Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: Prenups without a wedding...

Technically, this question is for my NANO original fiction, but it could apply to fic to so...

As I understand it, you sign the prenup some period of time before the wedding - a week? Month? Whatever, but not like... at the ceremony when you sign the license, right?

I'm also thinking about Lois and Lex here. I don't KNOW that he would have insisted on a prenup because he'd just have her killed if something went wrong, but if he did have her sign one some period of time before the wedding...

What happens if she calls off the wedding? Can there be a stipulation in there that if she doesn't marry him, there is some kind of penalty?

I know nothing about them :p . Anyone know anything about how they work?

ETA: Okay, online research has said that they recommend signing a prenup at least 30 days before the wedding and best if it's done before the invitations go out so that there's less chance of being accused of 'coercion' [oh by the way honey, i know we had the rehearsal dinner tonight, would you mind signing this? kind of thing]. But I can't find anything that says what happens if there's no wedding... does it just go poof?

What about something along the lines of 'if the wedding doesn't happen, each party is responsible for half the nonrefundable expenses associated with the wedding/honeymoon' - imagine that if Lex hadn't jumped :p .

I'd say the prenup is only binding if there is a nup (wedding). As far as expenses - who would normally pay when there is no wedding? I don't know.
Sue

No idea about the pre-nup. But since you mentioned Lex. He did have an ex-wife who got a company in her name

As for the wedding blowing up. In lawyer-shows that focus on civil law, there's always at least one episode where the leavee sues the leaver for emotional hurt, expenses, etc.

Michael

Courts won't enforce a clause in a contract that is against public policy. I would expect that forcing someone to get married if they don't want to would fall under that. Of course you can put anything in a contract and if a person just does what it says instead of taking it to court it works. That is why places post signs saying thaey are not rsponsible for thisngs that they legally are, some people will belive it and not sue them when they could.

A pre-nup is usually an agreement for how financial assets will allocated during the marriage and be divided if the marriage is dissolved. Generally it's used when one person is bringing a lot more assets into the marriage than the other, as would be the case with Lex and Lois. (It could also be used to protect the financial interests of children from a prior relationship.) If the marriage never takes place, the pre-nup never applies. And I can't imagine a court upholding a contract that says one person is forced to marry another upon threat of penalty. The mere existence of such a contract would imply coercion.

In the example you cited, about who would pay any bills, I could see a contract like that being enforceable. But I also think that, on a reasonable person scale, if one party had vastly more assets than the other, the second party would 1) be crazy for signing it, since it would be very coercive (and IMO, a big red flag for even being introduced) and 2) potential grounds for going to court to say it was coercive should the terms ever come to pass. I don't know whether the second party would win or not, but I'm sure he/she would have no trouble finding a lawyer to take the case.

As for how pre-nups work in general, typically each person has their own attorney to represent their interests. Even if one person doesn't want to use an attorney, sometimes the other attorney will insist on it, so that the first person can't go to court later and claim it was unfairly created, etc. (That was the situation with a friend of mine, who was willing to sign her pre-nup without representation, but her husband's attorney insisted that she get one.) Once the terms are agreed upon, each party signs the contract and it can then be used to settle whatever applicable disagreement comes up.

HTH!

There are a growing number of prenups that have more to do with preventing or ameliorating divorce. They include both parties involved agreeing to marital counseling before separating or similar. They may be recommended by specific religious groups and/or officiants, and there was one that some states were pushing a few years back. One common name for the latter is "covenant marriage".