Aaron Thomas on Redefining Prenuptial Agreements - Episode 60
In this episode, I had the privilege of chatting with Aaron Thomas, famously known online as the Prenup Guy. Aaron, a Harvard Law graduate with over two decades of experience in family law, shares his journey from being a family law attorney to founding prenups.com. He dives deep into the world of prenuptial agreements, debunking common myths and highlighting their importance not just in the event of a divorce but as a tool for financial clarity and protection in marriage. Aaron's insights are a treasure trove for anyone considering marriage or seeking to strengthen their financial unity with their partner. His personal story and the evolution of his thoughts on prenups shed light on how these agreements can serve as a foundation for a stronger, more transparent relationship.
About our guest:
Aaron Thomas, a three-time winner of Atlanta’s Best Divorce Attorney and a Harvard Law School graduate of 2002, is nationally recognized as a leading expert in family law. His firm, Aaron Thomas Law, was hailed as one of Georgia's fastest-growing family law firms from 2015-2022. Renowned for representing high-profile clients including NBA hall of famers, Superbowl winners, and Grammy award-winning artists, Aaron specializes in a broad spectrum of family law matters such as divorce, custody, child support, and prenuptial and postnuptial agreements. Additionally, as the founder of Prenups.com, he is considered the premier authority on drafting equitable prenuptial agreements, advocating for their role in fostering happy marriages by preventing common marital disputes through establishing a solid financial foundation during the engagement phase.
https://prenups.com/
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TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Naseema: My financially intentional people, you are in for a treat because I have Aaron Thomas joining us. And if you don't know Aaron Thomas, you probably Please should, because he is the prenup guy online and he is the person that you need in your back pocket.
If you're considering getting married, if you're married without a prenup or just someone that you should use as a resource when you're thinking about establishing a relationship with someone and you want to join finances. So welcome Aaron. It's a pleasure to have you.
[00:00:32] Aaron Thomas: Thank you so much for having me. It's honored to be here.
[00:00:35] Naseema: Of course, and before we start talking about this whole issue of like prenups, I just want you to pop your holler a little bit and let everybody know your background, like you're a Harvard grad. I just want to give you your flowers because you are the man.
[00:00:51] Aaron Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I am a family law attorney. over 20 years out of Harvard Law School. At this point, I'm in the state of Georgia. I'm in the city of Atlanta, and I am the founder of prenups dot com.
[00:01:08] Naseema: and yeah. Why prenups? There's so many ways. If you started out as a family law attorney is there a specific reason why you started focusing on prenups?
[00:01:19] Aaron Thomas: Yeah. When I got into family law, I did not know the first thing about divorce or how it worked. I got stumbled into it. I was recruited by a law firm that wanted somebody with trial experience and I'd been in the courtroom as a public defender for the past few years. And so I got dragged into it without really knowing, my parents just celebrated 57 years together.
So like I didn't have it in, Luckily for me, and I didn't have it in my own family. And I was shocked that first year to find out what divorce really looks like from the inside and how horrible it is for people, people think about divorce and they think about the end of a relationship that you at one point thought was going to last forever. And that is already heartbreaking enough. But then I think sometimes people overlook the pain Of the divorce case itself, right? The actual, like being in litigation and the stress that comes from that. And the financial cost, the emotional cost. And, originally, I thought about prenups the same way that most people did. I thought that they were, you're just planning for your divorce and it means you don't trust your spouse. And I thought all of those misconceptions. That people have. And my original take was just don't get married, like no one should, no one should enter into this crazy legal financial, like mess which, of course made me super popular with, all of my buddies, girlfriends and wives. At the time, but finally,
I started to learn more about prenuptial agreements and basically how, you could avoid a lot of the fights down the line by being very intentional about choosing what your financial relationship is going to look like, rather than just accepting The default one size fits all state prenup is what I call it.
And if you get married, you either got your own prenup, you have the state prenup. And, when it came time for me to get married my wife had already been, she'd been through a previous divorce. And she was the more financial responsible person in that relationship. And so she took a hit in that.
