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ResourcesFamily LawPrenuptial and Premarital AgreementsThere Are No "Boilerplate" Prenuptial Agreements

There Are No "Boilerplate" Prenuptial Agreements

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing so-called "boilerplate" prenuptial agreements. When we get contacted about prenups or about reviewing prenups, we do both, sometimes we will draft prenuptial agreements on behalf of clients and other times we will review prenuptial agreements between one party to a prospective marriage and one of our clients. 

When I get initial inquiries from folks about prenups, this happens pretty often, it is why I am mentioning it. Somebody will say, "oh well I need you to tell me what you can do with respect to a prenuptial agreement. I am sure it is just boilerplate, it is going to be mostly boilerplate!" Well no, and in fact you don't want to "boilerplate" prenup okay? Prenups are in my opinion they are kind of a living thing. I remember I had a course in law school, I think it was my third year of law school or my second year of law school where they had an adjunct professor. They brought in this guy who was really a heavy hitter divorce attorney and had a prenup. He had sort of this evolving prenup that he used for clients and he would show excerpts of it but literally he kept track of every piece of paper that he would show folks and took it back because it was his of intellectual property basically and he didn't want anybody seeing it. He didn't want it being copied and he didn't want it out there, in his situation he didn't want it out there being disseminated and used by the people.

I am bringing this up not to sort of hoard the information, it is more to the point we deal with a lot of different clients in a lot of different contexts with a lot of different financial backgrounds and a lot of different nationality backgrounds so you don't really want a boiler plate prenup insofar as there are significant considerations to take into account with respect to the laws of the various jurisdictions that may be involved in the event of a dissolution of a marriage and therefore the disbursement of a marital estate. There is a lot going on in a prenup. It is not just a matter of just setting down some words on paper and you can just keep using it over and over. It is not like a rental contract for a motel where everybody is just basically signing the same piece of "boiler plate". No a prenup is a living thing and they are going to be very fact specific, very case specific. You need to be very aware of all the nuances associated with the laws of the jurisdictions you are dealing with not least of which being Thailand which has some specific peccadillos associated with its law that are very different than other places. So long story short and the thing to take away from this video, there really is no “boilerplate” prenuptial agreement.