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Imagine entering a partnership agreement that not only safeguards your wealth but also your relationship. Yes, we're talking about prenuptial and post-nuptial agreements. In this episode, Jessica and Brandon sit down with Aaron Thomas, Harvard Law School graduate and founder of Prenups.com. With clients ranging from NBA hall of famers and Superbowl winners to Grammy award winning artists, Aaron has extensive experience representing his clients in a range of family law matters. As a three-time winner of Atlanta’s Best Divorce Attorney, you’ll want to tune in to learn from Aaron, and find out more about the positive impact a prenuptial agreement can have on your marriage. Get ready to ditch the negative stereotypes holding you back from creating an even happier union.
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Notes from the show:
Connect with Aaron Thomas at prenups.com
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His book “The Prenup Prescription” will be out later this year. You can check his website for updates.
Everyone you know. If you look at a prenup is kind of like a set of rules that defines how you manage your finances During the marriage as well as in a divorce. Everybody's got a prenup, every married couple's got a prenup. You either have one that you have crafted yourself, we have one that the state you happen to live in has written for you, and most people have not read that prenup and they don't know what it says and they probably wouldn't sign it if they had read it beforehand. And so there's just, you know, an easier way to, you know, address the finances than leaving it up to chance.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, welcome to the sugar daddy podcast. I'm Jessica and I'm Brandon, and we're the Norwoods, a husband and wife team here to demystify the realm of dollars so it all makes sense while giving you a glimpse into our relationship with money and each other. We are so glad you're here. Let's get started.
Speaker 3:Our content is intended to be used, and must be used, for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment, based upon your own personal circumstances. You should take independent financial advice from a licensed professional in connection with, or independently research and verify any information you find in our podcast and we should rely upon, whether for the purpose of making an investment decision or otherwise.
Speaker 4:Hey babe, what are we talking about today?
Speaker 2:today we are talking about prenups which we don't have.
Speaker 4:We don't need, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Aaron Thomas is gonna be here to tell us if we need one or not, and I think we might be leaving with a to-do list too late anyway, so I don't know, I listen. I've been following Aaron Thomas and I don't think it's too late, but today we are here saying it's too late cuz I'm not gonna get one.
Speaker 4:That's what.
Speaker 2:I'm saying You're not getting one.
Speaker 4:Oh.
Speaker 2:My gosh. Okay, we're already getting off the rails here. Aaron, we are so excited to have you here on the sugar daddy podcast. We're gonna find out about that. Thank you for being with us. Clearly, brandon has some strong opinions about prenups.
Speaker 4:But just about ours. I'm else's is really different scenario. Oh gosh, can you Sit a little bit? Yours is mine, mine is yours.
Speaker 2:Aaron, we clearly have some questions for you today. Thank you for being with us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I'm excited to be here. Clearly we've got some work to do so.
Speaker 2:Clearly, oh my gosh he's stuck with me.
Speaker 4:He doesn't matter, she's stuck with me. I'm not doing this again.
Speaker 2:Okay, so clearly you guys have figured out that we are here with an attorney today. Aaron Thomas will get into his bio in just a second, but we are gonna be talking all about prenups, what it is, who needs one we might need one I don't know what's going on today and all of the questions that surround Prenups, post-nuptial agreements, etc. So let's get into this bio and then, aaron, we're gonna ask you some some questions. Does that work for you?
Speaker 1:Sounds good, sounds good Okay.
Speaker 2:All right. Aaron Thomas is a family law attorney and founder of prenupscom. As a three-time winner of Atlanta's best divorce Attorney, aaron is one of the nation's top experts in family law issues. He is a 2002 graduate of Harvard Law School no big deal and his firm Aaron Thomas law was recognized by peers as one of the fastest growing family law firms in the state of Georgia, with clients ranging from NBA Hall of Famers and Super Bowl winners to Grammy Award-winning artists. Aaron has extensive experience Representing his clients in a range of family law matters, including divorce, custody, child support and prenuptial and post-nuptial agreements. As founder of prenupscom, aaron is widely viewed as the go-to source for writing fair prenups. He carries a fundamental belief that establishing a solid financial foundation during engagement can prevent many common marital disputes and that fair prenups help create happy marriages. I love that. That's fantastic. Okay, oh, I have so many questions.
Speaker 4:I have one question. I have a question.
Speaker 2:We're gonna start with our normal question. Okay, yes. Okay, aaron, we're excited that you're here, but first we need to know what your first money memory is.
Speaker 1:Oh, oh yeah, first money memory. You know, I Remember, you know, as kids I don't think we have a good you know ideas to whether or not we're wealthy or poor, kind of where we Stand. I remember going to a friend's house In elementary school who had an intercom in his house, you know, where his mom Could call downstairs to upstairs, and he had a playroom that was basically like the square footage of the entire, you know, first floor of my house growing up and and I remember being like, oh, this is what being rich looks like, this is this is what having money looks like. I think that'd be my love it.
Speaker 2:That's so funny that you say that because my best friend Her house had an intercom growing up and I remember having that same Thought of like oh my gosh, your house is so big, you have to push a button to communicate with the people upstairs, you know we had an intercom in our house. Of course we did.
Speaker 4:We had an intercom and we had our own. You know, the third story was the attic was completely finished, so it was a playroom, so it's a good big space, but we weren't rich, we were well-to-do, but I wouldn't say we were rich. But I guess the matter of perspective, as you say, matter of respect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, from my, from my standpoint, you would have been rich.
Speaker 2:I'll read your comments, Erin. I love it. That's fantastic. Okay, you were gonna ask him something.
