DP wants a prenup!

[HappyHattie]

I’ve taken legal advice so fully understand how they do/don’t work- not looking for technical advice just opinions on whether IABU??

I am 27 DP is 32 - he earns 3x my salary. (mine is respectable and I’ve just completed a masters so will increase).

DP owned his home with about £150k of equity before we met. (He paid top end of the asking price so has not gained value and may lose a bit post Brexit)

Anyway we’re financially merged- joint accounts- I’ve never held anything back from him- including my £7k of savings when I moved in. (I know I still don’t match his income but still)

He did mention getting something in writing to protect his £150k much earlier in the relationship - fine, I was happy with that- my sibling has one as he had a large inheritance- I’ve always been independent!

But now we’re actually getting married - my £7k of savings has been swallowed up, I’m not yet named on the mortgage and we’re both wanting to start a family post wedding (2-3 kids).

The plan is I’ll drop down to PT - only today whilst talking it through with a solicitor did I realise how vulnerable I’ll be leaving myself!

I don’t want to have small children and work FT (my career is demanding and DP whilst eager to help is very much consumed by his career and often works away for short periods) I work with so many women who try to juggle this and their lives look miserable! I’d rather not have children than live like that!

So this evening I’ve been really deflated- feeling like I’m getting the shit end of the stick really - I’m not after his money (not at all) but equally I don’t really want to be drafting up a 14 page prenup which even the solicitor said ‘is likely to get quite complicated’

It also seems like it’s going to escalate from ‘protecting the £150k’ to also including inheritance, pensions, earnings...etc.

I didn’t sign up for not being a ‘team’ if I wanted to build a financial future alone - I wouldn’t be getting married.

I’m probably ABU 😞 but would appreciate some opinions!

(DP is a wonderful guy - honestly 10/10 on everything else but he had a really bad experience as a teen when he lost his parent and their very recent new spouse tried to take everything- think this has made him overly cautious)

Here’s my two pence, I had a child with special needs and didn’t work for five years due to their health needs. Career crap, pension crap, pendion crap.... you can’t assume you’ll have an easy ride with children, be careful. I never imagined the emotional and financial strain having a child with special needs would be. Luckily my husband and I don’t have a prenup and we share everything

I had a friend in a kind of similar situation many years ago, she had been living with the other half for 2 years already, she left until he changed his mind - that they go into it together or not al all, he did and they are now married with 2 children ..... I would suggest ending it to test the water, then you will find out what is more important to him, the money or you in his life

Sounds like you’re planning to enter a business agreement rather than a marriage / family

Yes good point but isnt it that what it is in essence?.

Shared joint assets etc?

Say your a young man around say 30 who has done well for himself he marries has a couple of children his wife starts messing around with the local layabout she divorces him, judge says OK as you have children you have the house etc five miniutes later now ex wife has local layabout move in, ex husband is slumming it in a grotty flat.

Is that fair?.

Can you write in x before children but once you have children you are entitled to say 25% of the equity for the first and another 5% per child up to a maximum of 50% this drops by 5% per child on there 18th birthday with the last child dropping the last 25% on there 18th thus meaning you are protected whilst you are bringing up children and to help you buy a home for you and them if you need too! It might be some kind of compromise or like no claim till you’ve been married for x amount of years I would tell him how worried you are as being financially stable is so important when you do have children!

At least now you know where you stand. How long have you lived with him and have you been paying money to live there? Why have you lost £7K? I would say you are in a questionable situation even before you get married. If you decide to go down this route, you need to be clear how your finances will work and make sure you are not left holding the baby...so to speak.

I am a SAHM mum just returning to work after 12 years. My kids are 12 and 9. I couldn't leave them as little ones mostly due to poor health issues and I wanted to be with my children. I have absolutely loved it, but my husband is solid. we had twins with major health issues. We are a team. This discussion is really important. How will both of you work? How will you ensure that both of you are sharing the responsibility? It sounds like you are already taking this on to your shoulders. You don't have to. Question him on his expectations. If you take time off, will he pay you? Your retirement?

Another post mentioned buying a house together and he could put more in, but this would depend if he wants to buy in what you can afford or if you buy because of what he can afford and he gets more equity? This seems wrong also.

Perhaps not a prenup but a premarriage counselor to ask these questions and mediate an agreement..

Whatever you decide to do, be strong. Stand up for yourself. Don't let anyone make you feel like you are being unreasonable. Only you can fight for you because you will be left worse off if you don't do it. Learn from generations of women and fight for you.

His done a lot of research to protect himself ..
None too protect you or any children he might have.
Think very carefully not about yourself only but mainly the children you hope to have with him in the future.

