Who Needs Prenups?
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Madonna and Guy Ritchie are talking divorce, says AOL Money & Finance.
By the way, is it just me, or does she remind anyone else of that old famous saucy grande dame puppet Madame?
Same high cheek bones, prominent chin, and thin lips. Don’t get me wrong, I love Madonna and her new look. And, I’ve always envied her body, even when she had a pooch, as in her 1983 “Holiday” performance at the Hacienda Club in the U.K. Finally, I’ve also always loved Madame! So, that was in no way meant as an insult. Madame is, after all, a caricature; and, she could be a very cute caricature of Madonna’s new face (except for the big nose and cleft chin).
Madonna, 26, 35 (NY Knicks game), and 50. Madame, ageless.
NO PRENUP? MESSY BREAKUP!
Back to the main point of this article. Madonna, the Material Girl, the highest paid female entertainer in the world—and arguably the savviest!—shockingly did not protect her hard-earned assets with a simple prenuptial agreement. Now, it looks like she might have to go through the same kind of vicious battles that Paul McCartney just went through with his ex-love-of-his-life, Heather Mills, leaving him $48.7 million poorer, just because he also didn’t bother with a prenup.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, did have a prenup. And, though Ivana fought with a busload of lawyers to break it, she did not succeed. They eventually came to a mutually acceptable settlement and have since been quite amicable toward each other, even attending each other’s weddings to their current spouses.
WHY EVERYONE NEEDS A PRENUP
A. 50% DIVORCE RATE AND NO. 1 REASON IS MONEY
You might be thinking, “But, I don’t have millions of dollars! I don’t even have a thousand dollars! Why do I need a prenup? Besides, if I marry, it’ll be for good, and we’ll never divorce.” Suze Orman has the answer as to why you need a prenup even if you don’t have any money—and a couple of important things to say about your conviction that you’ll never divorce. In her DVD The Courage To Be Rich
B. YOUR EX’S DEBTS BECOME YOUR DEBTS
Suze Orman gives the very common example of couples who get married and decide to handle their separate income and expenses in this typical manner: (1) one account for their joint contributions and expenses; (2) a second account for one of the spouse’s private spending; and (3) a third account for the other spouse’s private spending. Often, in these situations, each spouse also gets a separate, individual credit card in their own name for their own spending. So far, so good. Then, they divorce. After the divorce, one spouse gets a phone call advising him/her that his/her spouse has tons of debt on that “separate, individual” credit card but has no money to pay it, so now they’re coming after the other spouse because he/she is personally responsible. Oh, yeah! This happens all the time!
HOW TO MAKE YOUR PRENUP STICK
To make your prenup more likely to hold up in court, you need to do 3 things:
1. Different but Equal Representation: Make sure each side is represented by their own lawyer. This way the other side can’t argue that they didn’t know what they were signing, what rights they were giving up, or that the single lawyer who drafted the prenup contract actually favored one spouse over the other.
2. Avoid Any Hint of Duress: Don’t whip out the prenup for the other person to sign on the way to the wedding because that’ll just get it voided on the grounds of duress. In fact, don’t have anyone sign it under any conditions that might appear as though they were pressured into it. The best way to avoid this is to retain separate lawyers to draft it, then for both parties to sign it long before the wedding (premarital/prenuptial agreement) or shortly afterwards (antenuptial agreement).
3. Overstate Your Assets: Don’t hide or forget anything when you list your assets on the prenup. If anything, overstate them! Avoid the risk that your greed, a secret, or an honest oversight on your part might undo all the hard work and protection of the prenup. If the judge thinks you were trying to defraud your spouse, then the whole prenup contract might be thrown out of court as invalid.
CONCLUSION
So, who needs prenups? We all do! And, when do we need to start talking about them? As soon as we begin talking about getting legally bound together in marriage. Why so early? Because, as Suze Orman points out, the best chance you have of being fair to each other is when you are still in love enough to consider entering the legal ties that bind the two of you together in unpredictably far-reaching ways.
Most of all, it’s the security and peace of mind that not only you are taken care of, but that you have taken care of your loved one, too—come what may! If you don’t want to give that to your loved one, then there’s something just not right there. I’m not saying there’s something wrong, exactly; but, something’s just not right. Do right by yourself. Do right by the ones you love. Be awesome! Be your own hero!
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[For “The Courage to Be Rich,” click here.]
[For “100 Money Quotes,” click here.]
[For “200 Rich Quotes,” click here.]
[For “200 Poor Quotes,” click here.]
[For “100 Love and Marriage Quotes,” click here.]
[For “100 Interesting Quotes by Women,” click here.]
[For all posts about different QUOTES, click here.]
[For “100 Differences between Men and Women,” click here.]
[For “Greed v. Desire,” click here.]
[For “Millionaires v. Billionaires,” click here.]
[For “How to Be a Billionaire in 10 Steps,” click here.]
July 11th, 2008 at 7:33 am
You make some great points, but I’m not convinced that absolutely everyone needs a prenup. I think it’s more of a “do what’s right for you” situation. Still, I like the overall angle that you took, that it’s not necessarily about pessimism and greed, but about protecting each other.
July 11th, 2008 at 9:11 am
Hi Sara! Thanks for your comment! Very well put! People have the misconception that people who get prenups are pessimistic or greedy. But, the truth is 50/50 odds of marital dissolution is not pessimism — it’s reality. And, to ignore that fact is to be foolishly and dangerously naive. Secondly, the point about greed, if you don’t have a prenup/antenup and you do get a divorce, that divorce will most definitely be about greed — and revenge, and power plays — and many more things that I honestly believe that all of us would rather avoiding exhibiting if we could (but that very few of us could when and if the love of our lives and the father/mother of our kids cheats on us with the 18-year-old nanny/secretary/fill-in-the-blank).
Asking for a prenup up front — and getting fair terms for whatever may happen — protects us not only from our loved one’s wrath in the future, but from our OWN. And, such nasty emotions and behaviors can be aroused even without marital bed infidelities (think Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger — no prenup and years of one of the nastiest divorce battles in Hollywood!). Not that a prenup (or antenup as Charlie Sheen and Denise Richardson had) can save anyone from turning their divorce into a media circus if they are hell-bent on doing so; but, it helped Charlie and Denise move on with their lives much more quickly than Alec and Kim.
I’m sure Paul McCartney and Madonna both thought that prenups were “not right for them,” but they certainly lived to regret it — 4 years later for him and 8 years later for her. When people say “it’s not for me,” they are secretly hoping against hope that (1) they won’t be in the 50% that gets divorced and (2) if they are, both they AND their spouse will be fair during the divorce proceedings. Let me put it this way, if you had a baby, would you be so optimistic about your baby’s health that you wouldn’t get him/her immunized with the full barrage of shots that most doctors recommend? They cause the baby a lot of discomfort when they are administered, but loving parents know the potential alternatives are a thousand times worse. The same is true of prenups/antenups and the potential for nasty divorces.