Speaker 4:I was gonna ask him so how did you decide to go into family law? What made you make that decision?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I really stumbled into family law. I don't think that many kids, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, say, oh, I want to be a divorce lawyer when I grow up. So I I got recruited into a family law firm. I had some trial experience. That kind of made a little name for myself in the courtroom, and a Firm that represented, you know, a lot of athletes and celebrities was looking for somebody with trial experience and they recruited me into into the family law firm. So I mean it was quite. It was quite the change for me. I'd been a criminal defense attorney beforehand and you know, imagine being 30 years old and you know my parents are still married. Most of my friends weren't even married yet, much less had they gone through a divorce. And all of a sudden I'm thrust into, you know, a world of acrimonious divorce. I mean it was. It was quite a journey for me.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'll say I did. I did a year of law school and then, you know, it didn't become an attorney and I don't recall anybody that I was in law school with talking about. They want to do family time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's not the, it's not the most popular area, but somebody's got to do it and it's. It's actually a needed service. I mean, once I got into it I said, yeah, I mean you don't want to need a family law attorney, but when you need one, you want a good one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Okay. Well, let's get into preneps, because this is now your realm, right, you're the prenep guy, you are the founder of prenepscom, which great I mean great web address, right, makes so much sense. Like, why would you not just prenepscom makes so much sense. Can you talk to us about what a prenep is? I know we've all heard it, we know that celebrities, very wealthy people, get them. But what is a prenep?
Speaker 1:Yeah, a prenep is essentially a a partnership agreement for your marriage. So it's an agreement that addresses the rules of the road for if you get divorced, but also during the marriage itself. Okay so we hear a lot about.
Speaker 2:We hear a lot about you know people again, celebrities and things. I mean, you know we're not privy to normal people's prenups. So the celebrity, the wealthy, the people in the spotlight that their prenups Include like rules, right, well, if you cheat on me, then this, or if you do this, then that is that what makes up a Prenep. Is those like if, then statements? Is that the norm?
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, pre-nups can include those kinds of things. I mean, I like to view them as kind of having three parts, you know. First is what are you coming in with? Um, you know, what are the assets you have coming in, what are the debts that you have coming in. Part two is kind of during the marriage. What are going to be the rules during the marriage? Do you have spending limits? How are you going to pay for bills? Do you use joint accounts? Do you use separate accounts? And then part three would be, uh, what I could euphemistically call the uh, the contingency plans. So what happens if the marriage doesn't last? You know, how do you uh extricate yourself from the marriage financially, how do you divide assets and debts? That type of thing.
Speaker 4:I guess I didn't realize that a pre-nup involves also you know kind of rules and stipulations of why you're actually married. I always thought of it in my mind is more or less in the event that you know things don't work out. This is what the pre-nup is for. This is going to spell out what happens. So that's interesting to know that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, before I started doing family law, I thought the same thing, you know, I thought that a pre-nup was essentially just if you get divorced, this is how you split it up. And I think I think even today, most lay people think that, you know, a pre-nup is essentially just a plan for divorce. I mean, that's why so many people object to them is because it's it looks like, or it feels like, you're planning your divorce before the marriage even starts. Um, I look at it as you know. Like I said, I used the analogy of a partnership agreement. I think a lot of people understand, kind of a business partnership. Um, it wouldn't be a very good business partnership agreement if you didn't spell out, okay, what happens if we sell the business or if one of the partners leaves the business? Um, but of course, your partnership agreement is also going to define what are your responsibilities during. You know the, the, the pendency of the business itself. Pre-nup is the same way. What are going to be the rules of the road during the marriage itself. Um, you know the. The example I just gave is like you know spending limits, Um, you know if you're going to spend money from a joint bank account, you know? Do you have to discuss it beforehand? Is it expenses over a certain amount of money that you're going to discuss beforehand? Who pays what bills that you can? You know that you had coming in. So if one spouse has student loan debt, are you going to pay those monthly payments with joint money? Are you going to pay with separate money? Um, same thing for anything else that somebody has coming in. So, um, it can really run the gamut. But any good prenuptial agreement is absolutely going to address, um, how you pay for your expenses and and what the rules of the road are during the marriage itself.
Speaker 2:Makes a lot of sense. What about, well, so? So I'll ask you this question, because Brandon gets it a lot as a financial planner, right, it was like, well, I'm not a millionaire, so I don't need a financial planner. And it's like well, the same analogy of like okay, I want to get in shape. Well, you don't usually go to a trainer when you already have a six pack, right, it's like you go to the trainer to get the six pack. So at what stage or when do you suggest reaching out to the likes of you to start the prenupt process, and who needs a prenupt?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no great question, because it is. It's such a common misconception that you've got to be rich to need a prenupt, and you know I look at a prenupt as a tool to prevent messy divorces. You know there's essentially two ways you're going to do that. One is to spell out exactly how you're going to divide everything if you do get divorced, so that you're not spending, you know, two years and 10s of thousands of dollars in a courtroom to figure that out. But the other way to prevent a messy divorce is to avoid the divorce altogether, which means eliminating arguments about money kind of the very predictable arguments that couples have during their marriage and trying to come up with ways to resolve those beforehand so that you don't have those predictable arguments, particularly about money. So you know, what makes a divorce messy is not the amount of money that you have when you get married, it's the amount of money you have at the end of the marriage, and so you certainly don't need to be a millionaire on the date of the wedding. But if you are that on that trajectory you know Henry's they call him high, high earners, not rich, yet People who are on the trajectory maybe you've got, you know, a hundred grand in a retirement account and somebody who that's their only asset. They got a hundred grand in a retirement account. They will tell you oh, I've got nothing. I've got nothing coming to the marriage. You know somebody else a hundred grand might be a lot of money but you know, to them they don't think it's a lot of money. Well, that hundred grand can grow to 200 to 400, you know, to 800 grand over the course of a marriage. And if that is money that would otherwise be defined as your separate property and instead you got to split it, you know I don't know anyone that wasn't you know that wouldn't spend a few, you know a few grand to protect half a million on the back end.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, oh yeah.
Speaker 4:I've, I must say, when I first got into finance, I used to work at Fidelity and I was working in the 401k plans, mainly for IBM. But I remember having to, you know, do quadros for people, and it's basically, you know, when people get divorced and one spouse is entitled to half of the other individuals on retirement plan, and those conversations were the worst.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, oh yeah, I mean the fact that you can know that term. Okay, so this is.
