The Benefits of a Prenuptial Agreement

Prenuptial agreements are valuable tools to protect your property and your financial stability before you enter a marriage. Knowing that many marriages end in divorce, particularly high-net worth marriages, using a prenuptial agreement can be highly beneficial and, in the best-case scenario, you won’t even need to rely on it at all.

Here are just a few examples of some of the benefits of prenuptial agreements.

• Keep your assets in the family: If you’re getting remarried and have children with a previous spouse, you can use a prenuptial agreement to ensure the vast majority (or even all) of your assets go to your children upon your death, rather than any children your new spouse might already have.
• Provide guidelines for asset distribution: This is a particularly important benefit for people who enter a marriage with a lot of assets, or if there is a significant discrepancy between the value of your premarital assets and your spouse’s. You can use your prenup to specify which assets are considered marital assets and provide guidelines for asset distribution should your marriage end in divorce.
• Protection against debts: Just as you can use your prenup to provide information and instructions about your assets, you can do the same with debts, shielding yourself from liability from any of the debts owed by your partner. This is especially important for people who live in community property states.
• Make the divorce go smoothly: By handling a lot of the issues of a divorce in your prenup, you can streamline the divorce process itself, preventing a lot of unnecessary delays and stress.
• Protect your business: If you are a business owner, you can use your prenup to spell out all business-related issues, including listing it as separate property so it does not get liquidated as part of your divorce.

For more information about the various benefits of using a prenup, contact a trusted Long Island divorce lawyer at Bryan L. Salamone & Associates.