Customer Reviews

Prenuptial Agreements: How to Write a Fair and Lasting Contract

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As I am preparing to be wed for the second time in November 2007, it is necessary for me to execute a prenuptial agreement to protect my assets and the assets of my children. It would be irresponsible to marry without one. I have researched available information on the internet including a determination of the best book on this subject matter. I ordered this book from Amazon at the best price available and I was not disappointed. The book is informative and includes sample language and forms to prepare your own prenuptial agreement. I, however, will simply use the book as reference material so I can carry on an intelligent conversation with an attorney of my choosing. I would NEVER try to prepare and execute a prenuptial agreement on my own given the complexities, legal issues, and different circumstances of each person. If you are in my situation, order the book and learn from it. Then, seek out an attorney to prepare and execute the agreement to ensure it cannot be challenged. Although I have a distaste for attorneys, sometimes you just can't get along without them. Regards and I wish you all a long, loving and prosperous marriage.

My now husband and I used this book and the included cd to write our pre-marital agreement. We did have seperate attorney's read it and explain it to avoid any conflict of interest excetra. Mine read it over for legality. His attorney was hesitant about not writeing it and allowing for reduced fees for only reviewing it because he sees too many that are not done well by do-it-yourselfers. However, after my husband's meeting he told me his attorney said that it was the most thurough and accurate do-it-yourself agreement he has ever seen!

I would highly recomend this, as well as negotiating lower fees if you choose to hire an attorny.

In my opinion, everybody should have a prenup because the process of drafting one teaches couples how to talk about money - and invaluable asset in their marriage to come.
We used this book to plan our prenup before our marriage in 2005.
It gives you all the relevant information, helps you consider all the important points, and alerts you about differences across states etc.
We still used lawyers to bullet-proof the agreement, but knowing exactly what we wanted greatly cut down on fees. In fact, my lawyer commented that she rarely had such a well-prepared client and the draft of the agreement was the fairest she had seen in years.

If you are marrying late, with significant assets, or have children from a former marriage you wish to take care of, a pre-nuptial agreement may be for you.

The book is quite thorough in its description of the basics, and provides a sound foundation for drafting a prenup. However, if you are very wealthy with millions of dollars in assets, and you are concerned that your new spouse will thwart your wishes when you die, you really should do your homework with this book, then contact an attorney.

Recommended

My husband and I used this book and CD set to help us write our pre-nup before we married. The information was very helpful to us, and made the process much easier. Pre-nups are especially valuable if one of you has significantly more assets (or debts) than the other, if one is self-employed and the other is not, or if there are other special circumstances that make the default laws of your state apply in an unfair way if you did not have a pre-nup. But those kinds of circumstances can also make a one-size-fits-all prenup less appropriate for you unless you adapt it a lot.

Whatever you do, it is crucial that you read the relevant portions of your state's laws very carefully, because even a lawyer can miss important details buried in the legal jargon. You can find all the state laws online through any search engine. For Californians, the MUST_READ sections include Family Code sections 1610-1617, and especially pay attention to 1615(c)3. Also look at Family Code sections 910-916. These were ones most relevant to us, but there may be others that you need to know about, for example, if you have other dependents to consider.

We adapted and added to the passages in the Nolo book and CD as needed for our own circumstances, but we were lucky enough to have an expert paralegal in the family who helped us find the right legal code sections and who proofread for us to make sure our intent and our language was clear. We would still recommend you run your completed draft by someone with some expertise who has done prenups recently and who doesn't ignore your background work and try to do the whole thing from scratch at your expense.

Something to think about: my husband and I found that all the detailed financial discussion and disclosure sometimes caused disagreement, but also brought us closer together. This is because we learned more about each other, reaffirmed our shared values, and learned the valuable skills of open-minded discussion, problem-solving, listening, tactful sharing of opinions, negotiation and compromise. So many people marry without ever talking about the unromantic but vitally important topics like finances! We encourage all couples to talk about these things very honestly. If you are not a good match, it will become more obvious during this process, but sooner is far less painful than later to find that out. If you are a good match, this process will leave you stronger and more confident in your coming marriage. Good luck to you.

My fiance and I used this book for our prenup. We found it to be a very useful guide for discussing how we wanted to structure our prenup. However, we spent a lot of time filling out the template to compose a draft which was bascially thrown out by our lawyers. I would only suggest this book as a guide for discussion. I would not recommend using the template.

The information in the book covered about 60% of the questions I had concerning my pre-nup. It presented the concepts of separate property and marital property. It covered a fairly broad area of potential clauses to add concerning pre-marital debt, taxes, real estate, etc. It has an appendix that list all the clauses as they might appear in a pre-nup. This was extremely useful in helping me get my head around the issues that would be important to me. My bride and I also used the worksheets on the CD - I found them useful not so much in that they will write your pre-nup for you (that's very unrealistic) but that they posed questions that got us really thinking and talking about the finer points of the pre-nup. I thought the book was extremely useful, just don't expect it to answer every question. Every couple's situation is different and state laws are different - for instance I had questions concerning life insurance policies and retirement plans that weren't answered in the book. But the book is a great primer before you speak with your lawyer(s).

This book does a lot more than just go through a laundry list of items to include or "boiler plate" prewritten items for your agreement. It gives a history of agreements and helps you decide if a "prenup" will be appropriate for you. It has chapters on negotiating, worksheets, a handy CD-ROM for saving time, and lots of references. It uses three examples of couples deciding what's best for them in their agreement. The best thing about the book is that it leads you through a discussion of prenups and gives you advice or what's advisable and what to avoid.

great book; easy read and provides plenty of templates so that user can enter specific info; saved alot of money by doing myself and having a lawyer only review and sign

I've used Nolo Press books with CDs to create legal documents in the past including "Do Your Own Divorce in Califonia". "Prenuptial Agreements" is another winner, on several levels. Not only will it produce the documents necessary for a prenup, it takes you and your partner through a process of discussing your current and future financial realities, which I believe would be helpful for all couples tying the knot, not only those in need of a preuptial agreement.