Speaker 2:I love. I like that you're. You're talking about it as a partnership, right? I think it puts it into a positive light. You know, obviously also in your bio you were saying that a pre-nep can can make the marriage happier and stronger, because you're planning. You're not planning for a divorce, right? Nobody that I know is getting married to then be like, ah, I can just get a divorce, no big deal. But life be life and we know that. So it's good to have a plan in place. And if you're planning for all these other things, why would you not plan for a proper exit, right? Like if you're looking at it as a partnership? So I like that you're stating it that way. Do people like you know, let's say, somebody's getting married in their mid 20s, early 30s, maybe has a 401k but no substantial assets Do you recommend them to get to have a pre-nep? That just evolves and changes over time? Or do you feel like there's a certain point maybe? Okay, my 401k hit $100,000. Now I should reach out to an attorney. Is there a kind of a turning point within the financial aspect where you recommend somebody then reach out? Or when is the good time a good time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think certainly you could use a net worth number. I mean, if you've got a hundred grand, the cost of a few grand to protect that, and what that hundred grand could turn into. I think you're definitely at the point where you could benefit from a prenup. But even beyond that, I think you have to look at the complexity of somebody's financial affairs. And a lot of us, particularly our generation, we have a tendency to underestimate the complexity of our finances, particularly when compared to, say, our parents' generation. So you know, my parents got married in the 1960s, okay, and a couple in the 1960s. Their finances really were super simple. I mean first, the average couple back then got married at like age 21. Today it's more like 30 for a first marriage, but a couple back then. They got married at age 21. Student loans weren't anything like they are today. You could literally work your way through school. Credit cards had just been invented so most people didn't have them. 401ks had not been invented yet. You know, the average couple back then. They might have one bank account between the two of them. They had no property, no retirement, no student loan debt, no credit card debt, you know, maybe a vehicle between the two of them. And you compare that with a couple getting married today, they're on average, you know, they're on average age 30 of their first marriage. They're likely to have four to five bank accounts each, three to four credit cards each, a retirement account or two because they didn't roll over the first one. Right, they've got two vehicles between them, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands in student loans, a house with some equity, maybe a small business. And so, you know, the couple getting married in the 1960s to continue on the business analogy was like a startup in somebody's garage with, you know, starting from absolute scratch. The average couple getting married today, it's like a corporate merger, you know, trying to combine. Wow, you know that kind of those kinds of financial lives. And you, just you would never do something like that without, even if you don't get an actual agreement, without at least sitting down and having a serious conversation about what are the rules going to be. You know the debts that you're bringing in and, besides just the assets and the debts, the habits that we have formed around our finances during that decade of life since we moved out of our parents' houses. That might be even more important than the differences between the different that we have in net worth or assets and debts is you know, what kind of habits do you have? Are you the kind of person that pays off your credit cards in full every month, or are you carrying balances and just paying the minimum? You know, have you been investing in your retirement accounts from the very beginning of your relationship? Or, you know, have you cashed out every time you've changed employers? So I think that kind of conversation is is necessary and a pre-op forces that conversation.
Speaker 2:Wow, well, when you put it like that, I feel like we should have a prenup the startup versus the corporation.
Speaker 4:All of those were fantastic analogies, so yeah, cuz I like I know just from you, know experience as far as what I do that you, the number of people that actually sit down and have these End-depth conversations when it comes to finances and then also just the behaviors behind finance, it doesn't occur like you have people that have been married for years and have never had these conversations. It's kind of crazy to me only because obviously what I do, but then also, like Jeff's and I but you know, proud of us getting married we have these conversations and I wasn't even like fully into finance yet when we first met, but we still have these conversations because it's so important, because I wouldn't say that a lack of money or Finances is the number one reason that people break up, but when you have, when you have issues there, it amplifies everything else.
Speaker 1:Right, right, I mean communication. You know, on one level or another, may be the top reason that people break up. And If you're not communicating about other things, you're likely not communicating about money, and money is just one of those. It's so taboo, people don't want to talk about it. You know, if you got 50 grand in credit card debt, you know that's not exactly first-day material, right, we're trying to put our best foot forward and we're showing, like you know, the Instagram versions of ourselves. And then you know, right, and then, and then, when does it happen? There's never a good time, you know, to like sit down and be like okay, by the way, here's my credit report and here's, you know, like, the balance on my student loans, and it's it's not, you know, necessarily fun or romantic, and so a lot of people skip it. And you know I've done probably a thousand divorces in my career and you just be shocked how many people have been married 20, 30 years and they still never have that conversation. And here they are at the end of the relationship and they have no idea what the assets are. You know what the debts are, you know what the practices are, what the hell bills are being paid, and you know it's certainly a factor. You know, even if it's not the number one reason. You know couples that are that are splitting up. They may disagree on a lot of things, but they're almost certainly disagreeing on financial matters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's so wild. I think Brandon and I came into our relationship. Hey, we were. He was 30. I was 28. We already owned homes, we, you know, we just weren't playing games. My parents got divorced After 35 years of marriage. So I was an adult during their divorce, which was not pleasant, and I, you know, his parents got divorced when he was five. I was in my mid to late 20s when my parents got divorced. I don't know that either one of them is ideal, right, because as a child you're like, is it me? Why are they fighting? What you know?
Speaker 4:if you think that you internalize, but also to preface, my mom has been divorced four times, so I've seen that, yeah, she just went through her fourth divorce.
