New Year? New marriage? New prenup!

The New Year can be a fresh start on life, and a second marriage can be a fresh start on love. Couples who are about to enter a second marriage often wish to create the sense of romance that their first marriages lacked. To that extent, they may forego a prenuptial agreement—but this is a huge mistake.

 

Prenups and the second marriage

As you no doubt remember from your first marriage, divorce is a complex and expensive process. If you and your previous spouse had a prenuptial agreement, it likely made the process much easier. Sometimes, couples enter into a second marriage confident that it will turn out different from the first. This may well be true, but it is nevertheless important to have another prenup in place, just in case.

Perhaps you and your spouse did not have a prenup—at some point, you may have wished that you had created one before the marriage. You and your ex may have believed that your marriage would last forever and that you would not need a prenup. Although you and your spouse no doubt love each other very much, do not disregard a prenuptial agreement the second time around.

What to consider in a second-marriage prenup

Creating a prenuptial agreement for a second marriage can be quite different than for a first marriage. Here are a few things that you should keep in mind:

• Remember, you should negotiate and sign the prenuptial agreement before your wedding. If you wait until after your wedding, you will instead have to create a postnuptial agreement. These tend to be much harder to enforce in court.
• Think carefully about commingling your assets. Commingling your accounts can make them much more difficult to divide in the event of a divorce. Cash and stocks in particular are two assets that you may not wish to commingle.
• If you and your spouse have children, think about how a prenup could affect them. Prenups can be useful in protecting your assets for your family members. In the event of a divorce or your death, you can designate which assets will go to your spouse, your stepchildren and your children.