Month: April 2020

If you’re thinking of signing a prenuptial agreement with your spouse, make sure that you fully disclose all of your assets and all of your debts. That means everything you own, all the money in your savings, anything you have in investments, any business ownership percentages and all the rest. If you have financial policies like a pension or a life insurance plan, you want to disclose these, as well.

Why is it is important to do this? Well, from a practical standpoint, your spouse just needs to know what you own before agreeing to a contract that can have a big impact on their financial future. They deserve to know what they’re agreeing to and what they may be signing away.

From a legal standpoint, it’s also important to disclose everything because the agreement likely will not stand if you don’t. The judge can throw it out, even if everything else was done correctly, and it no longer governs the divorce. This could cause you to lose some of the protections that you carefully built into your plan and that you were really counting on.

Remember, the opposite side of this is also true. You deserve to know all of the same details about your spouse before you sign. If they hid or failed to mention anything, the agreement may not hold up if you do eventually get divorced.

Prenups can get more complicated than many people assume. It is very important to know about all of the legal steps you need to take and what obligations both of you have.

It can be difficult for anyone to achieve dreams in life. Certain obstacles are unavoidable, and sometimes, things are just not meant to work out. You were able to reach your career goals by becoming an entrepreneur and creating a company that took off and remained successful. However, your marriage was not meant to last.

Now, you have concerns about what will happen to your business as a result of your pending divorce. Will you lose everything? Will your soon-to-be ex-spouse end up with the business? Will you owe him or her business assets? These are understandable concerns because your business undoubtedly means a great deal to you, and you do not want to unnecessarily harm its future.

Is your business marital property?

First, you may want to determine whether the court will consider your business marital property. If you first got married and then started your business, it does constitute marital property. Additionally, any assets obtained by the business after your marriage fall into this category. The same goes for starting your business before the marriage. The business itself may be separate property, but assets earned after marriage are not. Because Texas is a community property state, you and your spouse have the right to a 50-50 split of marital assets.

The possibility also exists that your spouse could have a claim to the business because he or she contributed to its success. At first, you may think that this does not apply because your spouse did not have dealings with the business, but if your spouse managed the household, taking over those duties may have allowed you to put more time and effort into the success of the business, which means he or she indirectly contributed to the company.

What can you do?

Before you resign yourself to losing a portion of your company during your divorce proceedings, you may want to remember that nothing is set in stone yet. You may have the ability to negotiate with your spouse to determine whether he or she would give up any claim to the business or business assets in exchange for other property. 

These negotiations can be tricky and sometimes heated, so it may be in your best interests to discuss your options with an attorney. Your legal counsel can help you determine the best options for working toward your goals.

How soon is “too soon” to decide that you’ve made a mistake with your marriage? Apparently, there’s really no such thing as “too soon” when it comes to matters of the heart. In fact, the majority of couples have a pretty good idea about whether their marriage is healthy from the very start — even before the honeymoon phase is over.

The typical picture of matrimony has always been a little grim. It’s generally been anticipated that a couple will rush into each other’s arms with great initial joy. Then, as time passes and the bloom of the new relationship fades, a couple’s overall satisfaction with their marriage is expected to fade quite a bit — even if the couple stays together out of a sort of dull contentment with their situation.

Except research doesn’t bear out this idea. Not only do many married couples (around 60%) start their relationship highly satisfied with each other, those couples tend to remain largely satisfied over time. Roughly 30% of couples start their marriage only moderately satisfied with the relationship, while 10% of couples aren’t particularly happy with their marriages even in the beginning. As it turns out, the lower your initial level of satisfaction in a marriage at the start, the lower it’s likely to continue being — especially among those in that bottom 10%.

What does this mean, in practical terms? The odds are good that you have a fairly clear sense about your marriage’s longevity from the very start. If you aren’t happy with the relationship, you probably can’t expect it to evolve into something better.

While nobody ever really wants to think about divorce, it really can be a fresh start for both parties — and is often the best solution once a couple realizes that they’re simply not compatible over the long run.