Prenups and weddings don’t mix.\u00a0 In my professional experience, asking\u00a0your fiance to sign a premarital agreement is never comfortable, but it is an especially bad idea the week of the wedding.\u00a0 By the time the family comes to town for the big event, the premarital agreement should be at least weeks old, if not months.<\/p>\n
Recently I’ve\u00a0had a couple of different experiences involving last-minute prenuptial agreements.\u00a0\u00a0Several\u00a0years ago a woman came in to the office with a draft of a premarital agreement her fiance was asking her to sign.\u00a0 Her wedding was only three days away.\u00a0 \u00a0Her family was already in town\u00a0from out of the country,\u00a0<\/em>and the final preparations were in process.\u00a0 I carefully reviewed the premarital agreement with her and found it was terribly one-sided in favor of her soon-to-be husband.\u00a0 If they ever divorced, she would be left with virtually nothing.\u00a0 I advised her about how the agreement would\u00a0be\u00a0devastating to her\u00a0if there were ever a divorce, and I told her that she should not sign the agreement.\u00a0 I put my advice in a letter to her and had her sign for her receipt of the letter.\u00a0 Unfortunately, she also signed the prenuptial\u00a0agreement.<\/p>\n A few weeks ago, the same client came back to my office.\u00a0 Her marriage so far seems strong.\u00a0 She loves her husband and she says he loves her.\u00a0 But she wonders.\u00a0 What if her husband decides to divorce her?\u00a0 What will she do?\u00a0 She is over 50 years old now and has been out of the work force for several years.\u00a0 She has no assets that are truly her own.\u00a0 If her husband decides to divorce her, will the prenuptial agreement hold up?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If the divorce court enforces the agreement, how will she support herself?\u00a0 How will she survive?<\/p>\n Sadly for my client, the agreement is probably enforceable.\u00a0 Being asked to sign a premarital agreement shortly before a wedding, while awkward and unpleasant, does not\u00a0normally constitute\u00a0the kind of duress that would justify unwinding the agreement, assuming other statutory requirements are met.\u00a0 See <\/em>A.R.S. Sec. 25-202.\u00a0 This is especially true\u00a0when each party to the agreement had counsel or at least the opportunity to consult with counsel before signing.\u00a0 My client was not “forced” to sign the prenuptial agreement.\u00a0 \u00a0She had legal advice before signing, and she voluntarily put pen to paper. \u00a0She\u00a0was free to not sign the agreement and accept the consequences of that decision.<\/p>\n What would have been\u00a0the consequences of refusing to sign?\u00a0\u00a0Of course\u00a0we\u00a0can only speculate.\u00a0 Perhaps the husband would have presented her a modified agreement that would have been\u00a0more favorable to her, that would have\u00a0provided better for her financially in the event of a divorce.\u00a0 Perhaps the husband would have dropped his request that she sign a prenuptial agreement altogether.\u00a0\u00a0 Or her greatest fear could have come true–that the wedding would be cancelled and she would be\u00a0terribly embarrassed.\u00a0 My client’s desire to avoid a possible cancellation of her wedding ultimately overcame her misgivings about the draft premarital agreement, and she signed so that her wedding would proceed as planned.<\/p>\n Last week, a different client made\u00a0a different decision.\u00a0 The situation was virtually identical.\u00a0 The would-be groom presented the would-be bride with a draft prenuptial agreement just three days before the wedding.\u00a0 Again, the draft agreement was extremely unfavorable to her while protecting all his assets and all his future income from any potential claims she might have under Arizona community property or spousal maintenance statutes in an eventual divorce.\u00a0 I advised her in writing of all the pitfalls of the agreement as written and instructed her not to sign it.\u00a0 She acknowledged my advice in writing, and the last thing she said to me was that she was not<\/strong> going to sign the agreement.<\/p>\n I have not yet heard from this second client as to how her fiance reacted when she told him she wouldn’t sign, but I was pleased that she recognized she had a choice and that she was willing to accept whatever consequences accompanied her decision to say “no.”\u00a0 The broader-application life lessons to be learned from this client’s decision to say “no” even when it would have been easier to say “yes” are profound but beyond the scope of this blog.<\/p>\n For a person who wants his fiance to sign a premarital agreement, the best practice is to present her and her counsel with the first draft long before the wedding day — months before if possible.\u00a0\u00a0A couple\u00a0who negotiate, revise and sign their prenuptial agreement long before their wedding can then relax and\u00a0focus on\u00a0their relationship rather than on their possible future\u00a0divorce.\u00a0 But for the person who is presented with a prenuptial agreement\u00a0 just days before the wedding, remember, it is still a choice<\/strong>, and\u00a0the answer can be “no.”<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2012 by Scoresby Family Law \u2013 J. Kyle Scoresby, P.C. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prenups and weddings don’t mix.\u00a0 In my professional experience, asking\u00a0your fiance to sign a premarital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[43,74],"class_list":["post-1403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prenuptial-agreement","tag-divorce","tag-prenuptial-agreements"],"yoast_head":"\n