Speaker 2:But so at that time it was she had gone through three. My parents got divorced after 35 years. We were like we're doing this once. So we just we laid out all the rules right. We talked about all the non sexy, non fun things. Also, we were friends first, so that helped, because then there's no pressure in having those conversations. So we just kind of laid it all out on the table. So. But for example, I came in to the relationship with a hundred thousand dollars in student loans. I have two master's degrees, brandon has an undergraduate degree and then stopped and didn't have any loans. So you're saying, yeah, we could have filled out or done a prenup to say, hey, if this goes south, you're responsible for your student loans and you don't have to pay them as a couple. Is that correct?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean that that would be you know kind of one thing. You know, I like to use the idea of I call them money buckets you know what's mine, what's yours, what's ours, you know, and you can split up your assets into those buckets, you can split up your debts into those buckets in terms of who's responsible for them, and then I think it also works for during the marriage with how the money flows, right, you know what expenses are going to be paid from. You know my money, what expenses? And I think it's important for couples to have their separate money as well. You know, I know that Not everyone on this call is a big fan of joint accounts, but you can have a Join, yeah, yeah, and I think I mean, I think that's that's a good idea to have a joint account and decide, you know how is that joint account going to be funded. You know there's I call it, there's the inside out way of funding the joint account or the outside in. So inside out is your paychecks go into the joint account and then you each get kind of an allowance for lack of a better way to put it that comes out of the joint account and goes into your separate accounts or your income can flow into your separate account and then you both contribute to a joint account that pays for the joint expenses. But I think it's super important for each spouse to have their own money, especially in, you know, today's day and age, and To be able to spend on the things that you want to spend on, without oversight or feeling like every single time that you stop by Chick-fil-A it's going to be scrutinized, you know, by your spouse, or you know, because it's more important how much you spend, not what you spend it on. And by having every single expense come out of the joint account, it causes tension, which is, you know, really unnecessary if you kind of separate things out and have your own money now let's.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about that, because you obviously know I have always been like I'm gonna have my own accounts. We don't need to have everything combined, we don't need to be Authorized users on each other's credit cards and all of that. Right, your score is yours, mine is mine. But In the event of a divorce, does it matter if you have joint or separate accounts or if we don't have a prenup, is it? Hey, the bucket is the bucket, and now we're gonna have to figure out how to split it, regardless of whose name is on the account.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's that is the perfect question, because if you do not have a prenup or a post up, it's not too late. If you don't have a prenup or a post now, then it doesn't matter whose name is on any of the assets, whose name is on any of the bank accounts. The court is going to treat everything like it is marital property. Now the rule is you're supposed to keep what you had coming in and you're supposed to divide what you had. You know what you accumulate together. But in practice that never really works. If you don't have a written agreement because, for example, you come into the marriage with a 401k, it's not like you stop contributing that 401k and open up a new 401k on the date of the marriage, right, and after 10 years, 15 years of marriage, how do you prove how much of the growth in your 401k came from the money that you had as of the date of the marriage and how much of the growth in that account came from the money that you contributed over the course of the marriage? And figuring out that one question costs people Americans literally billions of dollars in legal fees and Forensic account and fees in divorce cases every year. That could just be avoided if you had a rule. You know, for example, some couples will say all right, your retirement is your retirement, my retirement is my retirement. And We'll have a rule, like my wife and I do, that will sit down once a year and we'll talk about what we're going to do in terms of contributing to retirement accounts and we try to match, we try to keep keep it equal. If she's maxing out hers for one K, then I'll max out my 401k and we'll keep me cool. And that way there's no quadro necessary, there's no division of the retirement counts necessary because we've kept pace Over the course of the marriage and some couples we even go a step further so that if one spouse takes a break from the workforce for some agreed upon purpose usually raising kids or being a homemaker that We'll have the couple contribute to the non-working spouses, like brokerage account, in an amount that is equal to what the working spouse is getting in his or her retirement account. And that way is. That's another way to avoid dividing retirement accounts at the end, and I think it's just helpful for couples to have money in their Own names. Just psychologically it's like a good idea to know that. Alright, that is something that I could access without having to get permission from somebody else or having to pen on somebody else, and that's just one example of, you know, rules that couples can make that can, you know, help during the marriage as well. As you know, prevent messiness if the relationship doesn't last.
Speaker 2:So such a good point.
Speaker 4:So I would say, probably for most people, you know Now listen to this and finding out the more details of you know what pre-nups actually really entails, compared to what we just think they entail. I think the hardest part is how do you bring up the subject matter of Actually having a prenup or a post-nuptial, like any recommendations on even how to have that conversation, if an individual believes they should have this conversation?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you asked because I think the answer to that question is not necessarily intuitive. You know it's probably. You know, especially if your fiance or your spouse might be reluctant or buys into some of the stigma surrounding prenup. Suppose I'm illicit, be honest, they don't have the best reputation in the world. You know most people they think prenup. They think you know rich old guy, young gold, digging wife and trying to keep Good or bad, that's what. That's the image that comes to people's mind right. Or Super rich celebrities that you know they got to keep their millions from each other or whatever. And I think that if you expect that your fiance is going to be reluctant, that you don't approach it by going and saying, hey babe, I want to prenup, that's going to immediately bring all the negative images into their mind. Instead, I think you talk about all of the component parts of what you want to accomplish with the prenup. What people object to, in my experience, is the word prenup or postnup itself, not the component parts of what you're trying to accomplish. So, for example, for prenup or post up to be enforceable in any state, both spouses have to disclose all of the assets and debts to each other. We literally create network statements and attach them to the back of the agreements and Can you go to your fiance and say I think that we should be transparent about what each of us is coming into the marriage with our Assets, our debts, our incomes? You know, let's share our last few tax returns with each other. I think that we should decide. You know what goes in our money buckets. You know is. Is my retirement going to remain ours or is it going to become joint? You know your student loans. Are those going to remain your responsibility or are we gonna pay those from a joint account? You know what expenses are we going to pay jointly and what expenses are we gonna pay separately. Are we going to have rules around spending? You know anything over $500 that comes out of a joint account. I'd like to know. You know Maybe, maybe you would as well, maybe maybe $200. You want to know if before that money goes. Yeah, yeah, out of the joint bank account and just on down the line. And Then, yes, you know, if things don't work out, you know If you're marrying somebody who thinks that they should keep 90% of the assets, you should probably know that going in, you know, like, are we just gonna split everything 5050,? You know that we accumulate together and if we agree on that, let's lock ourselves into that now rather than Leave it up to. You know our worst emotions when we don't like each other anymore. I mean it's a lot easier have that conversation on the front end when you're getting along and before any kind of resentment has built in and before the communication has broken down. Because I mean, when I first started doing family law, I assume that's what it was. I assume if you split up, you just you split everything 5050,. But that's not how it works. In in 41 other 50 states, including Georgia, north Carolina, south Carolina they're equitable division states, which means that the court is authorized to divide your assets and debts Equitably, but that doesn't necessarily mean equally and so it is not uncommon at all For couples going through a divorce to spend 20 to 25 percent of their net worth Fighting over which one gets 60% of the assets and everybody believes that they deserve Two-thirds of the assets at the end of America. I mean, it's the same thing. In like a business partnership, everybody feels like they're doing two-thirds the work, right, yeah, so In a divorce, you know the person we did more of the homemaking. They think that. They think that they carry the load. And the person who earn more money. They think they're carry the load. And you know, if you agree ahead of time that, alright, everything we build together is 50%. That's not just going to make your divorce go smoother if your marriage doesn't work out. That's going to make your marriage go smoother if you just agree that that's the rule of the partnership while you're in it.
