Marital agreements define whose property is whose. If you’re in a community property state like California or Idaho you’ve got community property, you have separate property. Generally, gifts received by inheritance or otherwise are one separate property. If I take that separate property and put it into a joint account with my spouse, I am likely making a gift to my spouse. You know young people are not, generally don’t care to have marital agreements, some people feel that it’s not necessary. For parents, parents can guide and dictate what stays separate property by leaving assets in trust for a child. For young married people if one comes to the relationship with significant assets and the other one doesn’t, it’s best just to clarify who’s is who and what’s what.

For older people who might have children from other marriages it’s really not a matter of what happens in the event of divorce it tends to that also so it’s not to say that it doesn’t impact divorce, it does. But if you think about in terms of planning for your children as opposed to planning for the failure of your marriage. Because at death what happens is you have to figure out what separate property and what’s community property.

And so, it’s really a mechanism to protect your children and to organize your affairs in a tidy way that avoids conflict. It becomes very messy very quickly if you’ve moved from a non-community property state to a community property state. Even moving simply from one community property state to another, for example moving from California to Idaho, the community property laws are slightly different and they are not as people generally expect. Having an agreement whether it’s before marriage or made after marriage it’s a way to clarify and avoid future conflicts. And it benefits everyone, not just the spouses but kids and it’s strongly recommended.