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A Prenup Is the Latest Must-Have for Tech Startup Founders in Love
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoMakes sense, gold-digging is an equal opportunity employer.
- drblast 7y agoThe simplest way to do this is to not get married. Unless one party is truly in it for the money, there is very little advantage to it other than the social acceptance that comes from being married which is vanishing anyway. Legal marriage is a lifetime obligation where the terms aren't decided until after you sign. It's anachronistic and ridiculous. You wouldn't sign a job contract where if you got fired or quit you would face unspecified financial and personal penalties, but for some reason everyone wants to do that despite a 50% divorce rate. Insanity.
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoLegal marriage is a partnership. Marriage has other connotations from a social and religious sense. But business is business. You can’t afford to have a spouse who knows nothing about the business end up taking over the reins and making decisions that affect the business.
- unilynx 7y agoYou can split ownership and control. You should have arrangements in advance in the worst case (*), especially if your business employs others (where the worst case is probably being in an 'alive but not being able to make decisions' state, which can freeze all decision power and financial control)
- maxaf 7y ago> Unless one party is truly in it for the money, there is very little advantage to it other than the social acceptance that comes from being married which is vanishing anyway. There are other tangible advantages that you’re overlooking. Immigration and medical proxy are two that come to mind. I also find it convenient that my wife cannot be compelled to testify against me, or I against her.
- arcticfox 7y agoIt's a fascinating choice of words that you find it "convenient" that your spouse can't be forced to testify against you. That benefit has literally never crossed my mind, much less been convenient...
- navigatesol 7y agoYou're responsible to your partner, regarding acquired assets, whether you are legally married or common law.
- newnewpdro 7y agoMost states do not recognize common law marriage. And you can play it safe by regularly declaring you are not married in front of witnesses as a couple.
- magicalhippo 7y agoHere in Norway there are some significant legal benefits from being married. Things like special beneficial tax rules and inheritance.
- ImprovedSilence 7y agoUnless you want to have (or end up having) kids. That’s a whole different ballgame of long term shared responsibility, financially or otherwise, and it absolutely makes sense to have a legal commitment. If there is no plan for offspring, I 100% agree with your sentiment.
- w0mbat 7y agoRight. For example I have useful dual citizenship, which I can't pass on to my daughter because I'm not married to her mother. The rules on this vary according to the countries involved.
- dudul 7y agoCurious to know which citizenship that would be. My kids automatically got my citizenship just because I'm their dad, nothing to do with me being married to their mom or not.
- nostrademons 7y ago> Legal marriage is a lifetime obligation where the terms aren't decided until after you sign. That's part of the point - customary marriage vows are usually something like "to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, to love you and honour you until death do us part". There's a recognition there that life is uncertain and you can't predict exactly what the terms will be for the remainder of your life. But like most contracts, marriage is an exercise in giving up freedom to build trust - it's a way of aligning incentives so that two people can each know that the other has their back, even when they don't know exactly what that means. If you're not interested in making that contract or don't feel you could possibly be ready for it, then by all means, don't get married. It's not for everyone. But there's stuff you miss out on with that choice too.
- nordsieck 7y ago> it's a way of aligning incentives so that two people can each know that the other has their back But it doesn't align incentives. Instead, it creates unaligned incentives. In most relationships, one person is more of a spender and one person is more of a saver. Marriage is one big F-U to the saver. As far as I can tell, the real reasons to get married are the medical decision making and visitation rights. That's about it.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago> As far as I can tell, the real reasons to get married are the medical decision making and visitation rights. That's about it. Perhaps there is something more to an arrangement developed all over the world spanning a variety of cultures. Yes, one aspect of marriage is the business partnership. But there are other aspects to a marriage relationship that can’t be codified in law. Maybe it’s not as necessary with women now having just as much economic power as men.
- nordsieck 7y ago> Perhaps there is something more to an arrangement developed all over the world spanning a variety of cultures. Yes, one aspect of marriage is the business partnership. But there are other aspects to a marriage relationship that can’t be codified in law. I have nothing against the cultural institution of marriage. It's probably a good idea for most people. However, most people are unwilling to participate in the cultural institution of marriage without also having a legal marriage. At this point in the US, the laws surrounding marriage and the cultural institution have almost nothing to do with each other. For example, almost all of the laws around the sexual aspects of marriage: for cause divorce, alienation of affections, etc. are gone in most places. So when people are evaluating marriage, the most important thing to evaluate is the law, because that's what affects people lives the most.
