Would you get a prenup?

[sausagedoggie]

In a difficult situation with DP and wondering what others would do:

Me: 35, no kids, large extended family, £2m of assets, well off parents.
Him: 30, no kids, small extended family, no assets, well off parents.

We both want kids in the very near future and the plan is I go PT during child years.

Would you insist on a prenup?

DH and I have a pre nup and we are the opposite way around - he has family money, I didn't have a bean.

While we both know it was sensible to have in place, it was DH who felt most uncomfortable in all of the conversations surrounding the details.
I just saw it as a practicality and had a great solicitor to bring my points to the table.

We actually need to update ours this year and we agreed easily on the details to be amended

I wouldn't stay with someone who would want me to sign a prenup before marriage. It goes against the whole point of marriage and becoming a joint unit.

True love and commitment will always involve potential risk. What you want is a casual non-commital set up where you can bolt easily. Unfair to bring children into this if you already don't want to commit before things have even begun

I am in similar financial position. I have been married once, with a pre-nuptial agreement. We divorced amicably. It is important that you can show that your spouse obtained independent legal advice prior to signing it. It is also important that it is not signed very soon to any wedding as it could be stated to be undertaken under duress. Like others have said, it is sometimes taken into consideration at the time of a divorce, and one factor is the length of the marriage. However, if the poorer spouse has a marked change of circumstances (say they cannot work anymore) then it can be difficult to enforce, and it also doesn't cover assets improved or bought during the marriage. The judge said I was being 'unfair' to my ex-husband in asking him to sign an order stating he would never make a claim from me after we divorced. He had consented to this, but the judge thought he had lost his mind. However, it turned out ok for me. I would never marry anyone else, given current assets. My solicitor did say a pre-nuptial is a deterrent sometimes against long divorce battles. Take very good advice before you get married.

@WordleDordle

Would people advise the same if the genders were reversed?

I don't think op should marry him at all.

But the advice would depend on the situation.

If the one with all the assets expects the other to reduce their earning potential by being a sahp or working part time, I think the right thing is to be married.

If both will be working, then I would advise not to get married. Though have a plan incase the child needs extra care.

As op hasn't said her dp is going to be a sahp, I am guessing that's not their plans. If her partner is going to work part time or be a sahp, then they should marry and the prenuptial should have lots of provision protecting him.

@sausagedoggie no I wouldn’t sign a prenup because in your shoes I wouldn’t marry.

Despite the comments on here prenups are not iron clad. The longer the marriage/ joint children / life complications, the higher likelihood there is of a prenup not holding as much weight in the event of a divorce. They do not yet (in England certainly) hold the ironclad guarantees that they do in certain states in the US.

The only caveat to the above being if you are happy with what you have now being split 50/50 in the event of divorce.

And yes my advice would be identical if the OP was a man.

Two million and you are asking financial advice on MN 🙄

^ Agree!! Surely OP can afford a decent solicitor for proper legal advice!

But if I had £2 million I personally wouldn't get married. Maybe I'd do a genuine "commitment ceremony" in the Carribean or something similar .

@OhNoWhatYouGonnaDo

I think my husband would have liked a prenup in an ideal world. Not much in his own name, but his family are very wealthy. When he divorced his ex she ended up with about £450k in assets, the majority of which (about £300k of that) came from his family money rather than marital income/money. But I had been very clear beforehand that I would not agree to marry if a prenup was a prerequisite, and ultimately DH decided he would rather marry me without a prenup than insist on a prenup and lose me. In fairness, we both do the same job and have similar earning potential, and we both work part-time around our children, so we've agreed informally that if we were to split we would try to keep things fairly equal.

I felt that a prenup just wasn't compatible with what I wanted my marriage to be about. I didn't want to enter into it with an eye already on how we could end it.

Which is my long-winded way of saying, if you insist on a prenup, your partner may decide he doesn't want to get married. If that happens, you will need to decide what is more important to you - the marriage, or the prenup.

If you do marry and have children together, try to ensure you both work equally if you can - if you want a parent to be at home with your child at all times, you can achieve that by both going part-time at opposite ends of the week, rather than one parent working full-time and the other being a SAHP.

Yes but you have equal status so there would be no point for you ! This is a very different scenario.

Civil partnership? don't know the legals ins and outs of that.

I would definitely not get married if were in your shoes.

@LikeDiamonds

Civil partnership? don't know the legals ins and outs of that.

Rules for splitting assets on dissolution of civil partnerships are identical to the rules for divorce after marriage in England and Wales.

I mean, DH has a lot of family money and I don't - he will inherit at least £1 million when his parents die. I think he would have preferred a prenup!