The following article first appeared on City National Bank, News & Insights on September 1, 2017.
You think you’ve done everything right: Built your career, worked hard and accumulated substantial wealth. When you got married, you and your spouse did the responsible thing and signed a prenuptial agreement.
But what many people find out — sometimes too late — is that not every prenup is bulletproof. While celebrities and ultra-high-net-worth individuals fall into a financial hole after their marriages end, many people are surprised to find the legal protections they put in place may not hold up once they get divorced.
While no soon-to-be spouse wants to plan for a marriage to collapse, the fact is, divorce happens. Making sure your prenup is right for you, and drawn up correctly, can help protect your wealth.
Why Use a Prenup?
A good prenuptial agreement can help protect your assets and protect you from debts incurred by your former spouse before marriage.
These agreements can also protect a spouse’s rights to wealth built during the course of the marriage, as well as protect and provide for children from previous marriages or future marriages. They can also cover “legacy assets” that have been in one spouse’s family for generations.
Why Problems Arise
Problems with prenuptial agreements arise when those agreements don’t follow the formalities required by law to ensure their validity. For example, if the agreement was entered into under duress: If one party presented the agreement and demanded that the other party sign it close to the date of the wedding, the court may interpret that as evidence of duress or a one-sided agreement.
A prenup could also be ruled invalid if it doesn’t fully reveal all of a person’s assets or property, so the spouse doesn’t have a full picture of the true financial assets or holdings. The agreement could also be ruled invalid if both people don’t sign or notarize it, or if they don’t have their own independent legal representation.
How to Make It Stick
There is no such thing as a totally bulletproof agreement, but there are steps you can take to help ensure your prenup will stand up.
1. Openly discuss financial expectations and assumptions.
Sit down with your soon-to-be spouse and your legal counsel and discuss assets candidly.
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Which assets will be held as separate property, and which assets will be treated as marital property, and why?
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Fully disclose each party’s assets and debts.
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Decide how property will be purchased and titled during marriage. Are you willing to commingle marital funds to purchase assets?
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How will joint property be divided in case of divorce?
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How will household expenses be paid?
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How will you deal with personal debts incurred before the marriage?
2. Consider creating a trust.
Even if you don’t create a legal prenup, you can create a trust with a divorce clause that will split into two separate trusts to effectively split assets between ex-spouses.
Other trust structures are triggered if one spouse dies. They can be set up to provide a surviving spouse with income for his or her lifetime, and then ensure that the remaining assets go to the first spouse’s children.
“These trusts are technically not prenuptial tools, but they can ensure that the assets remain in the original family following the death of the first spouse,” Walker said. “If the surviving spouse remarries, it prevents the surviving spouse from distributing assets to his or her new spouse and family.”
3. Design an explicit plan.
Your plan should preserve wealth, protect assets, and clarify the financial rights of both spouses. It should establish and clarify the couple’s financial relationship and intentions regarding separate property, inheritances and property acquired during marriage. It should also delineate how assets will be divided, whether and how spousal support will be paid and how future earnings will be handled. This plan should explain the process and treatment of specific assets such as those set aside for children or assets that have been in the family for generations.
This article is intended as general information only and is not to be relied upon as constituting legal, financial or other professional advice. A professional advisor should be consulted regarding your specific situation. Information presented is believed to be factual and up-to-date but we do not guarantee its accuracy and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. All expressions of opinion reflect the judgment of the authors as of the date of publication and are subject to change. No endorsement of any third parties or their advice, opinions, information, products or services is expressly given or implied by Royal Bank of Canada or any of its affiliates.
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