- yodsanklai 7y agoI agree, it seems insane, yet people do get married, sometimes several times. Even the super rich apparently... I really wonder what goes through their head. I think it shows how social pressure and traditions are very powerful forces. That, and an incapacity to project themselves in the future. Humans are optimistic by nature. If we weren't, we'd be constantly anxious about getting old, declining, dying...
- ryanwaggoner 7y agoOr maybe they just have different values from you?
- monocasa 7y agoEh, that's who we thought until I was unconscious from a ski accident, and my gf (now wife) wasn't allowed access.
- epicureanideal 7y agoSounds like you need to draft some kind of situational power of attorney document. Much safer than a marriage.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- falcolas 7y agoMarried couples also have legal and implied rights that non-married partners do not have, especially if/when one of the people is seriously injured. There can also be financial benefits for taxes, especially if you have dependents. If my partner is in the ICU and we're married, I can sit with them and have a say in the care they receive. If we're not married, I often can't sit with them, nor can I get most details about how they're actually doing (HIPPA laws; you can get around this if you put waivers in place before needed), nor have any influence on their care.
- joeblow9999 7y agoyou can set up power of attorney for your partner
- bradstewart 7y agoThe social acceptance aspect is vanishing in some ways, but certainly not in all. That can be a huge benefit to marriage, especially if some of the less-than-accepting parties are family members. Yes, the world would be a better place if family always accepted your choice of partner, regardless of marriage. But that's often not the reality we live in due to religious beliefs, cultural norms, etc. I don't believe everyone should get married. I don't believe there should be any social stigma surrounding marriage--either positive or negative. But I do think it has value. I'll be the first to admit that I was not expecting marriage to cause any sort of change in my mentality, the way I approached the relationship, or the relationship dynamics in general. But it happened. I fundamentally believed I was 100% committed and marriage was a waste of time and money. But there was a "voice" in the back of mind always saying "you can just leave if you don't like a thing"; and I didn't recognize it was even there until I got married and it stopped.
- saiya-jin 7y agoThis 1000%. I am an agnostic, yet I accepted to have a church wedding for respect for my future wife. And the whole wedding day has been one of, if not the most amazing day of my life. That caught me utterly by surprise. And same could be said about many other aspects of life together. It made things better between us when I didn't expect they would, not just like that. It brings people closer. I couldn't care less about financial risks, I won't be taking money to the grave and life is damn short. There are far more important things in my life than zealously watching out and calculating cost/benefits.
- Gatsky 7y agoYet many of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people, who could do anything they want, get married... how does that square with your thesis?
- BubRoss 7y agoAnyone can choose to get married or not, why does 'wealth and power' matter?
- Gatsky 7y agoWell if marriage is ‘Insane’ then you might think that people with high agency might choose to do something else. If not the OP’s ideas about marriage may be missing the point.
- kelnos 7y agoHigh financial agency in no way makes someone immune from family, peer, or even societal pressure.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago“Being wealthy” is a rough proxy for “prioritizing wealth over other things” and therefore the existence of so many wealthy married people suggests marriage is not an impediment to wealth.
- Porthos9K 7y agoThey're still people. That makes them prone to doing irrational things when they're hungry, lonely, angry, or horny.
- friendlybus 7y agoJobs and companies are designed to die when they are no longer competitive. Corporate legal structures do not ask as deep questions of the individual participating as a marriage does. Child producing relationships work better with two consistent parents. Divorced parents still frequently share custody and are forced to deal with each other. The idea that you can be truly divorced with kids is a strange one. Couples without marriage cannot truly divulge the deepest secrets, go into the deepest of exiled places with someone else without a binding relationship. Not that marriage seems to mean that anymore, with the societal expectation that both sides will leave when it doesn't work for them anymore.
- david38 7y agoTrue, but many parents divorce. The children will do better when the father isn’t broke because the mother took him to the cleaners and spent $200k on lawyer fees and then had him thrown in jail for lack of child support payment that he couldn’t afford. Then he can keep going back to jail because as a “felon” he will never be able to afford the payments. This story was told to me by a woman whose mother did that to her father. The woman was slightly annoyed her mother kept getting the father thrown in jail because then she couldn’t see him. It never even occurred to her how horrible of a person the mother was for what she was doing to the father.
- friendlybus 7y agoYeah things are seriously messed up.
- d1zzy 7y agoGood luck getting dependent visas for a unmarried spouse...
- Aeolun 7y agoI don’t think they’re a spouse then? Just a girlfriend.
