Pre-Nups

[pokepoke420]

Things between my girlfriend and I have recently become more serious, but throughout my life I have witnessed certain scenarios that made me feel that a pre-nup is the best route. You can know and love someone today, but how can we really determine who they'll be in 10 years? I told her if we were to get married I would need her to sign a pre-nup - I have been successful in my life and I have assets that I would love to share, but not be taken from me one day if things ended up changing.

On that same note, I must mention how much of a kind sweet caring woman she is, and when I brought it up she flipped out on me saying that she can't believes that I think that way and to leave my past in the past all while saying she would never sign one. She isn't a vindictive type woman and I know her extremely well, but I was in an 8 year relationship prior to her with a woman that I also never thought would hurt me to only fuck my best friends and turn out to be a complete fucking wreck.

Am I a complete dick and taking my past out on her or am I being smart and preparing for the worst? I feel right in my thoughts, but the way she reacted made me feel like I fucked things up between us.

 

[Tubbs]

I personally believe if she really loves you unconditionally she'll sign it. There's no reason not to. It's just a piece of paper

 

[JessFR]

Honestly, I can sympathize with both sides. You're probably not being unreasonable, and you're certainly being smart. But at the same time, I can relate to her feelings, cause they're kinda my feelings too. I feel like if you truly love someone how can you be worrying about a prenup and already preparing for the marriage to end. I can understand why she flipped out, but I can also understand why you feel how you feel after what you've experienced. I can't say it's how I feel but I can understand it.

And it probably is the smarter move, it's worth noting that I do stupid shit all the time especially where love is involved and I don't tend to worry about my material wealth. Certainly helped by not really having any.

My advice is to try and understand where she's coming from, then try and explain to her why you feel how you feel.

I don't buy the "if she loves you she'll sign" argument. You can just flip that around and have her say "if you love me you won't make me sign". So that's crap. And it's not a piece of paper. It's a piece of paper that to her, me, and people like us says "you don't trust us to not screw you even if we well out of love and you're already planning for the end before the beginning. How much can you really love me if this is what you're thinking about?"

And I dunno, maybe that's irrational but love isn't rational

But while you can't say if she loves you she'll sign, cause that's a manipulation and it's bullshit cause you can argue the reverse just as easily. It is true that if she loves you she will want to understand your concerns. Just honestly and calmly and openly explain to her how you feel and what you're worried about. I'm assuming it's not that you don't love her but that you've seem how things can change and that you want to be wrong and not need a prenup, but that it's something weighing on your mind.

You two need to understand where each other are coming from. All serious relationships face these kinds disputes. And like always you just gotta learn to understand each other and try and work out where you can compromise or change your mind about things or disagree with but accept. The important part is to fully understand each other's position. I think in a good relationship both parties should always be thinking of the other. Which works so long as both are doing it for the other.

Good luck.

 

[SamanthaB]

Hi PokePoke,

I agree with Jess's post above wholeheartedly. However, I would add one important thing. If you guys sit down and talk this through together or with an attorney or therapist, I think there is a middle ground here that both of you might find will work. I speak specifically, that you would have a pre-nup document drawn up that outlines what you both came into the marriage with (that was either money or had a monetary value of some significance) and those things would be returned to each one of you and be off limits to either one of you if you two should divorce in the future. For example, if you have a house currently, you know what it is worth now. If you marry and the house increases in value, which it most likely would, if you divorced, you would get the premarital value back, but only half of the appreciated value. The same would go with pension funds, bank accounts, etc. that you each come into the marriage with. I think unless you agree otherwise ahead of time that things will be different, anything that you two build and acquire together after marriage, no matter who makes more money, would be divided equally. I think you might have more success with this flying with her.

Like it or not people, a marriage relationship is not just a physical and emotional partnership, but a financial one as well. Lots of couples want to stick their heads in the sand and just not deal with the financial from the get-go. And, unfortunately, financial issues are the #1 reason that marriages fail.

Let us know how this works out.

 

[Cream Gravy?]

I feel like it's an acceptance that you both know you're love will never last... though my fiance thinks I'd be a fool not to get one because she doesn't believe in certainty. Yet she said she'd be peeved if I asked for one. Well fuck me.

