The only job available was tapping maples, and I couldn’t even get an interview.
I had moved to a small town in New Hampshire after falling in love with a medical student in his senior year at McGill University in Montreal. He was American and committed to a four-year residency in New Hampshire, and I decided to leave Canada and follow him there.
Jobless, I joined him a year later, but I was miserable and missed my formerly vibrant social and professional life as a newspaper reporter, living in Toronto, Montreal and Paris. This was a time before the internet existed, and making new friends seemed impossible. My boyfriend worked long hours and was absent or exhausted most of the time. His residency salary was very low so we were on a tight budget and it was a two hour drive to the nearest town.
After 18 months of fruitless attempts to settle down happily, I asked him to move to New York so I could find a job, and he agreed. My job search lasted six months and he immediately got a $14,000 raise with his new residency. Thanks to a family legacy, I had money for a down payment on a suburban co-op apartment.
By the time we started planning our wedding, six years after we met, he was making six figures as a practicing physician. I knew nothing about the marriage laws of New York and was completely dependent on my fiancé’s income at the time and felt extremely vulnerable. So I consulted a lawyer – at $350 an hour in 1992 – and asked what I could gain in a divorce.
His answer surprised me: If the marriage was short-lived, and because I had a college degree, strong resume, and good health, a court wouldn’t offer me anything, he said, since I was fully capable of living in my own to provide livelihoods.
So I asked my fiancee for a prenuptial agreement to protect my one real asset, the apartment. My fiancé was in her late twenties and had chosen medicine after leaving a low-paying industry. He only had his medical education and a clarinet as assets.
Prenups have long been considered cold and unromantic, and often involve a major power imbalance between the spouses, but with so many marriages ending in divorce — and some states offering minimal post-divorce assessments — a prenup can save money, time and save emotional costs. pain. Knowing in advance what each person is entitled to reduces the costly and time-consuming need to discuss everything later.
The agreement immediately gave me a low five-figure sum, which would cover my legal fees, health insurance, and other expenses. He would keep his full pension and health insurance.
My fiancée agreed to the terms without endless arguments; I certainly would have put my life and career on the back burner to accommodate him.
When my husband left me after two years of marriage and quickly remarried a co-worker, I had the safety net I desperately needed. Emotionally devastated, I kept my home and was able to count on alimony to get back on my feet.
A prenuptial agreement is basically a legally binding agreement between both parties to fully disclose their assets and debts. It can also delineate a wide range of issues, including who will pay a mortgage, who will create a separate fund to pay for a stay-at-home partner or parent, and where the signers will live in the event of divorce. It quickly clarifies where each person stands financially and creates a forum for a candid discussion about how everyone wants to manage their money after marriage.
The cost to make one varies widely, with the higher cost—possibly $5,000 to $10,000—typically borne by the person requesting it. According to Raymond Hekmat, the founder of Hekmat Law and Mediation in Los Angeles, the partner who reviews the document with a separate attorney to make sure the agreement is not unfavorable could pay about $3,000.
Maria Squitieri, a 51-year-old teacher in New York, made the mistake of signing an agreement a few days before her wedding that she didn’t take the time to review. She was raised by her grandmother and said she was “extremely naive and trusting a flaw.”
“I really had nothing in the marriage” at age 33, said Ms Squitieri, whose ex-husband was a high-earning professional entering his second marriage. “I barely looked at the contract. I probably saw this older man as my savior.”
If the marriage ended in divorce, Ms. Squitieri said, she assumed she would be fine and able to return to work. She was young and healthy and eager to marry a man whose generosity to his children from his previous marriage and to her grandmother had impressed her. She worked the first two years of her marriage and then, after her son was born, left the workforce for seven years to stay at home with him.
The marriage failed and the agreement forced her to stay in New York City with her son, where the only affordable housing for them on her teacher’s salary was a studio. She fell into debt — even though the deal guaranteed her son private school, summer camp, and tutoring. The alimony she received was insufficient to live on without a job, which took her two years to find.
“I now realize that you can be a romantic who believes in love and still be smart and make a plan just in case,” Ms Squitieri said.
In fact, many people shy away from discussing a prenuptial agreement, says Tori Dunlap, a financial blogger, podcaster, and author. “The large amount of people don’t talk about money at all when they get into a relationship,” she said.
Although remote work has gained popularity, some professions, such as medicine and academia, still require travel from one country to another, which can hurt a surviving spouse’s earning capacity or income, especially when the spouse is older .
“Making those sacrifices is a good bargaining point,” says Brent Cashatt, co-founder and partner at CashattWarren Family Law in Des Moines. “It is a reason to make the agreement fairer. It’s a reasonable request.”
Mr Hekmat said drafting a prenuptial agreement should be a “win-win situation”.
“They create intimacy and trust,” he said. If the negotiations get ugly and contentious, he said, that could be a sign to completely reconsider marrying that person.
Arrangements have also changed over the past seven to 10 years, Mr Hekmat said.
“The way prenups used to be treated came from one person in a position of power — usually the man — but today marriages have changed, relationships have changed and work has changed,” he said. “My clients are generally professionals in their thirties and forties or entering into a second marriage. More people marry later in life. They have lived alone. They are used to spending their money as they please, especially women.”
If everything is negotiable
For Tonya Yan, 32, and Linh Yan, 27, drawing up a prenuptial agreement was a simple and easy decision. The couple lives in San Francisco and married in November. Both women grew up in Asian families — Linh Yan is Vietnamese and Tonya Yan is Chinese — which they say facilitated their frank discussions about finances. “Money is not a taboo for us,” said Tonya Yan.
As a gay couple, it was also easier to discuss prenuptial agreements, Tonya Yan said, because “when you throw out the script” about traditional marriage, everything is up for debate.
Tonya Yan is an international tax lawyer who earns about twice as much as Linh Yan, and both wanted to keep their finances separate. “It means we don’t take the other person for granted,” Linh Yan said.
For Tonya Yan, having a legal document that they both discussed at length and approved without resentment is like having a seat belt on. “You put it on hoping you never need it, expecting it to crash,” she said.
The couple lived together for four years. When they decided to get married, they didn’t want California divorce laws, which dictate a 50-50 division of assets and debts, to apply to them if they separated. Instead, they set their own rules using prenuptial agreements.
“California’s laws are particularly far-reaching and can trip couples up in ways they never expected,” said Tonya Yan. “Houses and real estate can potentially be considered half-owned by a spouse, even if that spouse has never paid a penny in the down payment or signed a deed,” she said. Conversely, she added, “someone can suddenly be held liable for half of a debt he didn’t even know his spouse owed.”
Linh Yan said she felt the same way about California laws and described herself as an independent person. “Even if there is a small chance of a divorce, I don’t want to depend on my wife’s money if things go wrong,” she said. Nine states currently have community property divorce laws.
“We have joint bank accounts, joint purchases, shared accounts – sharing is not the problem,” said Tonya Yan. “But it’s the difference between what we choose for ourselves versus what the state imposes on us.”
Tonya paid between $10,000 and $12,000 to draft the agreement using the services of Mr. Hekmat, while Linh paid her own attorney $3,000 to review it.
“People ask me, ‘Should I get one too?'” said Linh Yan. “I think it’s a luxury, since the people who need it most — financially vulnerable — are the least likely to afford one.”
Many couples planning to get married don’t research their state’s divorce laws, said Ms. Dunlap, the financial writer. “What many people don’t realize is that we all have marriage contracts. It’s what the state decides. If you don’t like that, you might want a prenup.”
