New York City Business Law Blog

A prenuptial agreement, as important as it is, often becomes something that is all too easy to put off. Maybe you want to ask your soon-to-be-spouse for one, but you're worried about the way they'll react. Therefore, you keep delaying. Finally, when the marriage is a week away and you can't put it off any longer, you bring it up.

You may already have made sure that the prenup will not hold up in court. That's the problem with the last-minute prenup. It's too close to the wedding, and that can force your partner's hand. That's a type of duress, and your spouse can argue as such in court if you get divorced.

When people lose their jobs, they sometimes use the terms "fired" and "laid off" interchangeably as if they mean the same thing. The person is just saying that they are not employed any longer.

That sentiment may make sense on a basic level. They did lose their job. However, it is important to know that these terms are not the same. They mean very different things, and exactly what happened can have a big impact on what you do after you lose your job.

One of the arguments people use against prenuptial agreements is that they think the document will make them more likely to end their marriage. After all, they're already thinking about divorce and planning for it before they're even married. Isn't that a defeatist attitude? Won't the prenup also make it easier to get divorced, so they'll be quicker to pick divorce if things get tough in the marriage?

While these things may be true in specific situations, there is generally no correlation between having a prenup and having higher odds of divorce. In one poll, the vast majority of experts (86%) claimed that signing one had "no predictable impact" at all.

More than likely, you had a good reason why you and your future former spouse decided to end your marriage. Perhaps your relationship degraded to the point where you can't even be in the same room together without arguing. Even though you may mourn the loss of what you once had, you may be excited to begin the next phase of your life without your ex-spouse.

The one thing keeping you from enjoying life without your ex is your children. Regardless of the state of your relationship, you still need to deal with your ex-spouse because of them. When you hear about people co-parenting, you probably cringe. The last thing you can envision is having to spend time with the other parent, even if it is for the sake of the children.