When Is It a Good Idea to Sign a Prenuptial Agreement?

Getting married means more than just signing a piece of paper or having a wedding. It means that you’re going to join your life with another person, and that your lives going forward are going to be legally entangled. Many couples consider signing a prenuptial agreement before getting married, but many aren’t sure if it’s necessary. According to the Garden City NY family lawyers at Fass & Greenberg, it’s something that many individuals should consider before getting married.

According to most family law attorneys in Garden City, you’ll want to consider signing a pre-nuptial agreement if you have any kind of property or assets that you’d want to protect in the event of divorce or death.  For young couples starting their lives together who have minimal assets, there is no need to sign a prenuptial agreement.  Even if one of the parties expects a significant inheritance in the future, that inheritance is considered “separate property” under New York State laws, provided any assets received are not transferred into joint accounts and transmuted into marital property.  

Couples who would be strongly advised to sign a prenuptial agreement would be those embarking upon a second marriage, where there are children from the first.  They may want to protect their children’s inheritances against the rights of the second spouse in the event of death. Also, in a second marriage, there are more often assets accumulated during the first marriage, such as a pension, a business, or an investment account, the appreciation of which, a spouse may want to protect with a prenuptial agreement.

In order to prevent a successful challenge to a prenuptial agreement, full financial disclosure must be exchanged and detailed in the agreement, and most importantly, the agreement must be fair to both parties.  If there is a lack of consideration in the agreement, i.e., the non-monied spouse waives any future right to maintenance or division of assets in the event of a divorce form a multimillionaire spouse, the agreement will be more than likely vulnerable to attack upon divorce.

Most important, both parties should be represented by independent, competent attorneys. Clients who try to save money by executing online forms for prenuptial agreements may be shocked later on to learn the ineffectiveness of these boilerplate templates.