What is a Prenuptial Agreement?

What is a Prenuptial Agreement?

Close-up of a mans hands signing on a document

A prenuptial agreement is a legally binding document between parties who are contemplating getting married in the near future. What it’s intended to do can be different in every case, but as a general statement, it is designed to set forth a set of rules that might be different from what the default provisions of the law would be upon divorce or separation in the future. It’s often done when one party has significantly more assets than the other. It can also be done as a way to keep family’s assets separate despite the fact that people are getting married. For example in a second marriage, the children of those parties will not benefit from the other side’s assets upon divorce in the second marriage.

Prenuptial agreements are the source of much litigation down the road when people are getting divorced. Even if there is a prenuptial agreement, one person might be asserting that as a claim in the divorce saying there should be no division of assets because the prenuptial agreement that we entered into twenty years ago says so. The person on the other side of that would probably be arguing that, for some reason, the prenuptial agreement is unenforceable or at least partially unenforceable and would probably try to attack that in the course of a divorce.

Robert Pollack is an experienced divorce and family law attorney in Long Island, New York. Contact The Pollack Law Firm, P.C., to set up a free initial consultation.

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