Only 10 percent of couples preparing for marriage get a pre-nuptial agreement yet one in two marriages end in divorce. Americans are obsessed with precautionary measures yet what we are trying to avoid ends up arriving anyway. Are we putting the aura of divorce over marriages by asking for prenuptial agreements before we walk the aisle?
The one question that seems to haunt me when I engage in any conversation about prenuptial agreements is how the lack of trust must be overwhelmingly present if you have to hide assets. I’m not a “just in case”, kind of girl when it comes to relationships, especially when dealing with marriage. I’m traditional and value the meaning of “forever” when it comes to matrimony, but discussing money and assets only kills the true meaning of what a marriage is to me.
I know that it is a legal agreement between two people that establishes the rights and accountabilities between the individuals, their future children and their in-laws. Nowhere in that definition did I mention the word love, but just because legally that is not its definition doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t love and trust the person you have decided to spend the rest of your life with. I would hope that is part of the conditions under which you marry a person, but a lot of what makes a marriage work is lost in these prenuptial decisions.
Why would you marry someone that you need a back-up plan for?
People change, some for better and some for worse, but in healthy marriages, the change happens as a unit not just as an individual. The purpose of a marriage in the spiritual sense is to grow together with another person. If people were to “change” couldn’t they do that on their own? Why get into marriage with the intentions of changing who you are if it only puts you at a pace that your partner is not at?
People get into marriages thinking about themselves from the beginning. The women are taught to plan the details of their future wedding before a husband even arrives. The dress, the flowers, how ivory the ivory silk on their veil will be – a moment meant for two is planned for one. This logic is applied in every facet of the marriage as it progresses and the pre-nup is only another manifestation of that. ‘We’ becomes ‘I’ especially if the worse happens before the better.
If you are sure enough to legally bind yourself with someone for the rest of your life, but not as certain about sharing a bank account and leaving your assets just as vulnerable as your heart then you need to re-evaluate why you are marrying this person. Divorce and pre-nuptials are comforting platforms for the confused and ensure; back up plans are great but if you do not feel passionately enough about a person that you need to keep divorce and pre-nuptials in the back burner, there is a great problem at the root of the relationship.