I read a post yesterday that just broke my heart. This poor woman was being basically threatened by her husband. If you don't sign these papers then you won't get these benefits or I'll divorce you and you'll get nothing. She was so hurt by all of it. When I read all that stuff it made me so happy that I have a prenup, I've already talked to my oldest and made sure that when he gets married there will be a prenup there too.
I am by no means a wealthy woman. But I was a SAHW for many years. During that time, everything was in his name, the bills, the lights, the credit cards, the car, etc. My first marriage, I did not have a prenup and boy do I regret that. I was pretty much left with three kids beds and my little pug...God rest his soul.
This second time around, I wasn't about to let that happen again.
About a month before the wedding I brought it up to DH. He, to my relief, was relieved that I was the one to mention it first. We didn't even need a lawyer. We printed out all the papers, sat down and filled them out together and negotiated a few things here and there and bam, we were done. All in all it cost us about 100.00 with processing, filing, notary fees and court costs. We both felt better because we were both protected.
I've heard alot about how unromantic that is. That's true, there was absolutely no romance when we were figureing it all out, but here's what there was...
We loved each other. We did this at a time in our relationship when we wanted to protect each other as well as ourselves. There was no animosity, there was no trying to one up each other, no negative feelings of any sort. I still love DH, we're still married, plan on being married for the rest of our lives so those papers we filed might never come in to use. For the most part, we are happy.
I can't begin to describe the hell I went through when I got divorced from my 1st husband. When you're first engaged, whether it be your 2nd time or not, you never think that you'll get divorced. You know you've found your true soul mate and happily ever after is on it's way.
Problem is, you thought that before, and happily never after happend. I'm glad that me and DH figured out what will happen, what will go to who, what future things we aquire will go to who, and what each kid gets while we were not in divorce mode. It goes well for both parties if they can sit with the person they love and figure this out rather than having two lawyers of two people who now hate each other battling it out. Cheeper too.
Look at that, our first budget decision together.