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SHOULD IT BE COMPULSORY FOR COUPLES TO SIGN A PRENUPTIAL AGREEMENT BEFORE MARRIAGE?

No, it should not be compulsory. When two adults - yes, grown adults - who are over the age of consent and old enough to drink, drive, vote and get married, choose to get married it is up to them whether or not they wish to have a prenuptial agreement. We can argue that Donald Trump may be daft (though I have never ever suspected that he is) if he marries a young woman who is totally penniless, but he is old enough to decide all of this for himself. Surely if people are old enough to decide how to invest their money and could blow it all in a casino in one night, or on dodgy stocks and shares, they are just as entitled to invest it into a relationship and how that relationship turns out is irrelevant.

But people seem to forget that usually when two people are getting married those two people know each other very well. They have been friends or been dating for quite a while and spent a lot of time together, the person who is marrying the poorer one of the two must have a good idea of whether or not that person is a sponger, a gold digger or irresponsible with money! Only someone very silly would marry someone without finding out what their attitude is towards money and how responsible they are with it, or someone where they have no idea of what their track record is with it. If they can get to an age where they can make all sorts of huge decisions, such as buying the money to buy a house, then they can decide on whether or not a partner is a good investment financially.

But you also have the fact that they simply might not care about it. If they are madly in love and are exuberantly happy at the idea of marrying their beloved they will not wish to contemplate or face the fact that maybe one day that relationship will end. To them, signing a prenuptial agreement is acknowledging that perhaps their fantastic new relationship which brings them so much happiness is not as perfect as it seems to be. By showing no interest in such an agreement they are showing faith in how long their future union will last. To tell a partner that you do not trust them without a prenuptial agreement is a harsh way to begin a married life together. Where one partner has a lot more than the other then really the one who has a lot less should expect and even offer to sign such an agreement, if only to show that they are not mercenary money grabbing gold diggers! If they are genuine and the relationship lasts it will not matter anyway. They should not be hoping to walk away richer if the marriage goes wrong.

In the unlikely event that the richer of the two trusts the poor one and then it backfires on them and the other walks away with a lot of their assets, well, that is up to them. They can either make sure their is a pre-nuptial agreement or they can take that risk. But the choice should be theirs, it should not be compulsory to sign such an agreement. If someone is so pathetic that they need others to safeguard their interests to the extent of forcing them to sign agreements before marriage, then they really are not mature enough to get married in the first place.

Learn more about this author, Carmel Brulez.
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