“Is cunamh mór comhairle mhaith” – “Good advice is great help.”
It is also a form of activism.
Someone getting ready to marry was presented a really lopsided prenup and didn’t know what to think of it, so he asked the Reddit community on r/Mensrights. As far as he’s concerned, they came through for him.
This is what he was wondering about:
My future in-laws want to talk to me about a pre-nup and they want to add a few extra clauses in it. I have not spoken to them yet, but I suspect the clauses are: 1. My fiancee will keep all of the inheritance (probably during the marriage too, not just in the case of a divorce). 2. Assets will be split 75%-25% (75% paid by me of course) On top of this: – My fiancee will be a stay at home mom – I will probably pay an obscene amount of spousal support, especially considering the stay at home mom part.
As others pointed out, the mandated SAHM part and the weird split of assets as well as the presumption of spousal support are all big throbbing red flags. Even the part about the way her inheritance would be handled is a red flag, because it means she reamins financially separate in a way he doesn’t. In all it makes him look less like a husband and more like a live-in sperm donor.
Anyway, this is a form of activism, because after all the personal is political.
Family law is unequal in the US as are the cultural expectations around marriage. The only way to make permanent change is to work at one marriage at a time, one parenting agreement at a time, one DV case at a time. Of course there will be times when some broad institutional action is needed – an unfair law or policy has to be overturned, a bigoted judge has to disciplined or even taken off the bench. But in the end, it’s the eaches that make the real difference.
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
Why are the future in-laws in on the pre-nup? That is none of their business!
Talk about red flags, that is a big one all by itself.
That was an oddly specific list for someone who has yet to actually speak to the in laws. Definatly a red flag if it comes to fruition thugh. Especially if his fiancé supports this buggery.
What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mostly mine.
So wanting the inheritance to stay with the daughter seems reasonable. That seems like something it might make sense for the in laws to be in on even since they are presumably the ones handing out the money. The rest… yeee gods. RED FLAGS EVERYWHERE
That isn’t a pre-nup, that’s the standard division of assets (post-divorce) when you live in a liberal state.
Yeah, and to top it off, I am pretty sure these are rich, rich people.
So she will be getting 75% of a very large amount… and alimony. Whew, being a SAHM is just so goddamned hard.
Let’s dispel this notion. Inheritance is income, just like any other. If she receives it while they are married then it should be split 50/50 just like any other marital asset. If she receives it after they are divorced, then it should at the very bare minimum be used to reduce any alimony or child support that he was being forced to pay. If you’re a man, courts will have no problem tapping into your inheritance to pay child support to your ex wife, sometimes in situations that aren’t very fair.
These are the type of parents who show up to their kid’s job interview. She’s probably getting married to try to get away from them in the first place. Nevertheless, they are members of a generation that raised the modern woman to posses a nearly intolerable sense of entitlement.
Maybe it’s just writing style but I am not sure I understand.
“My future in-laws want to talk to me about a pre-nup and they want to add a few extra clauses in it. I have not spoken to them yet…”
“a pre-nup” where did this pre-nup come from? Does the man mean “the pre-nup I drew up and insist on”? I don’t understand how “a pre-nup” just comes up.
Then there’s the “I have not spoken to them yet” part. Maybe the in laws aren’t going to add these things. Maybe they just want to talk about it to ensure that their daughter isn’t getting the short end of the stick. Maybe this man’s first draft pre-nup simply sucked for the the future bride. Maybe the man is entirely correct in his assumptions. Maybe the man just made an unclear post and everyone else’s assumptions are correct.
I dunno, for me, I’m on step 1, everyone is already on step 18.
“Why are the future in-laws in on the pre-nup? That is none of their business!
Talk about red flags, that is a big one all by itself.”
Yeppers. It doesn’t matter how the pre-nup came up, it is the daughter business to attend by herself.
There is a real strong stink of daddy’s litlte girl around this whole thing. If she were trying to get away from some helicopter parents, this wouldn’t even be an issue; she wouldn’t allow them anywhere near the process. This goes to the entitlement princess thing dungone is talking about – it’s the “poisoned benefits” of this kind of lack of boundaries.