- missosoup 7y agoMy understanding is that not getting married doesn't actually change much, since de-facto partners get a very similar set of power upon breakup? I've heard horror stories in AU of guys getting kicked out of their own house by their ex-girlfriends after living together for a few months.
- apta 7y ago> You wouldn't sign a job contract where if you got fired or quit you would face unspecified financial and personal penalties It's only like that in the US and perhaps some other Western countries. Other societies put up front the cost involved in case of divorce in the marriage contract itself.
- 35787 7y agoNo, actually you’re wrong. Even if you live in a state that does not practice common law marriage, you probably live in a state that adheres to the concept of cohabitation. I’ve looked at the laws myself for my state, and it’s clear that a man can be held responsible for non-marital alimony just for having a woman reside on his property. No paperwork is necessary, not even a verbal agreement. The laws are totally stacked against men and it’s complete bullshit.
- iliketocomplain 7y agoYou comparing marriage to a job is insanity.
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoIt’s not the ‘latest’. It has always been that way and there are Post-nups too.
- notadoc 7y agoWhy not for everyone? What's yours is yours, what's shared is shared. Seems simple enough? The legal entanglement is perhaps the strangest part of marriage, and divorce.
- ar_lan 7y agoI don't understand why marriage is a legal thing. Why is the government involved?
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoTaxes. Church and state get involved with the individual for extraction of assets, control resource distribution, control population growth by incentivizing higher birth rate(= work force = more taxes), ‘tithing’ of various forms and basically surveillance. From birth to death, they keep tabs.
- pizza234 7y agoBecause governments regulate the pivotal aspects of society. Marriage has been a long-standing form of union between people, which is supposed to be the foundation of procreation, which in turn is the foundation of a lasting society. Whether the regulations are outdated, it's definitely a very valid point of discussion, but the fact that there is regulation is significant.
- saalweachter 7y agoIf you want to take all the romance out of it, you can look at marriage as a well-understood standard contract for forming a legal partnership with oodles of case law and precedent. It's like how nearly everything is a Delaware corporation, or how nearly every lease you sign is one of three or four templates downloaded off the internet with the names and addresses filled in.
- kraig911 7y agoWell first things first kids need legal protection and a system needs something in place to account for them.
- jressey 7y ago> Latest Rich dudes have been getting prenups for like at least half a century.
- gwern 7y agoYes... when they are already rich. Not before.
- throwaway72873 7y agoPrenups do not work. Often it is ignored by court. Or wife can move (and divorce) to UK where prenups are not enforceable.
- 01100011 7y agoIn California, as far as I know, they definitely work. You and your spouse need independent counsel(i.e. two lawyers) for it to be valid.
- gamblor956 7y agoI only know of a handful of prenups that didn't work, and in every case where the prenup was pierced, it was due to one of the parties not satisfying the conditions required for a valid prenup. The number one failure? Not properly disclosing premarital assets. Disclose everything, and let the lawyer decide if it's immaterial (and as a side benefit, if they strike something from disclosure which is later found to be material in a divorce proceeding that results in the prenup being pierced, then generally your lawyer's malpractice insurance will make you whole). How should stock be disclosed? If it's publicly traded, you disclose the stock, type of shares, stock owned, and value at the time the disclosure was compiled. If it's not publicly traded, you list the type of stock restrictions on trading/owning if any, and estimated valuation based on the most recent one conducted by the company. If you're a C-suite officer of a VC-funded company, you generally also need to get an updated valuation, and if the company won't do one you may need a third-party valuation. (If you're not an executive, or it's a privately-owned traditionally financed company, no additional valuation needed.)
- m0zg 7y agoI think it's a must have for their spouses-to-be. The probability of "startup founders" striking it rich is infinitesimally small, so in a community property state (which California is), the down on luck "founder" could claim half of his/her spouse's property and wring out alimony as well, if they're female. Seems like a much more likely outcome.
- syedkarim 7y agoI don't believe gender matters. Alimony (which is called "maintenance" in some states) flows from high-income spouse to lower-income spouse, in order to maintain a standard of living. It's possible for a female to pay a male maintenance/alimony.
- epx 7y agoAnd the half dozen that do pay, make the news.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- m0zg 7y agoIt's certainly possible. The court is just _much_ more likely to require alimony for you if you're female. Same with custody. Where's that gender equality when you need it? https://www.divorcemag.com/articles/percentage-of-men-awarded-spousal-support-increasing https://www.divorcemag.com/articles/percentage-of-men-awarde... Quote: "The [2010] census found that about 12,000 men receive spousal support, and 380,000 women receive it."