She's also a lawyer. And so for us, it was a no brainer that we were going to do our own prenup. And so we really sat down and we're like, how can we, not just protect each other, but also avoid all of the pitfalls that me and my family law practice saw my clients go through over the years, and we sat down and tried to reverse engineer our way out of all of those different kinds of arguments. And when we started letting friends and other people know what it was that we were doing. People started saying, other people need to know about this. Other people need to know that this exists. Prenups need to be destigmatized and normalized and people need to, find out all the good that you can use them for.
And that was, probably eight years ago. And that's led down the path to, me founding, prenups. com years later,
[00:04:22] Naseema: that is incredible. And you said a lot of important things, but the one thing I want people to really note is that when you get married, you are going to have a prenup period. It's either going to be the one that you and your partner create or the one that the state has created for you.
And so when people are like, Oh, I don't want a prenup because I don't get married to get divorced. I'm just like, Oh, okay. Nobody gets married to get divorced. What?
[00:04:50] Aaron Thomas: no one does. Yeah, that's exactly it. No one's expecting. I think I actually saw like a poll one time that said like 98 percent of people who get married never expect to get divorced. And like the first thing that comes to mind is like, what about the other 2 percent thinking? But,
Virtually nobody, no one sees it coming.
No one
expects it. No one plans for it. We're all hoping for happily ever after.
[00:05:16] Naseema: right, and the thing is is that I think it creates those conversations early on that Even if, I feel like it brings up things that maybe it might cause you to question going into that relationship with someone I going through a divorce myself always say if I had to have gone through that process before I got married, it would have.
Cause me a lot of heartache, I don't wish divorce on anyone because the process is horrible.
And I've basically gone through two divorces, a standard divorce and I was only married for a year and I was a breadwinner. So it had a huge financial impact on me. And then I had a separation from my domestic partnership, but we had a child in common and we have property in common. And therefore, we basically had to do a divorce process, which I don't think a lot of people know and I don't know if that's state specific, but I'm in California.
And I had to do that. But those processes, even though in the 2nd case, we were very amicable was still very, very hard. And 1st of all. That whole, why should you get married thing is,
it's like one of those things that I'm like questioning, like never again, because that the process was really traumatic, but also I would never combine finances with somebody without a prenuptial agreement or a financial partnership agreement. I think it's just super important to clarify those things upfront when you're in a good space.
[00:06:46] Aaron Thomas: Yeah. I think, what you said about, combining finances with someone, Hmm. Without an agreement in place. That I think, it's such an overlooked part of what you are doing when you're getting married, right? We see marriage as this emotional relationship, some of your spiritual even relationship, and some people feel like it is dirty to introduce finances in the conversation.
Like it's a bad thing to even bring up. Finances, which, we could do an entire show breaking down the mentality, that goes into that, just, a piece of it is historically finances. It's always been a huge part, of marriage. Marriage just for love alone is just a very recent Hollywood concept.
But the history of marriage
is much more about, where do you think dowries came from? It was
much more about finances. We, even today, fathers walk their daughter down the aisle and we look at that as just this romantic, act.
That happens, but where does that come from? It signified historically the transfer of financial responsibility from a father to a husband. I am giving my daughter to you, is literally what dads would say. and we forget like where that came from, but, the truth is marriage is a, it's a financial partnership and you wouldn't combine, finance, you wouldn't combine businesses with
another business person
[00:08:10] Naseema: Yes.
[00:08:12] Aaron Thomas: without asking about the finances.
What are the fundamentals of the finances are, is your business in debt before we do this merger, is your business in debt or are you flushed with cash and who owns what and who's going to pay for what, you would do that with a business, even if that business partnership was going to last a year or two. And so the idea that we don't do the same amount of due diligence for what we expect to be a life partner, is crazy. And, that's what I want to change. Even if people don't sign legitimate prenups, I want the act of going through the due diligence, and the partnering up of finances to be something that we do intentionally. With everything out on the table wide open.