Speaker 2:Makes so much sense.
Speaker 4:I really like how you said that as far as focusing on how you want things to go, and not necessarily Using the word pre enough. I kind of do the same thing when you know. When working with individuals, I'm like you know what are we, what are you trying to accomplish? Rather than putting a specific term on it, because some people have ideas about different financial Instruments or strategies and like I don't want to do that and they really don't know what entails. So I very much understand how that is. They definitely have had Conversations with your mom where I'm like she's told me I don't think she doesn't want an annuity, but she would love a source of income that she doesn't outlive, that is not dependent upon how the market fluctuates, but she didn't want an annuity and then you're like but that is an annuity, because words matter and I told her and she was, she had a pension. I was like, well, that's an annuity.
Speaker 1:So yeah right, it's all about how you define it. I mean, another way to look at it is this I mean, this is one of my aha moments when I was practicing family law is, you know, when you look at it first of all, marriage is a financial contract you can't get, you can't get away from it. Marriage is a financial partnership just as much as it is a romantic partnership, and Everyone you know, if you look at a prenup is kind of like a set of rules that defines how you manage your finances During the marriage as well as in a divorce. Everybody's got a prenup, every married couple's got a prenup. You either have one that you have crafted yourself or you have one that the state you happen to live in has written for you. And Most people have not read that prenup and they don't know what it says and they probably wouldn't sign it if they had read it beforehand. And so there's just, you know, an easier way to, you know, address the finances Than leaving it up to chance. Is my belief. You know, it's just like with a business partnership. You would never go into a business partnership and say, alright, let's just run this business and you know, we'll figure out who owns what percentage of the business. If we break up the business, we'll just go to court and pay lawyers a ton money to figure out who owns you know what percentage of the business. And that's what we are kind of doing. If we don't, you know, at least have these conversations. You know, forget about the prenup for a second. We don't at least have these conversations about what the expectation is and who owns what and what falls into the hour Column and what falls into the mine and your columns during, you know, at the beginning of the relationship, before it feels like a punitive conversation or, you know, like the marriages in crisis.
Speaker 4:I mean. I mean, we're definitely from believers in that one of the most important financial decisions you make is the person you choose to spend your life with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, so let's talk about that, because we, we, so we're going on seven years married October, ten years together. We do not have a prenup, which now I am having all these aha moments, aaron, because of you Talk to us about people that are now in our state where it's like we're happily married.
Speaker 4:We don't plan on getting a divorce as I said before, but we like having a plan. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm stuck, I know, but we like having a plan. You know we have these money conversations all the time. Talk to us about our options now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean Congratulations on seven years. We, my wife and I, are seven years in as well, so we're Congratulations, thank you. Couples who are already married and and need to have this conversation and need to define something you know, beyond what their state's rules are, have the option of doing a post-nuptial agreement at least in 49 out of the 50 states. Iowa is the lone holdout for some reason. I have a feeling that we'll get on board at some point, but Right now, you know, almost everybody has the option of doing a post-nuptial agreement and a lot of people will come to me for a post-nuptial, sometimes after you know hearing an interview or hearing, you know, some kind of Information like this, and they realize that, wait a minute, we've been living a Legal fiction. We've been living, you know, treating our finances like they're separate, not knowing that you know the court is going to treat them as joint and we need to clarify who owns what, so that you know. You're not in my office in a couple years Saying what do you mean? He wants half of the house that I paid the mortgage for for the past 10 years. What do you mean? She? wants half of my retirement and I have that conversation, you know, week after week, month after month, year after year. You know, with hundreds, literally hundreds of couples where you know they lived as though their finances were separate and Then it isn't until decades later that they're in a lawyer's office that they realize Everything. All the money that I was hoarding over the course of our relationship from my spouse is now going to get Divided. I mean, like I had this one couple where the husband made 200 grand a year, his wife didn't work and stayed home and raised their two kids and he gave her an allowance of $300 a month.
Speaker 2:Now one was that household money or that was like her spending money.
Speaker 1:That was her entire spending money. And If there's one thing I've learned is that you know a couple living in the same household but different social economic brackets. That is a recipe for disaster. A part of was like dude, why did you think this was going to work? Like, how are you even surprised? But unwittingly, what he did is he created a financial incentive for his wife to leave him Because she was going to get more access to money by divorcing him and getting half of the assets then she ever would Staying with him. And so you know, if you are living in a relationship where your spouse is Financially incentivized to leave, then you might want to consider, you know, if not getting a postnup, at least clarifying you know the rules of. You know how money is treated in your house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes so much sense. So what? We would go through the same process as we would if we were newly engaged saying, hey, we want to pre-nup. We would go through the exact same process as a postnup, or is there something that's different that we need to call out?
