Prenup before K1 Visa marriage?

[Bug&Bug 147]

As a minimum, you should know the marriage conditions of your state. Marriage is a business contract and it comes with default dissolution clauses you are signing up for. 

 

Those clauses might put one of you or both in a bad situation you might want to remedy with a prenup. Or they might be fine.

 

 

[Nitas_man 3,100]

2 hours ago, Buckaroo said:

You should ask an attorney this question if you have substantial assets. I asked mine and it turns out that in my state (TX), your assets/property acquired before the marriage remain yours in the event of divorce, but any appreciation of those assets can be considered community property.

Correct.  

[Duke & Marie 1,389]

57 minutes ago, Bug&Bug said:

As a minimum, you should know the marriage conditions of your state. Marriage is a business contract and it comes with default dissolution clauses you are signing up for. 

 

Those clauses might put one of you or both in a bad situation you might want to remedy with a prenup. Or they might be fine.

 

 

I think there are some down sides when relying on state laws and state marriage clauses.... it could roll over into various country laws too...  just because you got married in the US doesn’t mean you can’t file for divorce back in your home country.... are country divorce and settlement laws obligated to comply with US state laws? I’m not sure they are, I think they’d be more inclined to do what’s fair and not necessarily think it ok for one to keep more than the other if you both shared the home for years.. heck I know back home you can lose half of everything after just 3 months of de facto let alone marriage.. 

[SalishSea 17,969]

4 hours ago, JeanneAdil said:

it does but i always wondered why marry if you are already thinking of what happens when we divorce.  

Makes sense in the case of people coming to a marriage with very unequal assets/earnings/children etc.

 

And even in community property states, not all assets are subject to that.

[EricLT 29]

I'm curious to how you will ask your finace to sign it. 

[mushroomspore 3,044]

5 hours ago, JeanneAdil said:

it does but i always wondered why marry if you are already thinking of what happens when we divorce.  

Because nobody can predict life. My husband and I considered it but we're not wealthy at all or anything like that, so we decided against it. It makes sense to me to have a pre-nup if you and/or your spouse are wealthy and have many assets. Might as well cover your ###. People often also turn extremely nasty when/if a marriage dissolves, even if they seem or seemed like they are not capable of that. Again, you can't predict life.

[chi6488 94]

I had one executed before marriage

[JonSeattle 202]

38 minutes ago, EricLT said:

I'm curious to how you will ask your finace to sign it. 

"Hey <nickname>, I would feel less stressed out if we signed a pre-nup. Is that OK with you?"

 

[Mike E 11,741]

We signed one.  
 

My lawyer didn’t tell me that her signing under “duress” would make the contract unenforceable.  I’d ignore that legal wisdom from non lawyers on this thread and ask your own lawyer.  
 

I’ve no idea what her lawyer told her, and a gentleman never asks such a question.  

 

To those saying “in our state, assets before the marriage are excluded from divorce” well what if you change states? 

 

Get one.  It doesn’t hurt.  It might help.  
 

[Mike E 11,741]

1 hour ago, EricLT said:

I'm curious to how you will ask your finace to sign it. 

“Hi darling, you know all that alimony I pay my ex wife and how you commented how unfair that was?”

[laylalex 7,293]

I've signed a prenup in both of my marriages. My ex and I were both against doing one, but our fathers both wore us down. There was a large disparity between what he was bringing to the marriage (significant assets in multiple countries) and what I was (student loan debt, a '97 Nissan Sentra and a laptop). When we split, the division ended up being more generous to me than if we had relied on the default division of assets. Even with the prenup, we ended up arguing it out in court for months but it would have been even longer had there been no prenup.

 

Second marriage, my husband and I agreed that we are both grown up people who can fend for ourselves perfectly well without the other's money/property if we get divorced. We have structured our prenup to reflect our choice to keep the bulk of our assets and income we acquire during the marriage separate. We can always agree to make something joint property that is separate. He also has a daughter from his first marriage and we wanted to make sure that she was protected as well, so we set up a trust for her in the US in addition to the ones she has in the UK.

 

When it comes to our estate planning, however, it looks a bit more average, with most of my money going to him (and any kids we might have) if I die first, and with me splitting his estate with his daughter (and any other kids) if he does. Massive generalization, but it doesn't look like "oh these don't look like people who love each other." We both had wretched divorces (his even worse than mine, if you look up the word "shafted" in the OED his picture is next to it) so we want a clean break if there's any break to be had.

 

It worked for us, but we have complex finances. It really is a matter of personal choice, as everyone has said, but it is far better to be prepared for the worst (as mentioned above) than caught out when you can afford it least. I don't think I could love my husband more (though I seem to every day, hmm) and we both knew a prenup was the best thing for us. 

[Boiler 45,729]

Not sure I would call a Netflix account a 'significant asset'.

[Bug&Bug 147]

6 hours ago, Duke & Marie said:

I think there are some down sides when relying on state laws and state marriage clauses.... it could roll over into various country laws too...  just because you got married in the US doesn’t mean you can’t file for divorce back in your home country.... are country divorce and settlement laws obligated to comply with US state laws? I’m not sure they are, I think they’d be more inclined to do what’s fair and not necessarily think it ok for one to keep more than the other if you both shared the home for years.. heck I know back home you can lose half of everything after just 3 months of de facto let alone marriage.. 

I have absolutely no idea how that works! Even more reason to do the research and get a prenup. But then, prenups are also done based on state laws so who knows. 

[Ontarkie 14,304]

~~Moved to Off Topics, from K1 P&P - as this is not a K1 Processing topic.~~

[TBoneTX 45,580]

Both parties should have lawyers to look over the proposed language in the prenup.

This can be challenging if the immigrant half isn't proficient in English, but it must be done.

 

Remember, too, to ensure that your estate documents drafted after marriage (certainly the Will, and possibly the statutory Power of Attorney) comport (or don't conflict) with the language in the prenup.

 

(Estate documents make excellent evidence for Removing Conditions on green cards, and they're even more important to have in "life.")

 

I'm not a lawyer.  I did speak with an estate/probate attorney on a casual basis and asked her whether she and her colleagues make the most money when people die without Wills.  She said, "Actually, we all make the most money by far when people have 'done it themselves' or used templates off the Internet."  Presented here for consideration.