[00:08:55] Naseema: Yes. What do you say when people ask you I'm such and such religion and we don't believe in divorce. So am I wasting my time on a process like this? Heh heh heh
[00:09:07] Aaron Thomas: that's a good question. In my experience, and I grew up in the church, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, me and my three sisters, we were all in church, playing some role. Grandfather is a pastor.
I got uncles that are pastors. My dad was the deacon. My mom taught Sunday, my dad taught Sunday school. I'm well versed in kind of, that world and that style of thinking. My observation though, is that. Divorce doesn't have a religion
[00:09:32] Naseema: Mm hmm.
[00:09:33] Aaron Thomas: and it hits people of faith the same way that it does people, without, and you can believe and still protect yourself, you're still going to get insurance, even if you believe that you're going to be protected, and, while it takes two people to agree to get married, it only takes one person to initiate a divorce. And
so divorce can come to you, even if you as an individual are never the person to initiate it or want it. And I think, as I've gotten older and seeing more things, my thinking has been not every married couple needs to stay together.
There are situations of, abuse. mental, physical, financial, even that should not be tolerated. There, are issues of infidelity or people, not respecting people
[00:10:25] Naseema: Mm hmm.
[00:10:26] Aaron Thomas: you making the wrong decision in a partner shouldn't condemn you to a lifetime of unhappiness.
[00:10:33] Naseema: Ooh.
[00:10:34] Aaron Thomas: lot of our grandmothers were not happy,
[00:10:35] Naseema: Listen, that right there, and that's a real word because, a lot of times people try to use our parents generation or our grandparents as examples of they stayed together for 30, 40 years then we should be able to do this. But that dynamic was really, really different.
[00:10:58] Aaron Thomas: very different,
very different. The history of marriage used to be, and this was even in the laws of the U. S. The basically that the woman ceased to exist as a legal entity and her being was absorbed into The man's being, that's why married women couldn't own property on
their own.
And they were seen to be, the subordinate of the husband, most of our grandparents weddings had the word obey in the vows, and there was no way my wife was going to include that word in our vows. So we just live, we live in a different world.
And now, as It
should be, couples are coming together. Presumably, hopefully, as equal partners and not, one person runs the family, one person runs all of the finances and controls everything. It's a joining of equals ideally. And so now there has to be a conversation, there has to be an agreement, it's not one person that calls all the shots. And. There's just so much difference in the generations between our grandparents generation and our generation, the advent of no fault divorce. In the seventies and then, basically everywhere, in the eighties and beyond a lot of people, criticize no fault divorce as giving people an easy out. You can get out of, divorce is easy. Really what it did is it was one of the biggest things for the women's liberation movement. In the history of this country, because previously, if you wanted to divorce, you had to say some fault, either your spouse is being abusive, of Or they're neglectful, or they have they've been unfaithful and you had to prove that in court. And can you imagine a woman going to court and accusing her husband of being abusive? And the entire time that this case is pending, months, maybe a year long,
they're still living under the same roof
as the husband that they're trying. And then if they can't prove it to the court's satisfaction, Where the judge is also a male, they can't prove it to the court satisfaction.
The court could deny their divorce
and say, no, you have to stay married. And now people have the ability. And legal support to get out of these types of relationships. And that should be seen as a good thing.
So I, all of that is to say we cannot use our grandparents reality as the guide of how we should do things today.
[00:13:27] Naseema: and women couldn't even have their own bank accounts until the sixties. Keep it real, like what are you going to do? So a lot of times people are forced to be in these situations and I always wonder where the no fault divorce came from because I thought that was interesting, but thank you for the context.
Cause I understand I was in an abusive marriage and having to try to prove to someone about that abuse is. A 2nd, cycle of abuse it is so traumatizing. That's 1 of the things even until this day people kind of brush under the rug and they don't talk about a lot. So I can see in a court of law, like, how damning that can be and how spouses killed their spouses all the time, but just like how that would be such a huge point of contention. And so I get it like that is crazy, but yeah, it's good to know. Like I never knew why I was like, why is there no fault? Because this dude is crazy. And I need to let them know that this is why we're getting a divorce.
