by Ronald Holmes

Created on: June 16, 2008

I believe it would be wrong to force couples to sign a prenuptial agreement before they can get married. Enacting a law like this would send the wrong message to couples who are anticipating marriage. We need to find other ways to try to alleviate messy divorces. There are other things that could be tried without getting the government so deeply involved in a very private matter.

If we tell couples that they have to sign a prenuptial agreement in order to get married, in a real sense we are telling them that we expect the marriage to fail. Even though statistics tell us that a majority of marriages will fail, this is not sending the right message to couples. The number of first marriages that fail is much lower than the number of total marriages that fail. If we take out the number of marriages where one or both partners have been married before, the percent of failed marriages goes down by quite a bit. If it is going to be required to have a prenuptial agreement it should be for people who have been divorced and are remarrying and not for every couple who is getting married.

Instead of telling couples they need to sign a prenuptial agreement, maybe we should be encouraging them to get counseling before they can get married. Many pastors already require this before they will agree to marry a couple. A pastor or counselor may be able to foresee a problem and help a couple to be able to work through a problem. Many marriages could be salvaged if the couples had more understanding of how to work through problems. Counseling will not work in every case. Both partners need to be willing to try to work things out and not all couples are willing to make the effort. We could also have couples spend time learning from couples who have been married for a long time. These couples generally have a lot of insight into how to make a relationship work.

Another reason why I feel it would be wrong is because it is not the government's responsibility to do this. The government intrudes into to many areas of our life already and we don't need to let them regulate another. Government regulation requires government enforcement which in turn requires more government. More or bigger government means more taxes will be necessary to fund the government. So also from a strictly financial standpoint, I am reluctant to have to pay for more regulation that I do not feel is a necessity.

For these reasons I feel it would be wrong to require couples to have a prenuptial agreement before they can get married. It just does not seem to make good sense, and it sends the wrong message about the longevity of marriage.

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