Wife for Hire

Magnify

Sure,” I tell my fiancé the first time he mentions a prenuptial agreement. I’ve always assumed he’d want one. He has money and that’s what people with money do - they protect it.

“I don’t really care about it,” he says with an apologetic grin, “it’s just that my financial adviser...”.

“It’s okay,” I interrupt him. “I’d love to.”

A couple of days later, on a warm early May evening, as we sip wine on the porch of his Cape Cod summer house, discussing what music to walk down the aisle to, he brings it up again. What a romance killer! The last thing I want right now - two months before we vow for better or worse, till death do us part - is to be dragged into a debate of who gets what in the event of divorce.

“Just draft the damn thing with your lawyer and I’ll sign it,” I say and get up to prepare dinner.

The third time he invokes the prenuptial is to tell me to get a lawyer. Unless I am legally represented, the contract is invalid. It isn’t enough that I have to plan the wedding and arrange the honeymoon, now I have to look for a lawyer, too?

“Don’t worry,” he says, “my attorney recommended one for you. Just call him and tell him that Mangold referred you.”

“But of course; and the name of the one he has recommended for me is Screwomenowsky?” I say, and we laugh. I mean it as a joke, but the idea of my team against his team begins to worry me.

While I admire the Manhattan skyline through the floor-to-ceiling windows of my lawyer’s midtown 19th-floor office, he gives me a brief review of New York State Marital Law.

If an asset is acquired after the marriage, he says, it is considered marital property unless it is a gift or inheritance. In the event of divorce, marital property is equitably divided between the spouses.

It sounds pretty fair to me, and I nod.

“You understand, don’t you,” he says, looking me in the eyes, “that with the prenuptial agreement your fiancé is asking you to waive the rights granted you by state law?”

I snap to attention. “Waive my rights?”

“He’ll specify in the prenuptial agreement what he wants to give you instead of what you have rights to under state law,” he says and explains that these kind of agreements are usually structured around the number of years the marriage lasts.

“Does that make sense?” he asks.