Pre Nups .. do they protect us ?

Hi Kenkoh, I discovered that you replied to my post.
I just want to give you my opinion of the “unconditional love” thing- at the risk of being lost along the detour, hehe.

I do think that unconditional love is basically a myth- most people are not able to love unconditionally.

You say that “true marriage is never meant to end up in dirvorce in the first place, has it been properly founded on the strong foundation of unconditional love in the first place”.

Exactly- marriage is not meant to end up in divorce, but the reality is, that most do end up in divorce and that people have no idea of what unconditional love really is.

“Why do partners wander away? Simply because not all the needs are properly satisfied by the other partner within the marriage/couple context.”True!

People confuse unconditional love with ‘need’. People, at a certain stage of their lives, might ‘need’ some qualities the other has to offer. But later they may grow and change and they might need different things now. They were co-depending at some point; when their needs change they may not be able to depend on each other for their different needs anymore.

Unconditionally loving someone, in my opinion, means that you give to each other without any conditions or restrictions attached. It is totally free- yet it is always there. It means that you love, respect and accept all character traits in each other, that you love and respect the other person for who they are.
This kind of love is hard to find- if you do you may want to cage it into marriage, which, at that point, restricts that love, because it is a free love that cannot be trapped, and therefore the ‘unconditional love’ evaporates.

The thing is that everyone wants to receive unconditional love[inlove], but, unfortunately, hardly anyone is able to give it.[glum2]

Celivia

I don’t know if this tale will help your question or not – but here’s what happened to me.

I had my own properties before I got married. He had only one run-down thing that he lived in. We got married and built the ‘dream family home’. He promised right from day one that he was never interested in taking what was already mine before we even met. I trusted him and no mention of pre-nup entered into it. Of course, we were never going to break up.

But we did.

Then he got nasty. Three court battles later and I **eventually** got back what was mine before we met, plus 50% of the equity in the dream family home. Some bright spark mentioned that we should have just split everything 50/50 and moved on. Wrong. I’d spent 10 years building my own safety net. I wasn’t going to hand it over just because we weren’t staying married. Unfortunately, it cost me a huge amount in legal fees.

Now I’m divorced and happily investing alone with my own properties again and my own money – but now I’ve met someone with just as much as I have.

We’re both cynical and fearful of the other becoming nasty financially if something goes wrong.

Does pre-nup come into it? No.

What it comes down to is the fact that I can prove that my properties were my own before we met and his properties were his before we met. Those things remain untouched – even in court.

Should we buy or build a joint family home – well of course that would become dividable 50/50 in the event that something goes wrong. As would any other asset bought jointly from this point onward.

Just my two cents
Lea

So, from a real-estate point of view… if you really want to protect your ‘valuables’, then…

The BEST Solution is:

Honour the Marriage Covenent!

A legal contract can always be broken or renegotiated with good lawyers.

But a Covenant is for life! Till death do you part. Love your spouse for life!

Pre-nups & DeFacto relationships are a sure sign that you don’t take your relationship serious, or you don’t or won’t commit to the Covenant aspect – it demonstrates clearly your expectations. What you expect is what you will get.

Personally, I expect to be married for life. I expect to love my wife, even when I don’t think she deserves it. I expect that my wife and I enjoy this journey of Real Estate Investing together!

I know that what I expect, and work hard for, will become a reality for me.

Yes it’s a tricky topic and most entertaining .
The very act of wanting a Pre Nup does note bode well for an impending Marriage .
Nothing can stop the Family Court going wherever it likes , even in to the most brilliantly set up Trust…. more power than the Tax Office when they’re in the mood .
The concept of “Family” being the building block for our good old western society certainly is a very powerful one .
Cheers then ,
M

MLV

I’m about to be married and wouldn’t want a financial agreement, what we have now is reasonably equal monetry wise and more importantly we are both very responsible with money.

This thread is sad though that all that can be created together becomes nasty if eventually things become sour for someone about to be married[ohno2]

still don’t know what i don’t know