I didn't think about it on the other side because that makes a lot of sense, a lot of sense, but I still hear like all this backlash about against having a prenup and I don't understand The mindset of people I don't think people understand I wonder where the negative connotation to a prenup came into place.
Like, why isn't it normalized? It seemed like it would be part of just that process of you getting married.
[00:14:57] Aaron Thomas: Yeah. And, it's such a great point. If it were normalized, like if it were mandatory, we would not think a second thing about it. You sit down, you decide, what's mine, what's yours, what's ours. Let's make sure that's an important thing to be on the same page about. And, how are we going to structure our finances? And just like in any business partnership agreement worth of paper it's written on, you would have what happens if, the business comes in? What happens if a partner leaves the business? Can we do that? Can we decide that while we're both on the same page and we love each other and, the respect is high.
Obviously we don't want it, the business to fail. We don't want the marriage to fail, but now is the time to do it rather than, spend tons of money on lawyers and fight about it. In a courtroom years down the line,
potentially. I think that a lot of the stigma surrounding prenuptial agreements comes from, number one, obviously, we don't want divorce. As a society, it is not something that, we want to promote, religiously or otherwise, we want our relationships to last forever. And, divorce has been just itself has been look down on and, a prenup preparing for that. Just gets caught in, the bad reputation of that whole world. But also because when premiums first came around they were primarily, at least the way we heard about them, they're primarily used by the very wealthy. And, so we attach. This image, a lot of people hear the word prenup and immediately they're thinking like, Anna Nicole Smith marrying like a 90 year old, oil baron.
I'm like dating myself, 20 year olds are like, who's Anna Nicole Smith. But,
[00:16:30] Naseema: that oh my god
[00:16:32] Aaron Thomas: but, we think about the Hollywood situation of some super old rich man, trying to keep his money away from a young gold digging wife and week. That doesn't apply to my life. I can't imagine me being in that scenario. And so people have all these misconceptions and so many of the misconceptions come from that image. People think that you got to be wealthy,
[00:16:53] Naseema: I don't even have a lot of money why would I care we don't we're not starting with much Why does it matter?
[00:16:58] Aaron Thomas: right people think that you've got to be wealthy, to, get clear on these types of issues or to benefit from a prenup. They think that, the only reason you would possibly do it is to prepare for divorce and there are many other benefits. To a prenuptial agreement that can come besides just, protecting your premier last.
Certainly that is a part of it. But all of those things combined to just, create this idea that, prenups are bad. And if you get one, it means that you don't trust your spouse. And I think a lot of people would be shocked to, for example, read my prenup with my wife and see how, number one, fair it is.
And number two, how much it focuses on. Our relationship during the marriage itself and not just what happens if we get divorced.
[00:17:47] Naseema: Love that can you break that down a little bit first of all actually I do want to back up a little bit and just give like the broad definition of what a prenup actually is and then I want to dive into how you use it in your marriage
yes, and thank you for asking me that. And so a prenup is a set of rules that define how you manage your finances, both during
[00:18:09] Aaron Thomas: and, if necessary, after a marriage. And obviously, you know why I'm putting that emphasis on during because a lot of people think that it is literally just you're writing your divorce settlement agreement and nothing else. And that is not the truth. And so the way that I like to break down the components of a prenup is, before marriage. During marriage and then yes, if necessary, after marriage, or what sometimes I'll euphemistically call the contingency clauses. And so before marriage. Before marriage, for a prenup to be enforceable in all 50 states each spouse has to disclose all of their assets and debts to the other spouse and their income. And we ensure that this happens in our agreements. We literally prepare a net worth statement for each spouse. And we, Staple that thing to the back of the agreement.
So there's no question that these things have been shared with each spouse. So that those things are put on the table and what I found is just that one act alone of transparency between spouses is number one so necessary and beneficial to the relationship. And two is something that would not happen in a majority. Of relationships, if you did not mandate that as part of your agreement and sometimes people, when you really think about it, shouldn't that be mandatory to get married altogether?