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoThat's on the order of 1:500 women. That is a ton considering that many of those statistical 500 woman have never divorced and that we live in an age of dual incomes.
- gamblor956 7y ago
- ykevinator 7y agoWhy get married if you're not doing it for better or for worse. I'm not asking sanctimoniously, I'm actually asking. Literally just date, it's fine.
- leetcrew 7y agoI obviously agree that it's a very bad idea to get married if you don't intend to stick it out, but it's not hard to see why people might do it anyway. they might live in a conservative community/family where children out of wedlock is still stigmatized. there is sometimes a cultural expectation that a person (especially a woman) will be married by a certain age. they might see their friends getting married and think it seems nice. these are all bad reasons, but it doesn't mean they aren't powerful ones.
- jdminhbg 7y agoYou can be as into for better or for worse as you want, but it doesn't matter if your spouse isn't.
- scarejunba 7y agoCan't keep your foreign partner in the country.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoMarriage comes with a lot of rights that dating doesn't give you. I read an interesting article years ago about a couple of idealistic, young artists who were against the idea of marriage. They lived together and had a baby together. The guy began saying at parties "My wife is pregnant" rather than "My girlfriend is pregnant" so people would congratulate him instead of saying "Bummer, dude." They were having to jump through so many hoops to arrange wills, insurance, etc to cover things that would have been simple and automatic if they got married they began contemplating just getting married.
- abstractbarista 7y agoFrankly, the best prenup is not getting married in the first place, and not living in a state which may honor "common law" marriage. You can't negotiate attraction, therefore marriage (in the legal sense) is at best negligible, and at worst very dangerous. Socially and spiritually, it can still be very positive and important. Furthermore, if we are to embrace feminism, we must cast aside the concept that marriage helps ensure the wife is financially stable after divorce. They are working and saving for themselves as well, right? Ultimately, it would be neat if the government didn't recognize marriage at all. Things like permission to make medical decisions, child care, or immigration would be bound by specific legal documents. (This would also have completely avoided the issue some people have with the government recognizing non-heterosexual marriages.)
- Arelius 7y ago> Furthermore, if we are to embrace feminism, we must cast aside the concept that marriage helps ensure the wife is financially stable after divorce. They are working and saving for themselves as well, right? We could debate if desirable or not, but it seems that a modern modification would maintain this without being anti-feminist: "Marriage helps ensure that both partners are financially stable after divorce." Which is generally what the law provides. It allows for the flexibility for the couple to allow for one partner to prioritize family care, while the other prioritizes financial matters, without discriminating based on gender. Sure there are still stereotypical gender roles in play that create biases, but the basic framework can persist.
- kelnos 7y ago> Furthermore, if we are to embrace feminism, we must cast aside the concept that marriage helps ensure the wife is financially stable after divorce. They are working and saving for themselves as well, right? A quick search seems to indicate that more and more men are suing for and receiving alimony[0]. The reason it's still not super common is probably due to traditional notions of masculinity being pervasive; men think "it's for women" or have too much masculine pride to ask for it[1]. [0] https://www.williamstrachanfamilylaw.com/2012/11/alimony-men-common/ https://www.williamstrachanfamilylaw.com/2012/11/alimony-men... [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-dont-more-men-ask-for_b_3503742 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-dont-more-men-ask-for_b_3...
- cascom 7y agoSeems like all a pre-nup is, is an amendment to the "standard marriage contract" (using that as a short hand for all the facets of marriage/divorce). If you don't know what the "standard marriage contract" is in your state then that's on you - but if you do learn what it is, my guess is there are a number of those items that don't/apply or you [both] may desire to amend/change them.
- sib 7y agoI think it's true that it is largely an amendment to the "standard marriage contract" as reflected by the state's laws (I have one and spent a lot of time in researching it). But, that amendment, just as any contractual amendment, can change the original agreement dramatically and across many, many key terms. As my attorney in the matter said to me, "You can let the state decide in the future what happens if you get divorced, or you and your partner can decide it now."
- jandrewrogers 7y agoI've witnessed a couple cases where a startup founder's spouse divorced them and it nearly destroyed the company. Having a hostile party who doesn't care about the startup suddenly become a major shareholder is a recipe for unpleasantness. The blast radius and destruction of value of treating a startup as community property affects many people not in the marriage.
