Premarital agreements are not exclusive to just high net worth couples. Texans with modest assets may have good reasons to create financial agreements before they get married. Prenuptial agreements can be valuable to those who own a business with other people, who have children from a previous marriage or who expect to inherit a large amount of money in the future.
A prenuptial agreement is a document that states how a couple’s assets should be divided in the event of separation or divorce. A prenup may also include instructions about how assets should be disbursed after a party dies. In a typical prenup, parties keep all of the assets that they acquired before they were married, and the agreement often contains a mechanism for determining the division of assets that were acquired after the date of marriage.
Couples usually sign a prenup when one earns a lot more money than the other. The prenup will usually include instructions about how alimony will be paid. In some cases, a prenup may explicitly state that there will be no alimony payments after a divorce.
A prenuptial agreement ensures that a judge will not be the main decision-maker in the event of a divorce, separation or death. A couple that wants to secure their future may want to talk to their respective family law attorneys about drafting a prenuptial agreement. However, there is no guarantee that it will be upheld if challenged at a later date. These documents are contracts, and a court may declare it void if it found that one of the parties was forced to sign it under duress, for example.