Speaker 1:It is. It's pretty much the same, you know. I think that you know couples who are going into their marriage Maybe they haven't established a joint bank account yet, and so they're having those conversations on the front end, whereas a couple that's been together for seven years is more likely to say let's take what we're already doing, that we agree works for us, and let's go, let's codify that in an agreement so that our, our day-to-day reality matches our legal reality. And that's what a lot of people do in postnups. They had kind of an understanding that, okay, you're. You know you're not saving for retirement. I'm super conservative with my money and so I am saving aggressively for retirement, but my retirement's mine and yours is yours, let's go ahead and write that down. So there's no surprises. And you know, if I'm the one saving my retirement and we just kind of agree that that's going to be how we treat our finances, I don't want you coming after half of my money if things don't work out. You know, ten years down the road. So there are you know that is some of the couples that get a post-nuptial agreement. There are other people who you know they meant to get a prenup, they just didn't get it done in time, you know, prior to the wedding. So some of those get a prenup. And then there are some people where something has happened in their relationship. There's been some Some event, you know, infidelity or something else that you know as broader than this made you know. For example, you know I had a woman who had been kind of the stay-at-home parent for 15 years. She had forfeited what could have otherwise been a lucrative for career for herself To be the homemaker for the household, to, to, to allow her husband to make the kind of money that he did in his career, and Caught him in an affair and decided, okay, if things don't work out, you know I have compromised my ability to earn money for the rest of my life and I want to make sure that I'm going to be well taken care of if something happens in our relationship doesn't work out. And you know this husband wanted to work. He wanted, you know, to work on the relationship and wanted to give it a chance and he was willing to. You know, put in writing, you know how much alimony she would get and what percentage of the asset she would get if anything would ever happen, so that With the financial issues, the financials are out of the way that they could go back and work on the rest of their relationship.
Speaker 2:You usually when there's like a clause like that, like a cheating clause, again just spacing this off of tabloids, right? Does that? Is that like a null and void statement of like, if you cheat then you get nothing? Is that typically how it's written or what does that look like?
Speaker 1:You, you know. Usually people say if you cheat you get a smaller percentage of, you know of the finances. It's, it's difficult. You know, I don't usually recommend infidelity clauses for People who have not already had infidelity crop up in their relationship. I mean, it sounds like a good idea on the front end, you know like alright with you cheat. You know you walk away with zero. But you know you could have a relationship where a couple has been married for 30 years and Built up millions and millions of dollars and both of them cheated and just one gets caught. Should that one you know the one, who, who got caught, you know who was sloppier about their affair walk away with absolutely zero? I mean, certainly you don't want to encourage infidelity, but it can be a slippery slope because then you start asking questions about you know Well, what if there was, you know, mistreatment, or what if there was abuse, or what if it was verbal abuse, or what if you got arrested for you know drug use, or what if you, you know, get a DUI and what do you classify as infidelity?
Speaker 4:because you know some people define it differently in different relationships right Is it is an emotional affair.
Speaker 1:Does that count? If so, what evidence do you need? You know, do I have to screenshot your text messages or, you know, is an eyewitness enough? So yeah, it can get, it can get sticky. You know, going down that road and that's it also, kind of takes you back to where a lot of couples are Without a prenup. Where, you know, in equitable division states, the court can basically take anything into account when deciding how to divide of the assets. Some judges are like I don't care about affairs. I've seen it all, done it all heard a million times. Come in here and I'm chopping up your estate 5050. And there are other judges who are like, no, if you cheated, you're getting less of the money and you never really know. You know, judges are, they're human, like anybody else. And so what ends up happening is Couples who go to through a divorce. They're financially incentivized to throw as much mud against the wall as possible, to air all of their dirty laundry out in a public courtroom. Anybody can come in and sit in, you know, or get the copy of the transcript of in order, because you never know what's going to catch the attention of a judge and give them a little bit of a leg up. You know, in getting a larger share of the assets, and a lot of couples just decide to say you know what, we're not going to play that game. We're not going to incentivize any kind of airing a dirty laundry if we don't work out. We're taking our 50% share of the joint accounts and we're going our separate ways. You know, what's mine in my name goes to me. What's in your name goes to you. Whatever's in joint names is 5050 and we're not going to spend a year and a half, two years, six figures on lawyers. You know we're not going to spend all that time and money and energy and you know emotional turmoil in our lives because our relationship didn't work out. We're just going to go ahead and define, you know, make it possible for us to Leave each other with a clean of break as possible a lot of times, because you might be having to parent children with that person Later on and you just don't want to put yourself in that kind of position.
Speaker 2:Wow, this is I miss. I've learned so much today. What? What have we not asked you that we should have asked you at this point?
