No

by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: June 20, 2007   Last Updated: September 15, 2010

Is marriage real or is it just playing house? Prenuptial agreements are detrimental to marriage. If you are that uncertain of your commitment to the one you propose to love until death do us part, then don't marry. Hold on to your precious assets until you find someone who you willingly will allow to share your fortune.

The law, however, could be more strictly enforced. If it can be proved that a supposedly legitimate marriage resulted in one of the two squandering money belonging to the other, then the law would have the right to stop it. But, no, it should not be compulsory.

In life there are no guarantees. But to take this most important step of a lifetime and downgrade it to a mere business deal, tarnishes marriage. I would suggest that the two work out their financial differences between themselves before marriage, and even have separate accounts if both work, but to sign an agreement shows a lack of trust. This too, this no signing of agreements will be a deterrent to too many hasty unions. To tangle up this 'knot that binds' with loopholes, is surely to have some unraveling effect to the whole affair.

At a later date I am reviewing what I have written and while I have not down a complete turn around where marriage is concerned, I do believe I was a bit hasty in my prior judgment. The best intentions can offer go sour when day by day trials and tribulations bring on more than some poor fold can handle. While ideally, the two getting married should be so much in love and so much a part of each other that it would be unthinkable to even think of such a thing as a nuptial agreement, times and age changes the picture dramatically at times.

The two love birds that had few material assets other than each other work and build their wealth together and both share equally and both live long lives and have several children that reap the reward for their togetherness and their good examples. These two are exemplary. They are unapproachable and they are the norm. They are rare.

What most often happens is something like this: The two are of unequal capabilities and each have different emotional inheritances and somewhere down the line one is growing in esteem and in wealth, while the other is floundering. Still, supposedly they married for better or worse. They agreed to that, but this is the worst. Most don't last. Yet a court of law divides thing equally and this is as it should be. It is a fair solution.

And this other kind of marriages that are more problematic. One is older and is rich and the other is young and poor and is not looking for love but for money; the older and richer is looking for love in all the wrong places. If two foolish people like this want to get married let them sign whatever they want to sign. If they both get what they want and they are open about it to the other and are not calling it what it is not, then who really cares? Let them sign a prenuptial if they so desire. Calling it a marriage is not really going to make it one, however.

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