[00:19:33] Naseema: On now. Come on now.
[00:19:35] Aaron Thomas: your finances,
[00:19:37] Naseema: But I think so when you?
get a divorce, they're gonna look at that stuff. So why wouldn't they mandate that up front? It drives me bonkers. Ugh.
[00:19:47] Aaron Thomas: Yeah. I
mean, if marriage is legally. Merging your finances,
combining your finances.
Shouldn't you have the right to know? But that only happens, with prenuptial. Now, some people, if you're, into finances, you're on top of your
things and you don't have the kind of taboo around discussing money that most Americans do quite frankly then maybe you are the kind of person, but even people who are, very transparent with their finances with their spouse or their loved one. They don't always get as specific as putting it down on paper in black and white. And I
think that there is another step that goes because once you have to put down every asset and every debt on a piece of paper, one, you start remembering those things that you may have conveniently forgot about. Oh, yeah, the credit card.
That's just mine. That didn't concern you that that 20 grand of debt that I have, or, maybe the money that you owe to the IRS and these other things that typically don't come up while you're dating.
In a normal dating relationship. You're not exposing the things that, you may not be super proud of,
The debt that you have, or, the fact that you haven't saved as much for retirement as you wish you had, at a certain age. And then a lot of those things never come out and I've done divorce cases where people have been married 20, 30 more years and still don't know. What the finances of the person who shares their bed look like they
don't know what they don't know how much they make.
They don't know what the assets are.
They don't know what the debts are. Sometimes people come in and they don't even know where their spouse banks. So I can't, I don't even know where to send the subpoena to. Because they don't know, where they bank, we're checking the mailbox to see what, what bills are coming. And so that, before marriage is, due diligence period, you get transparent about all your finances and then there's during the marriage. And, in a prenup, I think it's important for people to talk about how are we going to do our accounts and how
does the money flow?
Are we going to do, what my parents did and put all the money comes into one bank account and all the checks get written, from the same bank account, just one account for everything or what is more common today where couples get married later in life and they're not getting married at 20 and it's easy to have 20 bank accounts cause you can open them online and that kind of thing is to have a joint bank account
that pays for the joint bills that you both have access to, but to also have separate bank accounts. Where your income goes into those and then you contribute to the joint bank account for the joint expenses either
50 50 or pro rider with your incomes or some kind of way that you've agreed upon You have some separation where you have your own spending money You have your own accounts, but you also have you know resources that you pull together that is the household money and I think that makes sense for a lot of couples today because we don't typically go from one day.
All of our finances are separate and then you know Your partner moves in and you dump all of your accounts together. You have no more, separate accounts. Everything is joint. All your credit cards are joint. That's just not how couples today live. And because of that is all the more important for us to have a, a very intentional conversation about, how are we going to fund the joint account? How much do we each contribute to these bills? Which of these bills do we consider joint bills, which are separate? Do we agree that we each have an allowance? Do we each get spending money of our own? What are our savings rates going to be? What are we going to do, for retirement? What expectations of transparency regarding finances do we have in our relationship? And one thing that we have in, my own prenup is what I call the annual shareholders meeting
[00:23:17] Naseema: Mmhmm.
[00:23:17] Aaron Thomas: We had, we sit down once a year. Some people do it quarterly or even more often, and we have a state of the union, the state of the household finances, what are the assets?
What are the debts? What happened this past year? What surprises do we do? We not plan for some expenses that came up. Can we use all this information to plan for the next year budgeting and, tweak them, tweak the amounts that we get for our allowances or tweak the amount of our contributions to the joint account. These are such important to. conversations to have because all of the nightmare scenarios that I've seen come from the lack of communication around these things. That happens very often when people don't have a prenup and they just go in and trust that things will work out financially. and my wife and I went even further with it. We decided, what are the things that we value as a couple? And can we make sure that we plan for these things. We're big savers. We want to save, a huge percentage of our take home income.