Speaker 1:I mean I think that there are a lot of people are curious about you know the other aspects of a prenup that can make for a positive marriage. You know, not just protect against you know the divorce itself, but make for good in your relationship. And just a couple examples of that you know. One is you know we talked about discussing large expenditures. We talked about, you know, dividing things up into the money buckets mine, yours and ours. Another is kind of. You know what qualifies as equality in a financial relationship. You know the roommate example of like everyone pays. You know 50-50 of all the bills, regardless of how much everybody makes, doesn't always work in a marriage relationship, and so a lot of couples may choose to pay expenses or fund the joint account proportionately to their income, right? So if I make 60,000, you make 40,000, I put in 60% of the joint money and you put in 40% of the joint money. You know that kind of thing. You know, one interesting thing that my wife and I chose to put in our prenup is a provision about counseling. So you know one thing I noticed as a divorce lawyer is that you know when one spouse wants to go to counseling the other spouse, you know doesn't get interested, you go to counseling, you do it by yourself. You do the counseling and then when that spouse comes around and says, okay, let's do it, the first spouse is given up. And so, you know, my wife and I decided all right, if either one of us wants to go to counseling, we're going to counseling. We agreed ahead of time that either one could trigger this counseling provision. You know, once per year and we go to three sessions, and if either of us wanted to move to dissolve the marriage, then we had to do six sessions of counseling. Oh, wow. And sometimes that might not be. You know, let's save the marriage. Sometimes it might be. How are we going to co-parent, you know, our daughter together after this is done? Or how can we get rid of the joint assets, you know, and make us much money and serve both of our interests? You know, and have an opportunity to resolve as many issues before somebody goes and spends thousands of dollars on a lawyer. So we also have something that I like to call the shareholders meeting. You can tell I like these business analogies, yeah, but I think that all households should have a shareholder meeting where, you know, once per year you sit down and you discuss, kind of like, the state of the union, the state of the finances. You know what are the assets and debts. Do we have any big surprises last year? Are there things that we want to budget in for next year? You know, in my house we love travel. So you know we have a travel fund. You know we're going to put aside 5% of all of our take home income into a travel fund so that whenever we want to take a trip, the money is there. And the more that we make, you know, the more we get to travel or the more we get to spend on our travel and having a time, because you know, as you guys acknowledge, there's never a good time to talk about the money for a lot of couples. You guys are obviously experts at it. A lot of people are not comfortable, you know, having the money conversations. But if it's on the calendar or repeating every event every December 1, we sit down and here's the shareholder meeting agenda and we talk about these things and we decide who the CFO is in the relationship. You know, every relationship has like one person who's the spreadsheet nerd and then there's the other person says I trust you to manage the spreadsheets and the CFO doesn't run the finance. They don't control the finances. They have a duty to report back Like they work for the company, they work for the partnership, they have a duty to report back to the couple about what's going on with the finances and just kind of putting some of those things you know in writing. So it takes some of the guesswork out of what can otherwise be. You know the sticky life of managing marital finance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love the analogies because it makes it so concrete and so it takes the emotion out of it. Right, it's just like you know, you have a health directive, you have we talk. You know, hey, what happens if I'm in a terrible car accident and I am in a coma. Like, how long are you going to leave me in the coma? How long are we going to live like this? How long you know? Like again, maybe we're crazy people, but like we talk about that stuff all the time, like I don't want to be a vegetable on a tube and you're bringing the kids to see me every Sunday. Like we're not living like that, right, so it makes total sense. Why would you not put these things in place? I love the counseling, right? Like, hey, we're going to give it a fair shake. We're going to go to three times. Oh, nope, we're going to go six times. You put it in place when you have clarity, when things are good, when you're you still love each other. Right, instead of being grumpy and being like, well, I wanted to go to therapy and you didn't, and it's like, well, now you're already the ship is already sinking. Right, like now it's not the time to get the toolbox out. We need to have the toolbox ready and fully stocked before the ship starts sinking.
Speaker 4:I like and I like the aspect of like. So, for example, like using us as an example that these are conversations that we already have, because I believe that we have a much healthier relationship than other people do, and we already have the conversations and we're in agreement on how things should you know, should be. So why not just put it in, you know writing? So that way? She said you like to think that if you know that day ever comes where that you know separation, divorce, occurs, that you would be amicable. But you don't know Like I can understand, like I get there right now. If she ever tried to divorce me, I'd probably not be that amicable, because I don't ever see myself getting divorced, so I would not be the nicest person probably. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it's exact. I mean we are exactly right in the point that we protect against every other potential life tragedy, right? We get life insurance, you know, to protect against, like a potential early death, you know. We get the health directives so you're not left in a coma, you know, for 10 years. We get car insurance to protect against a car wreck. We get house insurance against, against, you know, like a house fire. Every you know financial and life tragedy. We have some way of ensuring against it or protecting against it. But somehow we put marriages in this specific category like oh no, that's love and it's unromantic to touch, and like prepare for what could possibly go wrong in our marriage. And I think the exact opposite. I mean it deserves at least as much protection as your car or your house. You know, your marriage. It's as important as it is to your life, happiness and your finances and everything else. Doesn't it deserve the same you know protection and thought and planning that you would give all of these other, you know, major life areas.
Speaker 2:Well, when you put it like that, aaron.
Speaker 4:I also consider that, like I think about, like when you said the term you know with life insurance, like I think about this way that you know, with most life insurance you know majority of the time it doesn't pay out because most people have a term policy and I think only like 1% of the term policies pay out because most people live to old age, they don't die prematurely and so you know the divorce. I mean, isn't it like 50% of marriages in the divorce? So significantly higher probability? that you're going to need it, as compared to with your, you know, term life insurance policy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you pay for it once. You know you don't have to pay every month or every year. You pay for it once and that same insurance policy will last for your entire relationship.
Speaker 4:So one more thing, one more thing, sorry.
Speaker 2:Much of costs. You pay for it once. How much is it going to cost us, Aaron?
Speaker 4:I think that all depends.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, give us a break.
Speaker 1:For most couples. For most couples, we do them for a flat fee of $3,500. And so you know, we walk you through all of your options we talk about, you know, the everything we talked about, from the counseling provisions to the different money buckets, how things are going to be split up. We try to make it dummy proof so that if your marriage does come to an end, that you know, you basically just follow the rules in your agreement and you can do it, you know, without spending tens of thousands or more on attorneys. But also, you know, I think our approach is to give you the tools to take most of the money arguments off the table and prevent them before they happen by, you know, allowing you to craft kind of the partnership agreement for your marriage with your spouse or fiancee on the front end, while communication is high, while the love is high, while the respect is high.
Speaker 2:How long does it take? Like, what does this process look like If we were? Well, because clearly we need to post it up now, I mean it's going to happen. So we're, going to reach out to you. So what are we looking at? Time paperwork, right, it's a lot of data gathering, I'm assuming. What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Yes, you are correct that it is. The data gathering is usually the longest part of the process. You know there are some people who can go to mittcom and print out their net worth statement in 30 seconds, you know, and have every asset and debt. And there are other people who have to go reset a bunch of passwords to find out. You know what they have in assets and debts, but the whole process usually takes about a month. You know we can do them in a couple of weeks. You know, if you're getting married, I always say start, you know, months before the wedding, not weeks before the wedding. It should be a collaborative process. You don't want to dump a prenup that you prepared on your own, you know, on your spouse the week before the wedding. Don't be that person, you know, give yourself time to do it. But you know a lot of couples, if they've had these conversations, you know if they've listened to this podcast and they've gotten ideas you know already on what they want to do, can usually go from beginning to end in about a month.
