Pre-Marital Planning and Agreements, Around the World

are discussed, briefly, by the BBC.   Thanks, and a tip of the Panama fedora  (it's 65 in Los Angeles) to Randy Kessler and Jeremy Morley, quoted in the article.

4000 Answers

I just answered my four thousandth question on Avvo.  Think I'll rest.

Looks Like A Romantic Summer!

Three years after my post noting that boomers and post-boomers seem to be much more comfortable with the idea of "tailoring" their marriage by way of a pre-marital agreement, the economy is slowly emerging from the doldrums, same-sex marriages are happening again in California, and, based on the number of calls I'm getting about relationship planning and pre-nups, Cupid is working overtime.

"That Magic Moment", Revisited (A Belated Valentine's Day Post)

       While the legal wrangling over same-sex marriage continues apace (see my next post) as the economy looks like it may be improving, the divorce rate seems to be edging up again. 

  

            ....and why is this seemingly depressing thought in a Valentine's Day post?  

         Because I really want starry-eyed folks  (music swells, here, please)  to have successful marriages.  How to come as close as possible to guaranteeing it?  Talk to each other BEFORE the deal is struck.  If you and that special someone need to change the "marriage contract" to meet YOUR needs and expectations, then, whether you're eighteen or eighty*,  the time for that conversation is BEFORE you "sign on the dotted line"**. 

* Belated tip of the purple and gold,  Fat Tuesday fedora  (from Meyer The Hatter) to Randy Kessler for the pointers.

**those who've followed this space for a while know that my paternal grandfather remarried at 75, after being widowed, and was happily married on the day he died; my father remarried at 79 after my mom died, and was happily married until he passed last year.

Back to Hollywood

Kim K's marriage is broken, after seventy-two days; presumably she listened to her own advice on the subject of prenuptial agreements.

Back In The Saddle Again

After a hiatus, I'm accumulated enough stuff so that I feel obliged to get some posts up.

Within a week after the McCourts thought they'd worked an over-all settlement, MLB has said "Not so fast..."

...and this just in:

"Khloe Kardashian thinks 'everybody needs a prenup.' In an interview ... ... the 26-year-old defended her recently engaged sister Kim's shocking premarital agreement. 'We have a prenup,' she said, standing alongside hubby Lamar Odom. 'Do you know what kind of day and age this is? Everybody needs a prenup. I don't care if you make five dollars or five million dollars, you're protecting yourself… People are crazy, you never know.'."

Prenups On The Way Up For Boomers

...or so says the Wall Street Journal.

Possible explanations (none exclusive, and none clearly verifiable) include:

that boomers divorce more frequently, and live longer, than their parents, and thus have a higher rate of re-marriage;

or that our lives are simply overwhelmed by fear of litigation; or

that the financial crisis has simply taken some of the romance out of romance.

. . . and apparently the Australians, who've only had pre-marital agreements recognized for about the last decade, are way ahead of the U.S., with a recent report saying that ten percent of couples are using them.

Pre-Nups: "Not Romantic", but more romantic than divorce!

On the upswing, says USA Today.

McCourts: Minding (And Dividing) The Family Store

Jamie McCourt has now filed her action for dissolution, along with a request for somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000 per month in spousal support (depending on whether she immediately gets back all her perks of being a Dodgers co-owner) and about two and a half million dollars in attorney fees and litigation costs.

What's interesting about this case, beyond the usual tabloid stuff, is that it involves almost all of the issues any married couple in business together faces when the marriage goes bad.

The questions aren't that different from those which have to be answered if the McCourts together had purchased and operated, let's say, a sandwich franchise, except that there's a much longer string of zeros after all the numbers, which makes it worthwhile to take a long hard look at the issues, rather than just sort of "washing them out". If either of them wants to air the dirt, as it appears that both may be in the process of doing, their employees, and their business competitors, are of course watching from the sidelines.

To the extent that either airs dirt, and the business suffers, there then will arise the equally interesting question of who it is (to mix metaphors) who killed the golden-egg-laying goose. Since California spouses have an ongoing fiduciary duty to their spouses, and to the community, NOT to kill the golden goose, if each takes a drumstick and pulls hard, it'll take a lot of sorting out to find the cause of goosey's death.

Kim Kardashian Agrees With Me: Get a Pre-marital Agreement!

I just couldn't resist writing the headline. Here's the story.

We're saying the same thing; we're just saying it differently

My learned colleague Mark Chinn** from Jackson, MS, posted a deliberately provocative title to his blog this week: said Mark: "If you get a prenuptial agreement in the days before the marriage, don’t sign it!"

My thought was: "If your fiance hands you a prenuptial agreement at the church door, stop the music, and postpone the wedding! You've just learned something very valuable about your fiance, before you've married him!"

Mark's point, as we kicked it around on Facebook afterwards, was: "If you are going to sign a life time contract, you better have counsel and some time to think about it."

Mine was: "That INCLUDES that big contract you sign on when you say "I do!"




** Mark's a great guy, and a wonderful lawyer, but he's about as different from me as someone who would fit my superficial police description (6'2"+; 200 lb. + white male, brown hair, glasses, over 40, lawyer, married, parent) could be: he's perpetually cheerful when I'm saturnine; he's relaxed and Southern and small-towny where I'm a perpetual pent-up Northern cosmopole, etc.

A Cup of Coffee On The Way, Pt. II: Why Is Getting Married Easier Than Joining a Health Club?

When I was younger, and even more cynical, I once joked that the best way to reduce the divorce rate was to make it a lot more difficult to get married.

It's not as funny as I used to think it was.

When you buy a house, or even a car, you get a stack of many pages full of tiny type, which you are expected to read. Some really important paragraphs are in BOLD TYPE, with lines for you to sign or initial, confirming that the BOLD TYPE got your attention, and that you at least read those parts, and that you say that you understand them. Then, if you change your mind within a day or so, within some limits, you can back out. Heck, in California, if you just want to join a gym, you have to go through a similar ritual*.

If you want to get married, on the other hand, you pays your money, and you gets your license. There's a contract there, all right,** it's just that nobody really demands that you read it, let alone that you have any idea what it says before you sign on for it.

I've spent 29 years wrestling with what the terms of that contract really are, and I've got sort of a handle on it, says the State Bar*** . I used to keep the terms of that contract in a shelf-full of books, which had to be updated annually; now I keep it on my computer, where it occupies a swath of virtual space. Most of those young folks lining up at ring stores in the Jewelry District haven't a clue what's in there.

Next topic up: If you want the "off-the-rack" marriage contract, we've made it fast, cheap, and easy; if you want to think about, and change, what you're signing on for, even if you and your spouse-to-be agree, it's expensive, complicated and takes at least a week.

Why would we discourage people from looking before leaping?


* California law regarding this implies that it came to the attention of our Legislature that miscreants were going out and signing up, say, 90-year-old ladies to expensive "lifetime" installment contracts for gym or "dance studio" memberships, and swindling the heck out of them; thus there are now fairly comprehensive rules for what you have to read, before you can get those mambo lessons.
**Says so, right there in California Family Code 300: " Marriage is a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman. . .". Don't send me a comment about the validity of those last five words; I'll be coming around to THAT debate presently.
*** "Family Law Certified Specialist, State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization"