Dear Jane,
My husband demands that I sign a POST-nuptial agreement because he wants his children from another marriage to get a share of my money.
We have both been married for seven years and share a five-year-old daughter; We also have two children each from previous marriages, all of them in their 20s. When we met, I owned my own home, as did he, and we are both lucky to work well-paying jobs, although he makes about ten times more than I do.
Still, we’ve never had to worry about money.
When we started discussing the idea of marriage, I brought up the topic of a prenuptial agreement. Since we were both entering the relationship with our own assets, as well as our own financial obligations, I thought it would be a good idea to put everything in writing.
Dear Jane, My husband is demanding that I sign a postnuptial agreement so that his children from a previous marriage can access my money.
He immediately rejected the idea, insisting that he loved me and wasn’t at all worried about our relationship. Since I was so in love, I decided not to press the issue and just a few months later we got married. Since then, we both sold our houses and moved to a larger house, where we now live with our daughter.
After we made the decision to buy a house together, I suggested that we write a joint will detailing what would happen to our house and our finances if one of us died before the other.
Our current wills are from when we were both single parents and I want to make sure our daughter is protected. But every time he tried to discuss it, he would ignore me or try to find a way to change the subject.
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Unfortunately, our marriage has not turned out as I had hoped, and while we are in therapy in an attempt to save our relationship, it is becoming even more clear to me that we need to get all of our finances in order.
So I finally addressed the whole issue head-on, only for him to turn around and tell me that he now wants to discuss a post-nuptial agreement because he wants to make sure his two children from his previous marriage get a fair deal. part of “our” money.
To be clear, we’ve always kept our finances totally separate: he does what he wants with his money and I have no control over how he decides to spend it.
So for him to now suggest that his two children should have some of “our” money is crazy to me, especially since I spent a lot of time trying to convince him how important it was that we address this before we got married.
I’m very afraid that his children will come after me if anything ever happens to him, and I will have to fend for myself and my daughter.
I need advice on how to proceed. I feel so betrayed. So surprised. It has changed my entire feeling about this marriage, a feeling that wasn’t so good to begin with.
Of,
Spouse in conflict
Dear Conflicted Spouse:
See a lawyer as soon as possible.
I’m afraid nothing in your letter makes much sense to me, let alone that you are going through marital problems and now is the time your husband chooses to make this ridiculous request, given that you already keep your finances completely separate.
I’m not sure how you consider it “our” money, when you keep everything separate, although many US states consider everything within the marriage, marital property, and look for equitable distribution.
Please take care of yourself and your future.
You don’t have to start divorce proceedings, but you do need to know exactly what your situation is and how to protect yourself.
A good lawyer will advise you on this, but any advice columnist will tell you that even thinking about a postnuptial agreement that would benefit one more than the other, when your marriage is already struggling, is a big, firm no.