Speaker 2:That's not bad. And then what happens if we move right? We're in North Carolina, you're in Georgia, my job takes me somewhere else. Is there like a rest of pot prosody clause? Do we just update the paperwork? What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, great, great question and you kind of guess the answer. You know every, every good prenup is going to include kind of a choice of law provision. Basically says, wherever you move to, this prenup is going to be enforced based on the rules of the state where you had it drafted. In other words, you prepare it once and you never have to think about it again because wherever you move, they're going to honor the prenup based on the rules that where of where it was drafted.
Speaker 4:How often do people like update you know prenups, like, for example, I guess maybe it's not obviously comparable, but like with a will, like you know you have a will when you got married but then you have two kids, you want to update your will because you have two kids now. It's kind of like the same thing in regards to prenups that they get updated when you know drastic things change.
Speaker 1:Most people don't. If your prenup has been drafted well, then you have the ability to allow your finances to grow with you. So right, if your prenup is basically saying asset, assets that are that are titled in my name belong to me, assets that are titled your name belong to you and everything that is in joint names is going to be split 50 50. Then whenever you acquire a new asset or a new debt or open a bank account or open a credit card, you title it the way that you want it to be treated. So if you open accounts supposed to be joint title and your names if you buy a property and you want it to be considered a joint property, you put both of your names on the deed, even if both of your names on the more on the mortgage, put both of your names on the deed to that new property and that's how you categorize it and that way you can. You have control over how things are classified over the course of your marriage. You don't have to keep coming back and pay your lawyers to update things.
Speaker 2:What about future projects? Right, so, right now, the podcast that I mean, this is obviously something we do together. We want it to become very lucrative, right Is that? Would we be able to put something in that says the Sugar Daddy podcast, no matter how big it gets, we split it 50 50, where we, you know, that'd be the business structure, like the analogy that he uses also. Yeah, everything is kind of split. But like can you do that preemptively? Right, we're not there yet, but that's the goal.
Speaker 4:Well, the way you structure the business, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the business is the same thing. You title it, you know where, you register it in the names of how it is supposed to be owned.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:I guess, since I, like the other businesses that we own, I did the registrations and it's just one person, so she didn't see the back into that side. But yeah, you can choose, you know, the percentage of ownership and stuff like that in the process of your business 100%. This one hasn't been registered yet, so yeah, and look, you have flexibility beyond that too.
Speaker 1:You know there are some people that say, all right, you know, this one property we're going to do, we're going to split it two thirds. One third and we'll write it into the agreement. Or some people will come back and modify their agreements, you know, update their agreements because they have something specific, like I'm going to open up this account or I'm by this property and it's just going to be titled my name for whatever reason, but we mean for it to be joint. You know, some people will do that with their retirement accounts because obviously you can't jointly title the 401k. But if you want it to be specifically owned, then we'll just write it in the agreement. You know, everything is based on title, except you know the 401ks that's going to be owned jointly, you know, despite the fact that it's titled one person's name.
Speaker 2:So yeah, Well, aaron, this has been so informative, so enlightening. I definitely came into this conversation, I think, with the negative stereotypical thoughts around preneps right, you have to be rich and famous and have millions of dollars to even need one. But I love that you reframed it for us and really made it part of a partnership and I love that you bucketized it into. You know the different parts of the relationship. I think that I think that framed it up for me at the beginning, which is really fantastic, and you really did make it so positive that it just makes sense to have one right, pre or post-nup right. Obviously, if you can do it before you get married, that's probably ideal. But for people like us who went into it thinking, well, we're going to be married, we're not bringing in millions of dollars it doesn't make sense. Now I'm leaving this conversation thinking, oh, it does make sense. We have these conversations all the time already. We have so many other protections in place. Why would we not put one around our marriage, just in case? I love it.
Speaker 4:I definitely feel as though, like I have now added another category of conversation that I need to have with clients.
Speaker 2:And now you have somebody to refer them to.
Speaker 4:I also have one question that popped in my head. So is it possible to have a prenup or I guess it would still be a prenup, post-nup or whatever but if you're not married so long term people that have been together for a long time and plan on being together but they don't actually get married- yes, we also do what's called cohabitation agreements.
Speaker 1:So you know, for example, if somebody, if a couple who's not married, buys a piece of property together or, you know, enters a lease together, they begin living together and that couple splits up, you know deciding, you know how the lease gets paid or the mortgage is paid. You know if you're no longer living in the house can be a very sticky situation that you don't want to have on the back end. You don't want to have to hire lawyers and go, you know, to court over. You know paying mortgage on a house that you no longer live in but it's still affecting your credit. You can do a cohabitation agreement. So a lot of people who you know are not getting married but they're in kind of that in between stage, will do a cohabitation agreement where we'll cover a whole lot of the same kinds of things.
Speaker 2:Mm, that's a great question. I love it. Okay, Erin, we love to leave our listeners with one thing like a takeaway. I know you've given us a ton of gems and I think this is going to be so fantastic for our audience, but is there anything else you want to leave our listeners with today that we might not have touched on yet?
Speaker 1:You guys ask very good questions but I would just say you know, even if you are not. You know to get away from the sales pitch, even if you are not thinking about, you know getting a prenup or a post-nup, you know. I just encourage couples to, at a bare minimum, have these conversations with their partners. You know ahead of time, while communication is free flowing, you know while the respect is high, and be transparent about these issues. It is truly an investment in the health of your relationship.
Speaker 4:I love that. That's great advice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fantastic. Thank you for your insights and all of the facts you gave us today. You dispelled a lot of myths that I think I know we had. I'm sure our listeners had, so now we are armed and educated with so much more information. So thank you for being with us today.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for having me on. It's been a blast.
Speaker 2:Don't forget. Benjamin Franklin said an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. You just got paid Until next time. Thanks for listening to today's episode. We are so glad to have you as part of our Sugar Daddy community. If you learned something today, please remember to subscribe, rate, review and share this episode with your friends, family and extended network. Don't forget to connect with us on social media at the Sugar Daddy podcast. You can also email us your questions you want us to answer for our past the sugar segments at the sugar daddy podcast at gmailcom, or leave us a voicemail through our Instagram.
