Don’t Procrastinate: Talking about Prenup now can avoid problems later

As the life expectancy increases, there is an increase in the likelihood of having a 2nd, 3rd or 4th marriage in one’s lifetime. Moreover, as people get older, the chances of them having more significant assets as they enter into a marriage is more common than younger couples getting married who are not as likely to have savings, multiple real estate properties, more significant debt in the form of several mortgages, and so on. With age also comes intelligent fiscal decision making for one’s life and in your marriage because you’ve grown increasingly aware of how finances can impact you and your loved ones.

Planning your financial future with your spouse is also not just about you. It also impacts the children you may be bringing into the marriage from prior relationships, and any children that you will one day have together. This is a way to provide a stable foundation by ensuring that your children are, if you were to get a divorce, provided for in the manner that you both agree upon.

According to a recent article in New York Magazine, couples are waiting on average until they are around 30-34 to get married, which isn’t old by any means, but it is a big leap up from the ‘straight out of college’ marriages that used to be more the norm, where couples were marrying between 20 and 24. This ten year jump in New York alone can be attributed to many factors, as we mentioned life expectancy, career choices, cultural changes. One of the byproducts of this later in life marriage phenomenon is what New York Magazine calls a ‘prenup boom’. It makes sense that, as we get older, we make more practical decisions in all areas of our lives, and while it may not mean we are completely reckless in our youth, not getting a prenuptial agreement in a marriage is a way to throw caution to the wind, in a very high stakes situation, which doesn’t seem to make sense for anyone.

In a post on the forum and user generated content website Reddit.com a recent poster wrote:

My fiance and I just signed ours last week. Not because either of us is loaded nor has big sums of money coming our way in the future, but mostly because it's easier to talk about things and decide on things when you're not really really pissed off.”

It may be a blunt way to put it; that statement kind of cuts to the heart of the matter but it shows that, regardless of what you have NOW, or what your relationship is like NOW, the one thing in life we can count on is change, and talking about things with cool heads is smart. Sounds like a sensible decision to us!

When a couple is getting married, people are often asked at the wedding to offer words of encouragement, or advice, perhaps in a little hand written note in the wedding book, or in the video at the reception. One of the most oft repeated pieces of advice is: Never go to bed angry. You don’t want to wake up and argue more in the morning, or perhaps it is the superstitious idea that sleeping on a subconscious that is wrestling with problems can create more turmoil. Either way, a prenup is a way to do the same thing, in a sense. You are taking care of the problems that could come up ahead of time, so that you can both rest easy and not worry about them later.