PRENUPTIAL AGREEMENTS AND PREMARITAL AGREEMENTS

A prenuptial agreement or premarital agreement are the same. They are a legally enforceable agreement that allows you to protect and keep your assets and earnings that are yours before marriage so they will remain yours during and after filing for divorce. It also acts to protect you from the other’s debts they incurred before marriage – Once you get married, you may be liable for debts your spouse incurred before and also those incurred after. A San Diego Divorce Attorney can draft your prenuptial or premarital agreement to fit your specific wants and needs by including specific language that a judge would never order, absent a prenuptial or premarital agreement. For example, you may want to include language that sets spousal support or alimony. It can even state you can give gifts (including real property) to the other spouse, and all sorts of other language you want to include in it.

Without a prenuptial or premarital agreement, however, your San Diego Family Law attorney cannot protect you from the enforcement of the divorce laws, laws that do not protect your premarital assets from remaining yours. For example, California divorce law presumes all the assets and debts of both spouses are community property, meaning everything would be divided so that each spouse gets awarded half of every asset and every debt or the equivalent (i.e., a division “in kind” that obtains the same result). Is this what you want to happen? It does not even matter what State you were married in! Only a well-drafted premarital or prenuptial agreement drafted by your San Diego Family Law attorney can protect you from a judge enforcing divorce laws you do not want to apply to you, just because you chose to get married. Don’t count on the legal exceptions to the “community property presumption” to protect you either.

Many times both couples may want a prenuptial agreement, where both have separate assets they want to remain their own. They may have the very same reasons you have. Yet, whether one or both couples believe it is prudent to hire a San Diego Divorce attorney for this purpose, the reality is that most people don’t get one before they get married and those same people are likely to regret it in the future. We all know it isn’t exactly romantic. Even if both of you are truly in love and can’t imagine not spending the rest of your lives together, just thinking of the possibility of divorce, will result in you putting it off until it is too late. Don’t wait. No matter how bad it feels, hiring a San Diego Family Law attorney to get it done before you and your fiancé “tie the knot,” is likely to be one of the best decisions you or both you and your fiancé ever make. You both still can believe without a doubt that your marriage will last forever and it just may.