MaMu,
“That isn’t a pre-nup, that’s the standard division of assets (post-divorce) when you live in a liberal state.”
It’s not liberal states, it’s states that inherited Spanish family law, which is basically Roman law. The concept is that a married couple is a corporation and that when it dissolves the assets are split. It’s called community property. These are by no means all liberal states – Arizona works like this, for God’s sake. These states tend to be in the West, for obvious reasons, thus the impression that they are “liberal” states.
The other states work on English Commom law and under this system originally property, especially real property, belonged to families rather than individuals (contrary to Third Worldism’s uninformed characterization of that culture). The legal mechanism of entailment enshrines this doctrine. Since a property was not the individual property of the husband, he wasn’t taking it into the marraige with him and it couldn’t become joint property. This explains why daughters could not inherit property. property belonged to families and families were male lineages (not mommy-hubby couplings).
And that’s the basis of alimony. When a couple divirced the woman either went back to her family for support – which was hardly ever forthcoming – or starved. So alimony was the solution to that problem.
It was obviously a solution for another age.
Sorry for derail, but didn’t know where else to put this:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/55373764-78/achane-adoption-bland-child.html.csp
Quote from article:
A 4th District Court judge says he is “astonished and deeply troubled” by a Utah adoption agency’s deliberate move to circumvent the rights of a married man whose daughter was adopted at birth without his knowledge.
The Provo judge, while noting the birth mother had deceived her husband, the adoption agency and the prospective parents, has given the adoptive couple 60 days to give the child back.
A married father’s rights
While unmarried biological fathers must act to preserve their parental rights and have a limited time to do so, married fathers are presumed to have a constitutional, fundamental liberty interest in their children.
A married father “has the exact same parental rights as the mother from the get-go,” said Salt Lake attorney Scott Wiser, who with his father represents Terry Achane. “It is the same reason why any other married parent would not have to worry about filing a paternity petition or jumping through a series of legal hoops to get their kids back if a third-party like a neighbor or day-care provider decided not to return their kids.”
Unless his parental rights have been terminated for cause, the father’s consent to an adoption is required.
In his ruling in the Achane case, 4th District Judge Darold McDade called the situation painful and heartbreaking while noting previous Utah Supreme Court rulings that found that prospective adoptive parents are “legal strangers” who have no rights other than to temporarily care for the child until custody can be returned to a natural parent and that any bonding that may have occurred while they had custody is “legally irrelevant.”
In a 48-page ruling, Judge Darold McDade said the Adoption Center of Choice’s policy of refusing to disclose any information to Terry Achane once he learned what had happened to his baby is “utterly indefensible.”
Salt Lake City attorneys Mark and Scott Wiser, the father/son team that represented Achane, used even stronger language for what occurred.
“This is a case of human trafficking,” said Mark Wiser. “Children are being bought and sold. It is one thing what [adoption agencies] have been doing with unmarried biological fathers. It is in a new area when they are trying to take a child away from a married father who wants to have his child.”
@Daisy: heard about it and think it’s horrible. Utah has something of an online reputation for being the place to go for a mother who wants to give up a child for adoption against the fathers wishes.
Daisy, thanks for the derail. I saw that and had to get up and walk around a while. It’s a good example of how men’s rights are woman’s issue too.
Yep, that’s old school marriage alright. Not so much an emotional bond as a property deal with reproductive duties.
Peter, I remember Rick Santorum opposing gay marriage on the grounds that marraige was solely for the purpose of producing children. Hell, that’s why I got married, and the only reason. How gay is that?
An arrangment around reproductive duites. Yep.
Say, do you stil comment over at GMP?
Occasionally, I was modding there too for a while but it got too heavy workwise.
Marriage certainly used to be solely about reproduction (back in the days when love was something of a luxury for most of the population) but I’d like to hope we’ve gotten a bit further than that 🙂
Speaking of santorum: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/03/12/the_santorum_cocktail_a_taste_test.html
Bottoms up!