What To Know About Getting Divorced With A Prenuptial Agreement

Did you decide to get a prenuptial agreement before you got married, and are now getting divorced? If so, you may think that this legal document is going to make the whole divorce process go smoothly. Here is what you can expect when getting divorced when you have a prenuptial agreement.

You'll Avoid Many Parts of Mediation with a Prenuptial Agreement

The hardest part of the divorce process will likely be mediation. It is when you and your spouse need to divide your assets by coming to an agreement on everything. Anything that you cannot agree on will eventually be settled in court by a judge, where the decision is taken completely out of your hands.

With a prenuptial agreement, you can skip mediation about anything you decided on prior to the marriage. For instance, if you already owned a home prior to meeting your spouse, it may have been decided that you will get to keep the house rather than split the equity that you paid into it. The same logic can be applied to debts that you had before the marriage, where it is decided that the other person will not be responsible for paying back a loan that is not their own. Prenuptial agreement can even state how much alimony a spouse will receive if it was agreed on before the marriage.

Where things will get complicated is when new assets are acquired that were not accounted for before the marriage. You'll likely still need to go through mediation for these types of things.

Your Spouse May Challenge the Prenuptial Agreement

Know that it is always possible for a spouse to challenge the prenuptial agreement. There are many reasons that this could happen, which starts with the situation under which the prenuptial agreement was signed. A spouse could claim that they were not aware of what they were signing, that there were made to sign an agreement that they didn't realize was very unfair to them, or that the document is not legally binding.

The prenuptial agreement may also be contested due to the reasons of the divorce. For example, if the marriage is ending due to infidelity, it may be viewed by the court as a violation of the prenuptial agreement.

It's always a good idea to work with a divorce lawyer during a divorce proceeding for these reasons, even when you have a prenuptial agreement and think things will go smoothly. For more information, visit websites like http://WWW.TML-LAW.com.

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