 

[Vastness]

Nothing in life is certain, and human beings cannot predict the future with absolute certainty no matter how much of a fairy tale any particular romance might seem in the given moment.

Is it selfish to create a will before you've reached a certain age, because it's an acceptance that you know you might die unexpectedly, leaving your loved ones bereaved, and any dependants with an uncertain future?

If you're American or unlucky enough to live in another nation with some insane dystopian healthcare system, is it selfish to pay for health insurance while you're young and in good health, rather than giving that money to charity?

Is it a vague insult to either your employer, your country, or your bank not to save money, and instead spend it on friends, family, or, again, charity, even if you think that nothing could ever go wrong, your company is a moral, stable entity, your bosses are good people who trust in you, your government is a stable, sensible entity which will always make good decisions for the benefit of it's people...?

I could go on with more and more out there and more and more ridiculous examples.


These things are all prudent insurance policies to protect yourself and by extension, those close to you from the a worst case scenario that you and in this case, both of you (we hope ) hope will never come to pass.

Better than that, you have an objective reason in the presumably quite recent past why believing in a fairy tale at the expense of sound planning for a worst case scenario in the future is just not a good idea.

Honestly, I think you are totally in the right here, and your girlfriend's reaction to me is totally unjustified.

Most likely though she just hasn't really thought this through, and if she is a rational person then she should come to understand your position in time. I mean really, what is the downside? If you guys never break up, then it means nothing anyway. And if you do end up breaking up, why would she want any of your stuff? I'm sure that's not the reason you got together, so what difference would it make?

 

[JessFR]

Those comparisons are all idiotic. If you treat getting married as the same as opening a bank account or getting insurance, don't.

Here's what I think is stupid. I think its stupid to make such a huge commitment as a marriage with someone you don't even trust not to fuck you over if you one day fell out of love. It's not just that you've already decided you think you'll quite possibly not remain in love, you've also decided you don't trust your partner to not fuck you over when it happens. Why are you even getting married then?

I understand your position, but now that you've suggested mine is stupid... Now I'm pissed. I'll tell you right now for myself... I probably wouldn't sign it. I'd ask why are we even getting married? You said it yourself, life is uncertain. You could lose everything some other way even without a prenup. You could lose a lifelong loving relationship for the sake of demanding one. Life's uncertain. That's the only thing certain about it. Which is why I follow my heart and my instincts and hope for the best.

And while I do understand that as much as you might think you'll be in love forever, you might still wind up in a bitter divorce, I also think that a prenup is hardly the ideal answer. I think people should exercise a lot more judgement about who they marry. I see it all the time, people ignoring problems that will obviously be the death of their relationship one day. A prenup is just a bandaid solution. The ideal solution is to never need one. And I tend to think the relationship that'll never need one will usually be the one that knew they'd never need it.

But go ahead, open a marriage account with your wife. Take out sex insurance. If that's all it is to you if you think those situations are so similar.

Edit: just to be clear pokepoke this isn't directed at you. Sigh, I get that you've been burned before, and I can understand why that makes this hard. But hopefully some of this might give some insight into why some people feel so strongly opposed to prenups. I'm not actually as opposed to them as it probably sounds. Ultimately other people's relationships are none of my buisness, and people get in to all sorts of relationships that work in all sorts of ways. In the end all that matters is that they work for the people involved. I said that I see relationships all the time that I think are doomed to failure from the start. Probably the most common reason I find myself thinking that is when there are issues that aren't being talked about. Cause an ignored issue isn't a forgotten issue. Which is why I think the most important thing if for you to talk to your fiancé about it.

Way I see it, there are two ways this can go where it works out for the both of you. In the end, it'll either get signed or it won't. And you'll either become happily married or you won't. Obviously you want to be happily married, so you two need to find a solution.

One way I see that happening is that she realizes and understands why you want a prenup, and accepts that you wanting one doesn't have to mean you don't love her or that you don't want your relationship to work. And she signs it to make you happy, and you move on.

The other way where it can work out, is you realize life is always going to entail risk and it's all about what risks you wanna take. And that you're willing to take a leap of faith for your relationship, it doesn't get signed, and you move on.

