Premarital Agreements.doc

Premarital Agreements
A future husband wanted to be sure that if his marriage didn't work out, he could keep his treasured ice-cream collection safely stored away in a freezer. A woman insisted on verifying who would walk the dog. One man wanted the right to get a divorce if his bride-to-be gained more than 15 pounds once she became his wife.
These are some of the crazier clauses of prenuptial agreements. But make no mistake about it, what most of them are about is money — and how financial assets will be divided up if a couple divorces. And divorce with its panying money problems mon in the United States.
Prenuptial agreements — or "prenups" — are designed to address these problems as they arise. Prenups are negotiated by lawyers for the prospective spouses, and signed before a minister binds them in marriage. They have been gaining in acceptance in the United States since the early 1980s, when more states began passing laws that affected the division of financial assets in a divorce. The laws are based either on "community property" (split evenly) or on "reasonable distribution" (whatever a judge thinks is "fair").
The prenups of the famous make the headlines: lawyers for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis contested the prenuptial agreement between her and Aristotle Onassis after his death, reportedly winning $26 million in an out-of-court settlement.
But prenuptial agreements a