I hope to be proved wrong but I think OP is going to accept this just so she can get out of working full-time, which is fucking ridiculous.

Anyone who asks for a prenup is saying they don’t have faith that the marriage will last.

What if you were just to say no, OP? I think the answer should guide you as to whether you actually marry this man.

If your going to have kids you will have to give up work for a bit. It’s hard going back with kids. It changes everything.
I would not sign a pre nup. Not in a million years. Your the one who is going to be doing all the hard work.

By the answer I mean his reaction of course.

Anyone who asks for a prenup is saying they don’t have faith that the marriage will last.

Average UK marridge length according the office of UK statistics last time i looked was 11.4 Years..

Haven’t read the whole post but I don’t think YABU I would explain to your DP and whatever solicitor you go to that whilst you aren’t out for his money and have no objection to him protecting his 150K if you are to have kids then naturally your earning potential will drop significantly for you to he able to do that as a couple and therefore for him to withhold earnings and savings via prenup etc is unfair. If he isn’t willing to be a team then you are right to have reservations.

As I understand it (apologies if this has already been said, I could not face reading the entire thread) a pre-nup is very compelling to a judge unless there are minor children in the picture. At that point all bets are off, at least while the children remain in full time education. So the OP is highly unlikely to be ordered out of the house, but she may well only be allowed to live there until the children finish education. A maintenance order should take into account her loss of earnings and potential future earnings if the couple have agreed she should stay home to look after the children. If the OP has no objection to his protecting his equity, and only his equity (i.e. leave inheritances, pensions etc out of the picture) then the simple way of doing that is to agree that he gets a sum equal to the equity in the matrimonial home, capped at £150k. If the equity is less, he gets less. If the equity is more they share it, in agreed proportions. If anyone's family member is concerned about a spouse getting their hands on an inheritance then they can pay their own solicitor to change their will to protect against that.

I think if he wants to secure his equity and you are happy with that then fine - but it needs to be minus your £7k savings.
I would also think about whether it should be £143k or a % - if the property market tanks and it's worth much less - he could then say £143k is 50% of the property, rather than 25%......
I would also say that in the event if DC the total house value - then becomes marital property......

Please don't have children without getting married the law in the UK offers you no protection.... I have a very dear friend left impoverished after her "common law marriage" ended after 20+ years and multiple children where she was the sahm- I really can't believe that the law is so backwards in this country - but it really is!

I brought approximately a million pound property into my relationship, this is all I have and I inherited it, I would never ever ever have even considered a pre-nup. I’m likely to get more inheritance in th next 10/20 years. I consider this to be ours and not mine. My in laws gifted my DH 10k as they’d helped his siblings out and not him and wanted to be fair. He also sees this as our money.

Your soon to be DH might bring in more bacon but staying home, working PT, raising children....it’s not a small task. It’s one of the most important jobs you can have. There’s no decent training and you’ll be shaping human beings. Surely that’s worth financial equality/sharing of assets/salaries or whatever?

If you/we/anyone splits up it’s sad and everything but surely the way to approach a marriage is that you’re not going to be splitting rather than going into it protecting yourself from a potential split? And the split would be from someone he had loved and treasured and was the mother of his children. Isn’t that worth more than a crappy pre-nup to him?

I think it’s the wrong way to start your future together and I’d tell him to shove up his bumhole. I wonder if he squeaks when he walks?

NB when I say this is ‘all’ I have, I don’t mean to sound like a twat. I mean I have no savings, no pension, no decent salary. I know the property is amazing and we’re crazy lucky.

@happyhattie Hi You are in a sticky situation. I think you need to sit down and have a talk with him about all of your worries or maybe let him read this thread. I am a mum of three young children and we decided as a team that as I earned the lesser income and I wanted to raise a family I would be a stay at home mum. My husband has never made me feel like I'm the one taking the easy option and always tells me what a great job I'm doing he is fully supportive. A year ago I had an accident and severely hurt my back. I have since been for surgery and due to nerve damage the recovery is extremely slow. My husband and I have shared all of our finances from the very beginning. I cannot imagine being in any kind of relationship where this is not the case. I never would have agreed to the kind of thing that your partner is asking you to do. The idea of marriage is to look after eachother and help each other through this life. At the moment my partner works and I don't but when I am able to I will work and he will reduce his hours and have more time to himself. Between us we are muddling through but I cannot imagine being in a situation where his was his and mine was mine or where I felt he was with holding anything from me I think it's very damaging to a trusting relationship. Also how would he be if the boot was on the other foot. Say you had 150k invested into a property and told him to sign it away and give up his job to be a stay at home parent. It doesn't bode well for the ups and downs of life if for some reason you end up becoming reliant on him as I currently am on my husband how do you know he will be there financially and emotionally? Xx

What happens if he loses his job? So he earns 3 x what you do now - if he loses his job and you end up living off your salary, how does that factor into the equation? DH was earning 3 x what I was when we married, now we're equal earners. Plus we have kids. We don't have a prenup but at the same time we don't have joint everything - we have a joint account into which we pay an equal amount each month, and separate accounts into which salaries go. If you can pay the joint amount, what you do with your own salary is your business.