What you need to work out together is which one of those will make you both happiest. If you can find a third option great, but those two are all I can think of. You wanna get married yeah? You want it to work out in the long run. The. You gotta find a way for you both to be able to move forward happy and secure past this conflict.

But trust me, what you don't want is a fight where one of you just does something they don't wanna do to make the argument go away. Cause there will be other arguments in the future, and in my experience, neither partner ever really forgets the times they just placated the other. It builds up and becomes one of countless things that go in to a marriage breakdown. So, my strong advice from my experience with relationships, which is all this is. Is that whatever happens is something you can both get on board with.

I said before that I wouldn't sign one. Truth is I was just pissed off when I said that. I don't really know what I'd wind up doing in this situation. For me I'd want to really understand my partners motivation for a prenup.

I'd be much more likely to sign if I thought it was being asked for out of paranoia and bad past experiences than vastness's argument. Which would seriously make me ask what we are getting married for.

 

[Vastness]

I'm pretty sure I didn't say your position was stupid, to be honest I didn't even really read your post and just skimmed the thread and then responded to the question asked in the OP. Although having read your most recent post, I won't say it's stupid but I very strongly disagree.

I don't think the comparisons I made are idiotic at all, and there's no implication that marriage is like opening a bank account. On the contrary, it's a far, far bigger commitment than opening a bank account, with far more significant consequences to your life if you make a mistake, and that's why it would make quite reasonable sense to put some kind of safeguards in place, so that if it turns out if you DID make a mistake, the secondary damage it can do to your life is limited.

I think people should exercise a lot more judgement about who they marry. I see it all the time, people ignoring problems that will obviously be the death of their relationship one day. A prenup is just a bandaid solution. The ideal solution is to never need one.

This "solution" is just not a solution at all, and is more than a little insulting to people who have married someone they thought was the love of their lives only for it to end in disaster.

The ideal solution to car crash fatalities is for everyone to just stop crashing their cars... It doesn't mean we should stop wearing seatbelts, or that by wearing a seatbelt, I'm somehow insulting the skill of the driver, which is basically what you are saying is happening when someone asks for a prenup - they're somehow insulting the commitment and faithfulness of the other person.

I'm sorry to say but I really just don't understand your position at all. Again, it's an insurance policy against a worst case outcome that you both hope will never happen. Perhaps one of you goes through an unexpected transformative experience that changes their whole outlook on life, or even has a traumatic brain injury which causes them not to love the other person anymore... you accept that life is uncertain, and yet you seem to have some problem with your partner preparing for uncertain outcomes. People change, constantly, in ways that they didn't even expect themselves.

Why is it so important that you don't sign a pre-nup? If it's important to you partner, why would you even care?

If it makes them sleep a little easier at night, and you never break up, then what's the problem? Or even if you did break up, surely you wouldn't even want their stuff? So in effect a pre-nup would make no difference either way.

Or perhaps you would want to get something if it didn't work out - in which case, NOT signing a pre-nup is basically an insurance policy for yourself.

 

[JessFR]

If you don't understand it by now you're not gonna. I'd just be repeating myself. Literally, I can reply to your whole post again but almost all of it will be a rephrased way of saying what I said before.

What pisses me off is you don't see how one-sided your thinking is.

"if you don't break up then what's the difference". "you wouldn't take their stuff anyway so what's the difference". Several of your arguments could work just as well for being antiprenup as proprenup. That you don't see that is quite frustrating.

But I can see further discussion and argument won't go anywhere which is why it took me a while to get around to replying at all. You're not gonna understand it no matter what I say.

 

[craigh2011]

Anybody who doesn’t require a prenup and a free trade agreement is missing the boat. Any person you might ask to sign one should be discarded immediately.

Relationships that are hinged on money are doomed to fail. Don’t be naive.

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

Things between my girlfriend and I have recently become more serious, but throughout my life I have witnessed certain scenarios that made me feel that a pre-nup is the best route. You can know and love someone today, but how can we really determine who they'll be in 10 years? I told her if we were to get married I would need her to sign a pre-nup - I have been successful in my life and I have assets that I would love to share, but not be taken from me one day if things ended up changing.

