kane

I think marrying anyone you have only known a few weeks is dumb. I've never been married, but before I got married I would be with her for a pretty long time and we would have lived together for a decent amount of time.

You can count on people changing. That is what people do. The question is will those changes include you in them of if you change will those changes include your spouse in them. A pre-nup makes sure that when you change, if the marriage doesn't last, both parties are protected.

Here are a couple of examples.

1. I have a friend who got married at 24. The girl he married was 20. They started dating when he was 22 and she was 18. They lived together for about 6 months before getting married. They were married 3 years. About 1.5 years into the marriage things changed. She was now 21 and wanted to out clubbing and partying with her friends (as most 21 year olds do). He was then about 26 then and was past that phase in his life and often he had to work nights. Eventually they grew apart because she was always off with her friends and he didn't want to go so she found someone else that did want to go. They got divorced. He bought a house when they first got married then sold it and bought a nice big house. She told him that was the dream house she had always wanted. She spent exactly 1 night in the house then left him the day after they moved in. With no pre-nup he had to choose to give her 50% of the value of his pension from the time they were married or 50% of the equity in the house. He chose the house. He also had to pay off her car, pay part of her student loans and agree to pay her car insurance for the next 2 years. He had a good paying job before they ever met. When they divorced she was around 23-24 and had never worked a day since they were together. She was always going to school for one thing or another. She never added one dime to the marriage and yet she walked away with a nice chunk. A pre-nup could have allowed him to save some of the money he earned and worked hard for.

2. A couple gets married. One of them has a bunch of money coming into the relationship. The other has next to nothing. They stay married for 5-7 years then divorce. There are no kids to fight over. You can bet without a pre-nup the person that had nothing coming into that relationship will leave with a nice chunk of that money after the divorce even though it was created before they even met. A pre-nup can help clarify that. The wealthy one can set it up so the one with nothing gets something at the split, but without it they could lose a lot, maybe even half.

A pre-nup isn't saying you don't trust them. It is simply saying that if, for some unseen reason things don't work out, the separation of things is on record. It sounds cold, but more than half of all marriages don't work, so I think in these days it is nearly a must if one of the two people involved has any amount assets.

If you both get into the marriage with nothing and you work together to build up your assets then splitting them is the only fair thing to do, but if not, the person who came in with a lot should be allowed to determine how much of that they want to give the other person should a divorce occur.