- nostrademons 7y agoI've also seen startups destroyed by a founder divorce, but a pre-nup wouldn't/didn't help. The problem (in all 3 cases) was that the founder's concentration, drive, motivation, and confidence was destroyed. Divorce is hugely emotionally tumultuous: people going through it usually do not have the mental bandwidth to spend on something as attention-demanding as a startup. It also usually leads to big changes in lifestyle, goals, and motivations: many folks I know who have gotten divorced completely reexamine what's important in their life. (In some cases, this leads to the divorce rather than the other way around.) Very often a startup, or the specific startup they're working on, isn't one of those things once the dust settles. The lesson I took from it wasn't to get a pre-nup, it was to invest time in your relationship even while doing the startup, and get your spouse on-board with it. That's somewhat incompatible with the Silicon Valley image of a maniacal laser-focused startup founder, but then, a large number of them have a wreckage of a personal life that ultimately ends up costing them a lot of what they've made in startups.
- jandrewrogers 7y agoAll very good points.
- mikeg8 7y agoI agree but think that 1) there are many ways a founder can lose drive, motivation, concentration, etc. some being the death of a friend/sibling/parent, medical diagnoses etc. While a divorce may be very difficult for a founder to recover from, and avoiding divorce should be prioritized, it’s not a full-proof way to safeguard a founders productivity. 2) Without a pre-nup, the startup will most likely increase it’s exposure possibly adding a toxic shareholder/board member, a situation that may be more difficult to recover from than replacing the founder. Just my thoughts.
- capableweb 7y agoIt's a shame that many countries in the world, you have to get married if you're not from the same country. Married people have different rights to stay together compared to people who spend many years living together. If it wasn't for some immigration laws and other areas where you're not equal unless you're married, there is little point in getting married at the present time.
- dudul 7y agoTaxes, health insurance are reasons that have nothing to do with immigration.
- henryfjordan 7y agoIt might not be the same everywhere, but at least for my health plan it covers the "household", so you just have to live together. No need to be married. You do have to pay taxes on half of the company's contribution though, which is not insignificant.
- BrandonM 7y agoTo me, the main point of marriage in the present day is to have all your friends and family sign off on your mutual declaration, “This person is now the most important person in my life.” Your parents, best friends, siblings no longer have any standing to complain when you favor your spouse over themselves. More even than the legal differences, I think that’s really the purpose of marriage, and the ceremony itself is a reflection of that reality.
- capableweb 7y agoI feel you should be able to make that decision yourself and you have no obligation to make anyone else but you, to sign off on what you feel is important. If I now feel that a another person is the most important person, that's it. Now it's so, for me.
- baron816 7y agoBetter to have and not need than need and not have.
- kelnos 7y agoUnless there's lingering resentment and trust issues stemming from the fact that you pushed hard for a pre-nup, which leads to a divorce that otherwise wouldn't've happened.
- motohagiography 7y agoThe clause about voting rights of shares not transferring to an ex-spouse in a VC agreement is pragmatic. Money and share value you can manage and negotiate equivalent value, but a material change in control is way more complex. Marriage is incidental to that, and there isn't much of a future for it outside religious societies anyway. The good news is the trend creates lots of opportunities for luxury products and consumption as the millennial generation ages out of prime child raising age and finds the hole in their lives money just can't fill, but that won't stop them from trying. If you have ideas for what these people will want in 2025-2030, might as well start your financial plan now. Whether it's money or share votes, plan to maintain control.
- neonate 7y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20191011183634/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-11/prenup-is-latest-must-have-for-tech-startup-founders-in-love https://web.archive.org/web/20191011183634/https://www.bloom...
- accountDEADBEEF 7y agoA bit off-topic but has anyone else noticed a trend in the webpage title not matching the article title? Eg in this case, the page title is "Broke and in Love, More Tech Entrepreneurs Demanding Prenups" vs the article heading of "A Prenup Is the Latest Must-Have for Tech Startup Founders in Love". Is this just some old version of the title cached? The weird thing is that the URL matches article heading.
- Kye 7y agoThe title on the page is just a styled tag. It can be different. It's usually done because what works for search engines often reads bland for humans. The h1 tag is an opportunity to serve the human while also serving Google.
- alexpetralia 7y agoI wouldn't be surprised if the page title is set initially, but the final title is updated and set based on A/B tests.
