Over the years, I have learned a lot from other CC’ers, especially from people who had different views than me. I didn’t realize there were so many regional/social economic differences.
“There seem to be ideas here that when someone looks at the same circumstance and makes a different decision they must not understand the circumstance. Can’t appreciate the risks. Must not have assets to protect. Just naive”
Let’s assume full good faith on both sides. It’s easy to be fair when assets are simple - add up the bank accounts and divide by 2, you take the living room sofa and I’ll take the side chairs and coffee table, and everyone keeps their own clothing and personal effects. As assets become more complicated, it isn’t as easy to divide them and people of good faith CAN disagree on what is fair.
As a silly example but illustrative, when my parents got divorced, my dad had millions of miles status on multiple airlines as he had flown internationally for business for many years. Are those community property to be divided somehow? Or personal property as it was his butt in those seats obtaining those miles? Reasonable people could have different views on which is fair.
My advice would be that if you feel like you need one, or your potential spouse feels like he/she needs one, you are not a good match.
I don’t think it is healthy going into a relationship with your mind on what happens if it doesn’t work out.
The only time I think it might make sense is if my kid (or their potential spouse) was rich and famous. Not talking about one or the other, both. Rich famous people often have a hard time knowing if someone really loves them or if they are just after the money and fame. They may never feel safe in a relationship without one. Close family friend had that happen. He was the ‘poor’ spouse and married a very famous rich woman. Her circle of ‘friends’ could never really believe that he truly loved her. The media and fans all figured he was just a mooch. Those of us who know him know that she will never really understand how wrong they were. He landed OK, but she ended up spinning out of control.
Life has made me a skeptic. Just saying.
Things are getting too serious. It’s just a thread. Here’s a joke I found -
I don’t know. I don’t see the humor in this.
In my 70’s, I would like to think I can do it more than once a week.
I hope my prostate let’s me. 
I guess we aren’t talking about pre nips any more.
Freudian slip? 
LOL!!! Oops.
Jym, that was the best laugh I’ve had all week. It was much needed after a rough week!
Feel better, Romani.
I have an aunt who married a very wealthy guy twenty-five years ago. She was of very modest means, working a very modest job. When she got married, they entered into a strict pre-nup that made clear that his assets were his, everything was to be kept separate, no accumulation of wealth was community property, blah, blah, blah. They’ve kept their finances totally separate. It really makes me sick to see how she lives. The money that they have is HIS money in their eyes. It is a point of pride for her not to ASK him for money, so anything that she does separate and apart from him is necessarily on a shoe-string budget that is painful. When he joins the group for dinner, he’s the big spender at the fancy steak house. If just the girls want to go to dinner, she is scrounging around for a two-for-one El Pollo Loco coupon. When they travel together, he often flies on a private jet thru Netjets. But when my mom (of very limited means) suggested that she and my aunt go on a Rick Steves tour together, my aunt said, no, she can’t afford it. He wears Brioni suits: she’s scraping the clearance racks at Nordstrom Rack.
Of course, they live in the $5 million house that he built to his taste during their marriage, but everything is done the way he wants it. It is HIS house, not THEIR house. His adult kids treat her like some unwanted guest is THEIR dad’s house. I think his will is set up for her to have a life estate in the house but with no flexibility whatsoever.
In the meantime, he is 10 years older than her and has all kinds of health issues and she spends a good deal of her time caring for him.
I don’t even know if he is fully conscious of the disparity in their economic circumstances,but it is an extreme and creepy outgrowth of the “protecting the assets I brought into the marriage” mentality.
^ That’s much more than a prenup issue. That’s a control freak, power trip issue.
That sounds very challenging for your aunt. I’m sorry for her that things are this way and hope their relationship has other redeeming value for her. I couldn’t tolerate a relationship like the one you describe and suspect many others wouldn’t either. Great power imbalances have repercussions well beyond whether or not to have a prenup, as your post illustrates.
nottelling, that is horrible. What a control freak, indeed. To a non-lawyer me, it surely sounds like the type of a prenup that could make a sympathetic court scramble around for some support to find it unconscionable.
" I think his will is set up for her to have a life estate in the house but with no flexibility whatsoever."
I hope the will also provides her with some funds to maintain the house and to pay taxes on this piece of property! Otherwise, it is a disaster in the making. Here is a property for you to live in and enjoy until the day you die, but make sure that my heirs get it in pristine condition and lien-free when you depart.
Nottelling, either your aunt did not receive good legal counsel when she signed the prenup or she was too in love to care about the restrictions.
Nowadays, both sides should and do get legal advice and let their lawyers negotiate equitable terms.
I think she signed the agreement to distinguish herself from the ex-wife whom the guy portrayed as a money-grubbing witch and to prove to the guy that she wasn’t interested in him for the money. I’m sure that if it were actually challenged in court, it would not hold up. My point is more that people should think carefully about attitudes that sometimes underlie pre-nups. Hers is obviously an extreme case.
*I deleted all the posts that were off topic regarding the claim that some people here were being intolerant and/or openly dismissive of other members’ positions and trying to invalidate the opinions of others. IMO the claim was without merit. All posts were civil. It is quite possible to have a firmly held position and be civil in presenting it. It’s called debate, and I mean true debate, not like what politicians do with personal attacks. True, CC is not a debating society and we try not to just have a thread hammer the same argument between two or a few people over and over, although certainly that happens. But it is here to present information, which sometimes is straightout factual and sometimes has opinion and interpretation involved. This is the latter and that can be and was being discussed respectfully until it got dragged off topic by the claims I mention.
For future reference, if a post is truly not civil in allowing others to have their opinion, then report it to us mods. Do not attack back, do not drag the thread off topic. If you are right we will delete or edit the offending post, if we disagree (its a judgement call but we sometimes think skins are too thin) we will simply not take action most of the time. We might send the reporter a note saying we didn’t take action and why, we might post a note on the thread saying the thread is OK for now but be careful. But a lot of the time we just let it go. It would be very time consuming to respond to every “false” report. But we do look at and make a decision regrading every single report.*
Oh, and I left the joke and responses, but let’s let that portion end there. A hypertechnical violation, but nothing worth acting on. We wouldn’t want any more “nip slips”
@nottelling, I’d recommend my loved ones run as far as they can from anyone who describes their ex as a truly nasty person, like your aunt says her H described his ex. We may be outliers, but several of ex BFs and GFs came to our wedding and we remain friendly.