so you think all prenups are fair and equitable in there signing?
No. However, each party should be smart enough to consult their own lawyer prior to signing.
you dont think either partner has more power than the other right?
zero cohersion?
To avoid dealing with the confusion of the implied double negative, I will just state that, yes, sometimes one partner has more power than the other,
It would seem to me that there is abuse on both sides of the prenup / lack thereof argument. Perhaps the fairest? / most nearly fair? agreements are those that:
1. Take into account assets accumulated prior to marriage (meaning prior to long term relationships in the case of people who are together for years before actually getting married). In other words, if your Grandmother bequeathed you 10,000,000 dollars, pounds, whatever, 20 years before you get married, my view is that the other person is not deserving of half (or any given percentage) of this inheritance.
2. If the wife (not to be sexist, but assuming the majority of cases) has not worked, but rather stayed home, raised kids and played homemaker, than they should be compensated after divorce, because she was denied the opportunity to accumulate her own assets.
3. Perhaps a “sliding scale” – the longer you go in a relationship, the more claim to a settlement approaching 50/50 – might make sense.
However, in spite of this, if two competent adults enter into a contract and are reasonably informed as to the potential consequences, then that contract stands. Period.
Having said that, there is certainly a plethora of examples demonstrating extreme injustice from either party’s view. The system needs revision, but how?
A radical idea that I have seen proposed from time to time is the concept of “contract marriages”. This involves the idea of a marriage contract lasting for a term – say 5 years, 10 years, etc. with automatic renewal if the contractual clause to terminate is not invoked. I believe I could even make a case for this type of arrangement reducing divorce rates – e.g. “I am so mad at you right now, I want a divorce, but we only have six months left on our contract, so let’s wait until then.” Perhaps by the time six months have passed, the couple will have reconciled, therefore “one less divorce”, at least for now.
Anyway, the current system needs revision. I have personally been a (potential) victim of a “gold – digger”, in that she filed for divorced 6 months and one day after our wedding. You have to be married for 6 months in the particular state I live in to have claim to the ‘marital estate’. I could go into an entire rant about that whole episode, but this is not the time nor place.
Again, I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do believe strongly that the current system is deficient by many different measurements.
