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[inaudible]. Hello and welcome to the trusted podcast. I’m your host, Blake Johnson. And today we’re going to talk about a couple of things, mostly regarding prenups, post-nuptial and po premarital agreements. What that means, how it all works and what your options are there. So let’s say you’ve found the one you want to marry you, uh, you have some assets of your own and you know, no one wants to think worst case scenario cause you’re, Trust Attorney Las Vegas you’re in love, you’re twitterpated and um, you think it’s gonna work out great. And I do hope and wish that that is the case. But we want to PR, we want to plan for the worst case scenario. That’s my job as an attorney, as an estate planning attorney, especially as to plan for the worst case scenarios and make your wishes, um, uh, yeah, put in place so that it happens the way that you want it to.
So, uh, if you, if you’re ahead of the game you’ve planned before the marriage and um, and you have assets and you want to do a prenup or that premarital agreement, what is it? It is a, it’s a contract. It is an agreement between two parties. And what you do is you lay out everything, all the assets that both of you have and your separate estates and you say, this is everything that’s mine and this is everything that’s yours and we’re going to keep it that way. Or we’ll say these, you know, the house will own jointly or you know, whatever the case may be is you can be, you want to be super detailed in this, make sure we hit all the bullet points and you want to make sure you disclose everything. Um, otherwise it may invalidate the prenup. And, um, the Trust Attorney Las Vegas, the other thing that a prenup does is it says in the case of divorce, what’s gonna Happen?
You can put in there, you know, how the assets stay yours, so the assets you had before they stay yours. Um, or you could say if you, if the marriage ends in a certain period of time, then it stays yours. Or after, you know, if it’s after 20 years, then they, they get a percentage of it. Um, you can also say lay out ahead of time that there will be spousal support or there won’t be spousal support and there won’t be child support or there will be child support. Um, that one’s kind of harder to get around, uh, cause, uh, if there’s not kids prior to the marriage, then, um, you can’t really dictate those terms in. Sometimes for public policy, courts will kind of ignore those clauses in a Prenup, but it doesn’t hurt to try. And especially if it’s reasonable, you say, hey, look, we will do trout support and we agree that, um, you know, a wife or husband is going to be paid, um, you know, $500 a month per kid or whatever the case may be Trust Attorney Las Vegas.
Um, but the whole point is to, to lay it all out there, be upfront, say, all right, here’s what we’re agreeing to. We’re, we’re in love. We, we hope it all works out. We’re saying that while we’re, we’re on good terms, we want to lay everything out. Um, so it’s very clear what’s going on. So, uh, what’s, let’s um, you got married and you were so twitterpated you forgot to get the prenup is, are you out of luck? And the answer is no. You can do a postnuptial agreement and it’s acts just the same as a prenup. It’s just saying that after you got married, you guys are agreeing to the same terms, the terms of, you know, if we ever get divorced, this is what’s going to happen. These assets are to remain husband’s separate property. These other assets are to remain wife’s separate property.
These ones are considered joint and will be split 50, 50, whatever the case may be. That’s, that’s how you do it. And plan your state from a, for a marital agreement. K now who needs one of these prenups are post nups. Um, typically you want to have at least some assets. It doesn’t have to be a lot if you have a house or a significant savings or investment account and you know, 50,000 plus, you want that to be subject to the divorce. Would you want that to remain your separate property? Um, there’s no real dollar amount there. It’s just matter of whether you feel it’s necessary or not to, to risk it. Um, in the divorce, uh, business owners definitely want to be willing to concern concerning this because you own the business beforehand. You don’t want to have to split ownership with the business after you get divorced Trust Attorney Las Vegas.
Um, and still remain partners with your ex spouse or have, you know, a few businesses, the bulk of your assets. Um, if you keep the business and the wife’s skin or her husband’s going to keep everything else in the divorce to make things equal. Cause that’s typically the way courts work in a divorce is they keep the assets in the estate equal for each party as much as possible. If as long as it’s not separate property. If it’s separate property, meaning that you owned it before marriage or you received it by inheritance and you kept it separate, then that remains yours unless you specify in it in a prenup or a postnup that that’s going to be split. Um, definitely recommend, um, doing the prenup or postnup for second or third plus marriages. Just because you know, there’s a lot of complications that go into that.
Do you want your assets to go to your kids or do you want to go to spouse? Um, that brings up another point with estate planning. If you’re in a second or third marriage, definitely want to get your trust and will redone or make sure that it’s in place the correct way. Cause if you don’t have the, any of those documents and let’s say you die first, everything goes to spouse. Um, cause that’s the way you left it or based on, you know, if you commingle all the assets and it now becomes community property, it goes to spouse when she, when they die, um, that’s going to go to their kids, not to any of your kids. Your kids kind of get disinherited without meaning to. Um, so really important to get your trust and your estate planning done from that perspective. But back to prenup.
Postnup I’m another person who wants to do it is someone who, if you receive a large inheritance, even after the marriage, you said, okay, let’s do a postnup to, to agree that, you know, even though we may put this, use some of this for some community assets to buy stuff together, um, I want to get this back because it’s my inheritance. Um, so that’d be another reason to do it. Now let’s say, um, you have significant assets and you would do not want to disclose those assets to your future spouse. Um, what can you do? Or, um, let’s also say that you can’t get your significant other to sign the prenup or postnup what are your options? Um, now if you haven’t, haven’t gotten married yet, uh, options are better. Um, either way you can set up a separate property trust and it’s just a revokable trust.
Um, but we’re saying that this property is to be your separate property. So if you haven’t gotten married yet, really easy, really clear. Says, all right, these are the assets that I had. We put them in the trust this day. So it’s very cut and dry, clear. This is my assets. And so we can always prove to the court that you’re, that’s your separate property and um, ex spouse has no claim to it. Um, we just have to just show, show the trust document, show the transfer dates, so a little bit more work than if you had the, the prenup or postnup. Um, but it does essentially do the same thing. It’s a prenup without having to get the other party to sign because we say here is clearly everything that was mined separately, no issues there. Um, you can also do a separate property trust after you get married and do that for the inheritance you receive now would be a good one to do it for Trust Attorney Las Vegas.
Um, and as long as you’ve kept your assets separate, even after the marriage, you could put them into a separate property trust. So if you had, let’s say, a rental house, um, and it always stayed in your name, then you can transfer that into a separate property trust even after you get married. And that acts as a postnup without having to get the other party’s signature. So that’s kind of, um, uh, the main actions that you can take. And then of course, always if you keep your property separate so you keep it solely in your name, you don’t co-mingle it mean you don’t join it with your spouses assets. Um, and you can show that paper trail that will always be your separate property if it comes to a divorce. So, uh, that’s prenups pro signups and other, um, marital agreements that you can do. Uh, you know, ideally you would do both the separate property trust and a prenup beforehand. Uh, but obviously, you know, things don’t always work out the way we, we intend. Sometimes we get sidetracked with especially being in love. So, um, point being, you know, reach out to an Trust Attorney Las Vegas , see what we can do to help protect those assets in the worst case scenario. So thank you for listening and this is Blake with trusted estate planning. Um, and hope you enjoy the podcast. Thanks. Bye.
