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One of the many benefits of drafting a prenuptial agreement is that you will have some sense of how your property will be divided upon divorce. If you are in the process of seeking a divorce and have a prenup in place, it should give you some guidance as to how your divorce will proceed. In many cases, if spouses do not care to contest any provisions within prenuptial agreements, divorce cases tend to be cheaper and are finalized more quickly than they would usually be.
However, it is important to keep in mind that a prenuptial agreement does not remove either spouse from participation in the divorce process. Instead, it will help to determine the nature of your divorce settlement agreement provided that the prenuptial agreement is valid. If it is deemed to be invalid for reasons of unfairness, improper execution, etc. then the divorce process will need to be approached from scratch.
If your prenuptial agreement is valid, you and your attorney will work together to paint a complete financial picture of you and your spouse’s current assets, debts, income and expenses. You will use this accounting in various ways throughout the proceedings, including in reviewing your prenuptial agreement’s potential impact on this financial picture.
If you or your spouse has deviated from any of the terms set forth in the prenuptial agreement, you and your attorney will need to discuss how those actions will impact the process at hand. For while your prenup may give you an idea of how your divorce will progress, it will offer no guarantees if certain circumstances have changed the nature or the enforceability of the contract.
Source: Huffington Post, “Heading to Divorce Court With a Prenuptial Agreement,” Alton Abramowitz, Nov. 4, 2013