- rolltiide 7y agoDon't sleep on Foundations and Trusts. You can contribute to them even during a marriage and you could be trustee and your ex-spouse would not be a creditor. In this topic of shares in your startup though, it is more likely that your Foundation cannot be an owner of it (or maybe a percentage limitation of ownership if you are actively involved in the company), so don't donate shares of that company to that foundation. But for the fiat money earned you can donate unlimited amounts to that, with a 30% annual tax deduction against your annual gross income. This may not be obvious, but its correct that you can't get money out of a foundation aside from 'reasonable salary' which will then be taxed as ordinary income, but you can use the foundation's nest egg to pump the value of other assets you own, as long as you aren't buying and selling direct to the foundation. Ideally an invigorated market will purchase from your personal orders above the price the foundation has pumped the market to with its tax free money. foundation just ends up owning a bunch of the asset from the pump, you personally just have a bunch of short or long term capital gains, which you can again offset by donating to the foundation or offset from prior donations above that prior year's AGI limit. illiquid markets are always ripe for this behavior. Foundations can also support other causes you have in mind, as they were designed for.
- heelix 7y agoSharing a checkbook is one of those fundamental things with marriage. Both parties need to be aligned - even when one makes substantially more than the other. If someone thinks they need a pre-nup, they should still be in that dating phase. Yes, the other could get half if things go tango uniform... and if one just prices their partner as a chief cook and bottle washer at market prices... can't say that is going to last. (Will be 26 years with my Bride now... so still rookie numbers)
- kelnos 7y agoThis may surprise you, but relationship types run the gamut, and just because something has worked well for you, it doesn't mean it's ideal (or even functional) for everyone else.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sudosteph 7y agoGrats on 26 years! I'm with you just because I can't imagine the mental overhead of having to keep track of individual property after marriage. My husband and I act as one in all things - and being unified in goals and finances has has given us advantages over our peers in many ways. Marriage is a hard contract to fulfill for some folks, but when it works it is an amazing thing. And it does require those involved to design it to be a lifelong thing. Pre-nups, even if rational, do go counter to that design and it's hard to not think that it would weaken a marriage if that was always in the back of your mind.
- nullc 7y agoNot getting married or having an overly aggressive lopsided prenup can result in enormous power imbalances that inhibit having the true partnership which is necessary for a successful relationship. Unless your relationship never was and never is intended to be a partnership between equals. But if so you owe it to yourself and your partner to be clear about that. By all means, set things up so that an acrimonious divorce won't require selling an illiquid business or whatnot. But if you go into thing with entirely a whats-mine-is-mine then there are real questions as to the purpose of your relationship in the first place.
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- hardwaresofton 7y ago> Not getting married or having an overly aggressive lopsided prenup can result in enormous power imbalances that inhibit having the true partnership which is necessary for a successful relationship. I agree with this --If a prenup is creating/enforcing a large power imbalance, at least one (likely both) people need to seriously consider what they're getting into. I disagree with the rest of the things you said after that though: > true partnership which is necessary for a successful relationship > Unless your relationship never was and never is intended to be a partnership between equals. But if so you owe it to yourself and your partner to be clear about that. > to the purpose of your relationship in the first place. This argument seems like it is very subjective. To be fair I do think most societies have generally gotten to consensus on what successful relationships looks like in broad strokes, but I think that kind of consensus falls apart when you really start looking closely at it. Even simple things like "how is the burden of child rearing split" start to create huge fractures. The phrase "partnership between equals" does not preclude prenups -- the details of the partnership are between the people entering into it. It's quite possibly extremely naive but ideally both people have a clear understanding of the nature of the relationship and agree on the future enough to put that into written terms they agree with. If someone is creating a lopsided prenup in an attempt to hoard wealth on one side because of a lack of trust... Maybe you shouldn't bind yourself to that particular person for life? People get into relationships for lots of reasons. Some cultures pair people up for social advancement, others try to pair for love, others pair with a sense of duty/obligation/necessity, and some cultures don't pair up at all. Marriage is a covenant -- saying/writing what you expect down is the best way to make sure another person knows it, whether finances are involved or not. I'd say a prenup is a really good indicator to both sides of the potential power imbalance -- just like a proposal, it shouldn't be a surprise.
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoI've sometimes wondered: what about "postnups" (post nuptial agreements)? Are there a thing? Do they exist? Can they fully substitute the lack of a prenup?
- erikpukinskis 7y agoSure, you can sign a similar document after getting married.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- solomontribe 7y agoIn the present system, it's biased against one side and where institution is seeking to extract everything from you. No one should get married in this system.