was she under pressure to sign? Was there full disclosure? Would an injustice be done by upholding the agreement?

This case provides a clear indication of the way the law in the UK is going in realtion to pre-nuptial agreements. A previous case the year before, that showed the way things were starting to go is M -v- M. This involved a wealthy Canadian couple who moved to Britain for tax reasons. In some ways the circumstances were similar: the agreement was signed on the eve of the wedding, the bride-to-be was pregnant, and the bridegroom was much wealthier than his wife. He was opposed to abortion but refused to marry her unless she signed an agreement giving her only £275,000 if the marriage failed. She was in her early 30s, he in his late 40s, and both had been married before.

He claimed she saw him as "a good catch" and trapped him into marriage by her pregnancy. Three years after their 1995 wedding, he sold his shares in the company where he worked as an executive for £6.4m and the couple moved to Britain to save tax. Two years later, they separated. Back in those days, the judge refused to hold the wife to the agreed £275,000 but said her award should be "more modest" than she would have got had she not signed the agreement - £875,000 for herself plus £15,000 a year (and school fees) for the couple's five-year-old daughter. Unlike Mrs K, Mrs M had signed under pressure but the judge said it would be as unjust to Mr M to ignore the agreement as it would be to Mrs M to hold her strictly to its terms. The important points here though are that both prenuptial agreements saved the wealthier party literally millions of pounds, and that these days judges are starting to take the view that responsible adults should be entitled to plan their financial future if that is what they want to do.

Pre-nuptial agreements are not just for the super rich; the property boom has made them relevant to tens of thousands of UK couples. The Government and the courts are moving towards making them fully enforceable in the courts, in line with other EEC countries, to introduce more certainty into the process of splitting family assets after divorce and to cut legal bills in disputed divorces.

Six years ago the Government drew up a consultation paper recommending that pre-nuptial agreements should be fully binding on the courts. As for High Court family judges, many believe the courts should give effect to agreements as long as they were freely and fairly entered into, with separate legal advice and full disclosure of both parties' assets, subject to the interests of any children and with the judge having discretion to disregard anything that produced an unfair result.

Six years on, and without the need for parliament to legislate, it seems that is precisely what the judges are achieving."

margaretclare

Thanks for this - it's absolutely fascinating.

It's interesting in both these cases that there was a degree of 'pressure' all round. The (richer) male partner felt that the woman looked on him as a 'catch'. The pregnancy was used as a bargaining-counter by both and also by the parents.

It's interesting that many of us who think we haven't got much, actually have something - equity in a property. Could my present husband have moved in here with me in 1997 with his eye on 'getting his hands on' the equity in my bungalow? When he turned up on my doorstep in flight from marriage to a frigid, extravagant, violent woman, turned up almost destitute, like a refugee? Somehow, it has worked out well, we needed no legally-binding pre-nuptial agreement, we were married in 2002 and we are still as happy. Whatever we have left when the second survivor dies is planned to be split between 5 grandchildren, 2 of his and 3 of mine. We think that's fairest all the way round.

Aunty Margaret

november

Miroslav wrote:

I guess it depends on each individual case.

I agree totally.

All I know is, if I felt i'd been with someone long enough and I was the one with the money,

In our case neither of us has 'money' haha. I wish. As margaretclare says all I have is equity in a property. Unfortunately you can't share equity unless one can afford to buy the other out which neither of us can. If/when that ever changes that would be different. If I could 'afford' to give MrN half without putting myself or my children at risk of homelessness I would but in some respects I still don't see why I should/would want to give him half of what I had before we met. I wouldn't expect to have half of anything he owned before we met. I didn't want half of what the children's father had before we met (he owned a house prior to the house we owned and the equity from that made a downpayment which was deducted from the equity on the new property which seemed fair to me). Half of everything you get as a couple is different.

Equity to me isn't actually real money. Well not unless by some miracle all other properties went down in value (so I could afford to buy something else) and mind didn't. :rotfl:

I don't actually see us as having a disparity in wealth either. Its simply a matter of I had to buy a house to home my children before we met and he, having no children, didn't.

Incidentally when we both go anything we have is going to our children who are technically my children alone. He has no children and no dependants other than mine. It is what is best for the children (primarily) we both see as most important.

THRIFTY_JO

I have to say after accepting a marriage proposal two months ago, I can not belivee what I am reading. I am with Mr F come hell or high water. :beer:

We met and within a year had both sold our individual houses and have now bought our house. Mr F had some cc debts that he couldn't get to grips with thanks to the last sponger, sorry girlfriend ,who refused to help him shut their joint account, took the tv licence, his tv and cancelled the car insurance on New Years Eve when giving him the keys back.

He ended up having to pay off the overdraft on the joint account and having to to do a financial diassociation (See Experian for this) to make sure we could buy a house together. :T

You'd have though he'd be cynical about being with someone else but we both jumped in feet first, you only live once! He has paid off his cc with some of my savings and is paying me back so no nasty interest change surprises for him. We share everything as it is no fun when you can spoil yourself and the other person has no money for anything else but just living.

In a marriage aren't you supposed to support, respect and care about the other person? If you can't do that for someone you love then it makes me wonder!