Pre and Post-Nuptial Agreements Attorney in Minneapolis, Minnesota
What advice do you have for people considering a premarital agreement?
What advice do you have for people considering a premarital agreement?
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well prenuptial agreements are
you know there’s a place for them
if you’re coming in to say for for
example it’s a second marriage
and both parties are pretty established
financially and one party has 10 million
dollars in the bank and another party
has a small business
and
they’re going to get married
and they want to keep those things
separate
and they want to you know make sure that
if they do get divorced
that those issues are not going to be
before the court dividing the business
or dividing the um the money that
they’ve inherited or dividing
real estate that they presently own um
and there’s some nuance to that often
also there will there will be a
provision in a prenup that no spousal
maintenance will be paid
so you know people are doing that to
protect themselves um and the property
over a long period of time
the thing about pre-marital agreements
is if you’re really young and you’re
starting out as a partnership in
marriage and say you have a hundred
thousand dollars here and fifty thousand
dollars there and somebody comes to me
with a pre-marital agreement
the desire for one i often advise them
don’t bother
you don’t need it
those pieces of property are non-marital
there’s ways to keep track of it there’s
ways that i can advise you on how to
keep them separate so that if you do get
divorced the non-marital components of
that property gets acknowledged by the
court and prenuptial agreements can put
pressure on on a partnership it can it
can almost interfere with
people just
putting everything together and just
setting forth hand in hand in a marriage
so i don’t advise those for really young
people getting married the one other
caveat about prenuptial agreements
is that they need to be
procedurally fair
at the time that they are drafted in
other words if you’re getting married in
two days before the marriage you’re down
in the care of being at your destination
wedding and you whip out a prenuptial
agreement and hand it to your
prospective groom to be
and and say here you got to sign this
before we get married and and and they
and they they sign it you’re like well
okay i
i guess so you can imagine how that
would feel
they’re gonna come back
and if the person who presented that
tries to enforce it the court is gonna
say this was not procedurally fair you
didn’t give this person enough time to
consult an individual attorney on their
own to make sure that this was a fair
document so that’s what procedural
fairness is and then it has to be fair
at the time of enforcement uh say you
have a prenuptial agreement and then
somebody in the marriage and you’ve
agreed to know spousal maintenance but
you’ve been married for 20 years and and
the person who
would be the recipient of spousal
maintenance maybe they had a medical
condition that prevents them from
working and there’s plenty of money on
on the other side a court is not going
to enforce that because it’s not fair
they’ve put 20 years in maybe they’ve
raised the kids they can’t take care of
themselves the court’s going to throw
that prenuptial agreement out
Minneapolis, MN family law attorney Michael Fink shares his advice for people considering a premarital agreement. He states that prenuptial agreements have their place, particularly in situations where both parties are financially established—such as a second marriage where one spouse has substantial assets and the other owns a business. In these cases, a prenup can protect property, inheritance, or business interests, and may include provisions limiting or eliminating spousal maintenance. It provides certainty about what happens if the marriage ends, keeping certain assets separate from division in court.
However, he notes that for younger couples just starting out, he often advises against prenuptial agreements. At that stage, most assets are minimal, and there are ways to track non-marital property without introducing the pressures that a prenup can bring. A prenup can unintentionally create tension in a marriage by putting the focus on separation rather than partnership.
He emphasizes the importance of procedural fairness: a prenup must be presented well in advance of the wedding to allow each party sufficient time to consult their own attorney and fully understand the agreement. Handing a document to sign on the day of the wedding would likely render it unenforceable.
Finally, he stresses that a prenup must also be substantively fair at the time of enforcement. Even a well-drafted agreement can be invalidated if circumstances change dramatically—such as a spouse becoming unable to work due to medical issues after 20 years of marriage. Courts will not enforce provisions that would leave someone destitute or unfairly burdened, regardless of the original agreement.
