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Hello everyone and welcome to another Family Law Matters. I’m Dr. Michael Mantell and I’m privileged each week to join Bonnie Rabinovitch Mantel, the owner and managing partner of the Primus Family Law Group. Hi Bonnie.

Hi Michael, how are you doing today? Very well, thank you. Good to talk with you again. I want to talk with you about a topic that’s getting more and more attention and that is the prenuptial or premarital agreement.

I know that Primus Family Law Group has been doing these for a long time. Can you define what a prenuptial agreement or a premarital agreement is? Sure, it’s a contract that a fiancé and a fiancée sign before they get married which will divide or characterize their property. Either they’re trying to because we live in California and as soon as you get married everything you do, everything you earn, everything you spend is community.

People sometimes don’t want to do that and so a premarital agreement allows people to determine what they’re going to do through their marriage and if they, God forbid, get divorced. Are we seeing more and more people signing up for these prenuptial agreements? You know, Michael, I’m going to say it this way. Smarter people do because I get a lot of questions about, well, doesn’t that defeat the purpose or doesn’t that mean we’re not really invested in our marriage or we’re already planning on divorce? And forgive me for being a little bit more realistic.

The statistics are that almost two-thirds of marriages are going to end up in divorce so obviously when you get married, you know, assuming, I shouldn’t say obvious, but you love the person, you’re in love with the person and again you’ve got some of those, you know, fantasy rainbow and unicorns and that’s great and we always hope that every marriage lasts as long as yours, you know, or as long as my parents on their 65th but that’s not the reality. So as a divorce attorney where I see good people on their worst behavior, it helps a lot when you define your property and you figure out what you’re going to do with things beforehand so you don’t have that argument. It’s just a smart way to plan for the worst.

So a question from just my own thinking about this. If you don’t have a prenuptial agreement, the law does say, okay, here’s what’s going to happen with absent any premarital agreement, right? It’s going to be a 50-50 split and so forth and so on where the arguments come is where you haven’t determined in advance. So the point is, the more you prepare in advance, the better it’s going to be if God forbid there is some sort of a dilemma that leads to separation divorce, correct? Sure and then there’s always the idea that, you know, when you have nothing together, you get married at 20 and you have nothing, it’s not as necessary because you’re building your life together.

But as we’re seeing, people are getting married later in life and when they already have businesses, retirements, now there are certain things that are going to always be yours because you’ve had them before your marriage. But let’s say Dr. Mantel, let’s say you have a medical practice that you’ve had for 15 years before you got married. But then as soon as you get married, every dollar and every investment and every time you’ve devoted to that medical practice is community property and when you get divorced, you get to now buy out your spouse from your medical practice that you’ve always had.

Right and with the increase in the gray divorce that we hear more and more about and people going into a second marriage once they have already amassed, you know, their career, their savings, so forth. I hear more and more people going into this as of course there’s going to be a prenuptial agreement, a premarital agreement, of course there would be. There’s not this sense of don’t you trust me, we’re going to get divorced, you know, 25 years from now.

No, I think that people who especially in the gray divorce range are using this as a natural step in a second marriage. Yes, when both sides have assets to protect they are both more willing to do a premarital agreement. Right.

It’s a little bit more, you know, problematic when there’s one side who clearly has a lot more assets than another side. However, it’s still always better, I think, have some sort of contract. There’s certain things you can never contract away.

Child support, custody, and visitation. That’s not allowed to go into these premarital agreements so there should be no fear that we’re going to cut somebody out of their children’s lives. It’s really just for property assets, debts especially.

People, you know, and because you have to tell each other what you have, you’re going into your marriage often with your eyes sometimes, you know, more widely open than otherwise. I think it’s one other point I just want to raise and that is the way you bring it up to a potential spouse, the way you’re getting married, how do I bring this up? That has to be handled with sensitivity as well. If people have questions about prenuptial or premarital agreements and they want to talk with you for a half an hour or so for free, how can they reach you? Well, they can reach us at 619-574-8000.

That’s our direct line or you can reach us online at www.primusfamilylaw.com.