On that same note, I must mention how much of a kind sweet caring woman she is, and when I brought it up she flipped out on me saying that she can't believes that I think that way and to leave my past in the past all while saying she would never sign one. She isn't a vindictive type woman and I know her extremely well, but I was in an 8 year relationship prior to her with a woman that I also never thought would hurt me to only fuck my best friends and turn out to be a complete fucking wreck.

Am I a complete dick and taking my past out on her or am I being smart and preparing for the worst? I feel right in my thoughts, but the way she reacted made me feel like I fucked things up between us.

If you are that worried, and it's what you want, then consult a lawyer, get a prenup agreement that has what you want in it, and have her sign it. Good luck.

 

[JessFR]

If you are that worried, and it's what you want, then consult a lawyer, get a prenup agreement that has what you want in it, and have her sign it. Good luck.

Mmm, no. No that is not smart at all unless you want this relationship to fall apart before you even have the chance for it to end in divorce. You did read the whole post right?

She clearly already isn't a fan of the prenup. Going further along with it behind her back could easily make things a whole lot worse.

Oh, and word of advise. Generally not a good idea in a relationship to plan to get your partner to do something you know they don't want to do without involving them until most of the work is done. They will realize the truth, which is that it means you have no respect for how they feel. How could you when you so disregard it that you've already assumed you will get them to do what you want with absolutely no consideration at all that you might do what they want?

If you want a prenup, by all means continue trying to explain that to her if you feel she doesn't really understand your reasons. But don't be deceptive, don't be manipulative, and be open to their opinions too.

That's the only way a relationship between two people who don't always agree on everything can work.

 

[Tubbs]

Exactly what Jess just said, going behind her back you will lose her. Discuss it with her, tell her your reasons, don't force it.

 

[CoastTwoCoast]

Get that pre-nup!

No one wants to believe their spouse will turn into a monster who will take them for everything they are worth in the end, but it happens time and time again!

If she doesn't want to do it, maybe you shouldn't be together.

It's awful to have to think about divorce and what could possibly happen, but you would be foolish not to protect yourself. Tell her that's the way it has to be if she wants to get married.

Oh and if she REALLY doesn't want to rape you in divorce, she wouldn't make such a big deal about it. That's how I see it.

 

[zephyr]

These days its best to not makes things more difficult than need be .

Dont get married.

Its not worth it.

 

[JessFR]

Get that pre-nup!

No one wants to believe their spouse will turn into a monster who will take them for everything they are worth in the end, but it happens time and time again!

If she doesn't want to do it, maybe you shouldn't be together.

It's awful to have to think about divorce and what could possibly happen, but you would be foolish not to protect yourself. Tell her that's the way it has to be if she wants to get married.

Oh and if she REALLY doesn't want to rape you in divorce, she wouldn't make such a big deal about it. That's how I see it.

And you'd be wrong. I'm against it and it has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to take shit in a divorce.

If you wanna say either sign a prenup or you won't get married, well that's you're right. But be prepared for the possibility that the answer will be to not get married. Then you have a choice. You can take the easy option and tell yourself it's proof that she would have taken you for everything in the divorce. Or the hard option that you might have screwed up a good thing cause you have trust issues.

We all have our choices to make. And we all gotta live with them.

 

[llama112]

You never know what people can be like in a divorce. Prenups are often necessary..... no reason not to sign it. It protects you both.

 

[JessFR]

No reason to you is not no reason, it's no reason to you.

People are diverse.

But whatever, I'm officially sick of repeating myself in this thread and I think I've covered everything I could care to say.

Good luck OP. Honestly. I hope it works out.

EDIT: One other thing. I'm not even really disagreeing about not knowing how people might act in a divorce, or even that any of the concerns of the pro prenup aren't valid, perhaps very valid even. What I'm saying is that a prenup isn't the only valid choice to be made. Anything else I probably agree with to at least some extent. It's more a disagreement over interpreting and handling the realities of the situation.

 

[GiNa LyNnxx]

I will never get married, and I am completely honest to guys and they try and try,, they jut can't get it through their heads I will never get married

 

[GiNa LyNnxx]

I will never get married, and I am completely honest to guys and they try and try,, they jut can't get it through their heads I will never get married. I thought what I did for a living would make them not want to marry me I guess not!