Prenup Problems

Here is another problem with prenuptial agreements.

Individuals wishing to sign prenuptial agreements have come up against a hurdle when dealing with pension benefits.

It is not uncommon to see two people get engaged and many times it may be a second marriage. Sometimes, both people are high-earners and already have significant assets, so they agree to waive the right to each other's pensions in the event of a divorce.

Setting this up takes care of the problem of an early death and allows the pension benefits to go to the spouse's children, a charitable organization, or whomever else they named as a beneficiary.

But according to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (better known as ERISA), only a spouse can waive these rights, not a nonspouse. Legally speaking, a fiancé is not a spouse until the marriage is completed and therefore a prenuptial agreement related to this is not valid.

The legal papers can be composed and filed after the wedding is over and meet the legal requirements.

Not going into marriage with the assumption it is anything other than a lifelong commitment also helps and would minimize these problems, but we’ll never have a zero percent divorce rate.

I would however like to see it harder to terminate a marriage in our current system.