Sounds like your DP might be a bit naive about what a prenup means/involves.

If he's that worried about the £150k, he can get specific financial advice which would "protect" it from you rather than going the prenup route.

I didn't have a pre-nup in place with my now ex, but you are right to be cautious of anything that doesn't take into account your contribution to the family, which is just as valuable. My ex is a selfish, self centered, abusive man who wanted his cake and eat it. I spent 10 years raising his daughter, cleaning his pants, making his dinner, cleaning his house, and I even gave up many of my rights as a British Citizen for two years in order to get him a passport, and had to sacrifice much of my career to support his. His income increased by about £40,000 over the course of the relationship. He left last year, and, true to form, he left me with nothing. He was clever enough not to have bought a house, a car, no assets...he just frittered "his" money, or hid it. To fight him will cost me tens of thousands, which I just don't have, so I am left with a daughter to raise in a dilapidated house (he wanted the cheapest he could get), the career I had is gone, and he has walked away with money, a British passport, and zero responsibilities because he was also considered a danger to our child. I am not saying your DP will be anywhere near the level of scum my ex is, but, if I could go back in time, I would get over my concerns about being a "kept woman" and insist on a fair split of income. Now, it is even considered a form of domestic abuse for one partner to keep all the money whilst the other has nothing, so please don't allow yourself and, more importantly, your future children to have anything but the lives you deserve. Your DP may end up doing the work that gets paid, but you will be the support that enables that. Your contribution to the team will be 24/7 hard work, so do not downplay your part. Please get a fair agreement in place, not one that is biased towards him.

My friend ( we will call her Wendy ) married a man and had the exact same plan as yourself. Get married live in the house he owned and have 2-3 children. He had around 80k equity and a large mourgage. They were very happy, had a solid relationship and both extremely committed to a future together.
Before the wedding was booked he asked for a pre-nup protecting the 80k so should anything happen he would keep the money.
She agreed and signed one but it did escalate to pensions, earning ect.
He and Wendy married and had to children in 5 years. When the children were 4 and 6 the marriage fell apart, he moved out after an affair with a women he worked with and Wendy couldn’t afford the mourage so moved into a flat with the kids. He sold up and moved to the other end of the country. It was only in court that Wendy found out prenuptial agreements aren’t recognosed as legally binding in ENGLAND and even though the judge did agree to see it, it made no difference. She was awarded half of everything.

Wendy is my sister and she would tell you be smart! A marriage is built on trust and a prenuptial agreement is not trust it’s insurance on your own marriage not working

Explain to him you don’t want a prenuptial agreement - you will be very vulnerable should the marriage not work and you now have no savings.

If he wants to marry you and loves you he will understand

Well, the big question is: do you trust him? Because it is certain there is a lack of trust between the two of you.
He either doesn't trust you or doesn't trust himself.
Ask yourself this question: if you refused point blank to sign a prenuptial, do you think you will still get married/be in a relationship even?
Answer that question honestly and you will probably find that the last thing you should be doing is being with this man.

Do not sign a prenup. I repeat do not sign a prenup.

And ALWAYS have your own savings.

What does his will say? If something happened to him you shouldn't have to worry about selling the house too

I could be wrong and sorry if this has already been said but my understanding was/is that what you into a marriage with is protected from the pot isn’t it ?

I would not sign a pre-nup, if you have children and you work part time, you are making an economic contribution to the household and will be personally disadvantaged in your lower salary and that will feed into a significantly lower pension in your later years. That is why assets should be shared and from this point, you jointly manage finances together.

I think your solicitor is right that you are in a very vulnerable position and effectively are sacrificing your earnings potential and own financial resilience for the sake of your children (not unreasonable) but in return should expect this to be recognised by your partner. You will lose out on way more than £150k in lost earnings/pensions and pension growth over that period. This is an area i work in and the typical loss on pensions alone from working part time for 12 years in your 30s is a loss of around a 1/3rd of your pension fund PLUS you need to add the impact of your lost earnings being part time.