Prenuptial agreement - yes or no?

[Pike]

Interesting all the different viewpoints.

But, with respect to the morality issues, it is all pretty funny.

As someone noted, if you have very little in terms of wealth, then you can be very indignant at the words coming from those who do have wealth.  So just depends on which side of the hill you are on.

[DKMM]

Nah I'm a CPA but good guess.  We dip our toes in financial planning and legal work from time to time.  I sure do miss the real world this time of year...

That was the point of the trust, something that could be set in stone.  Its a good thing if you want security for your bride to be if used in a prenup.  They can be created in ways that would appear "flexible."  I'm looking at it from this perspective:

1)  you want to create an incentive for someone to not try to divorce you soon after marriage without good reason (prenup). 

2)  you want to show your bride to be that you won't abandon her either or secretly leave her with nothing when you die (trust). 

It reduces the risk in both of your situations, thus its mutually beneficial.

[Turboguy]

Thanks for the information DKMM.   Sometimes there is a fine line between something that pertains to one person and something we all can learn from so I will hope this stays in the range of things that we all can learn from.   To discuss it though I will have to talk about my own situation to some extent.

Perhaps I will take a closer look at trusts.   My impression was that there were two types of trusts, revocable and irrevocable and that a revocable one really didn't accomplish anything.

As far as the two perspectives, #1 is of no interest to me.  If she ever does want to divorce me I am not interested in having an incentive to prevent it.   If she wants to go, I think she should go.  If she wants to stay I want it to be because she is happy.

# 2 is important to me.  If things don't work out or I find myself shoveling coal in some hot place I don't want to have to worry about her or feel she is suffering financially because she decided to make a life with me.

The only advantage I could see in a trust would be that she would not have to worry that I would cut her out of my will but if I did and we were still married, it would not hold up in court anyway.   Regardless, it is something she will have to trust me on to some extent but that also could be covered in a pre-nup.

I guess the part I don't like about a trust is that it is not flexible so I am not sure what you meant by it would appear flexable.   Without it I am free to adjust things a little more to where I see the need.   VWRW is a very smart and wise gal and with the plans we have for her a few years down the road she has the brains to be making more money than a lot of the people here and then again she may be working part time as a cashier in a convenience store.  Without a trust if she is having a hard time figuring out how to spend all the money she is making I can go one way and if she is not achieving what she is capable of then I can say to myself, hey, I had better figure on doing a little more for her.

My other thing is there is still a lot of uncertainty about how I want to deal with a lot of the issues and I don't think when there is uncertainty it is time to do something that is irrevocable.   This is more personal and more complicated than I would want to get into here and it serves no purpose in anything that would be helpful to anyone else on RWD.

So perhaps you could tell me why a trust would offer an advantage over the prenup and will.  I am still a little unclear on that aspect of it?

[DKMM]

TG,

First of all, I am not a lawyer so I'm not giving bona fide legal advice.  A revocable one can become irrevocable upon death, which is more along the lines of what I'm thinking.  Irrevocable would be that inflexible type that you described but could be useful for balancing out a prenup (but that depends on your situation).

I should have clarified the #1, what I meant was you want to take away the incentive to divorce.

A trust could be set up to pay her upon death and also something that you can't ever take back.  It could also just pay her the earnings and have the principal go to your heirs (this keeps kids from resenting their step mom and also a tool for avoiding lawsuits between them).

Again, I'm saying use a trust WITH a prenup to balance it out.  Not saying use it in place of a prenup, that makes no sense unless you are out to prove your generosity.

If I missed something I'm sorry but my brain is only half working right now.  7 more weeks of hellish work then finally I get on that plane back to Rodina...