One of the things that we put in our agreement is that, if anything ever happened, we would keep our own retirement accounts. But while we're married, We equalize our retirement contributions. If she's maxing out, I'm maxing out, if we're saving for something else and we're cutting in, we're only going to, contribute half of the 401k limit, then we're both doing it.
And that way we both keep pace. With our retirement contributions, we
remain equal on that front.
But we're communicating about it and we have, the same rule rather than, you're, my retirement is my business and your retirement contributions is your business, even though we're living under the same roof.
Yeah. So those are just some examples of some of the things that, you can put in an agreement,
[00:24:48] Naseema: I love, the shareholders meeting, but yes, I think the key component that most people miss is that they think prenups are about just when you get divorced, but it does dictate how you manage your finances. Through your relationship. And if you already know that most marriages in because of financial issues, why wouldn't you want to do this?
It just doesn't make sense again. Like I think it should be something that's mandated, but also think that people should have to take mandated parenting classes before having kids. But that's a whole nother story for another day, but it just makes sense. It makes so much sense. But then, there's always this thing, especially as a woman in the back of my head, because, just being say, we always are told we have to put a little money to the side just in case something happens. Of course that's financial infidelity, but it's also like this little security thing that women think that they need to have. And I'm not sure if it's just a woman thing, but this is just what I have heard, but what do you say to people that just want to squirrel away a little bit? Don't wanna share it just in case.
[00:25:58] Aaron Thomas: Yeah. And no I hear that a hundred percent because my, my grandma had, her money to the side where quite honestly, if granddad had known about it, that money would have been spent up. So it was
like, for her, it made total sense. And it was the greatest thing in the world,
And I think that, to really pull that apart. We have to talk about, why is there the need for that?
And I think it comes back to a need for security.
And if you're married to somebody who is I control all the finances and I make all the decisions, then you've got to have the side account.
to make yourself feel secure.
On the other hand, if you have, like what my agreement says, which is, everything that we build together outside of our retirement accounts is 50 50. And so if anything ever happened in me and my wife's relationship, she knows exactly what she would walk away with.
And by the way, she has access. To all of those joint accounts
where she can go in and
check and see it just like I can. And so both of us have the exact same understanding of, one, the money in our own separately titled accounts belongs to us. Whatever is there is already ours.
And then we're both 50 percent stakeholders in. The joint accounts, which was where we do the majority of our savings outside of retirement accounts, and I think that eliminates the need to have this separate, account with some couples
will choose to do in that instance say, you've got a couple where one spouse is a saver and the other one's a spender. what a lot of them will do is whether they're doing kind of the inside out or the outside in, where does the money, initially go they will say, all right, each of us is going to have 1000 of our own spending money per
[00:27:46] Naseema: Mm-Hmm.
[00:27:47] Aaron Thomas: And if I choose to spend every penny of mine. That's fine. Because if anything ever happened, you still get to keep your so you can save 999 of your 1000 every month. And if anything ever happened, you would still reap the benefit of all those savings
because that is your money to keep to do with what you want to spend it to save it. And that's how you address that problem.
And then, if for a fact that you're not going to court, and everything that's in joint names is 50 50, okay. Then, you don't have the need to squirrel away money on the side. So I can think you can even benefit couples who, feel like they have that situation.
[00:28:22] Naseema: Yeah, I love that. I love like creating that a solution. However, there is a problem that needs to be addressed in that. So that was a great answer. I do wanna know though, if you have a prenup, does that completely eliminate the chances of you going to court?
[00:28:40] Aaron Thomas: No. In any divorce case, there are essentially four potential issues at play. There's dividing the assets and debts. There is alimony, there is child custody, and there's child support.
If you have a prenup, like if it is well written, a prenup should cover everything that has to do with dividing your assets and debts and alimony.
So it should take those financial issues completely off the table.
And then you're talking about child custody and child support, which you can't determine until, the time being, because otherwise you could sign an agreement. When both of you are great parents that says we're going to do 5050 custody and then one person develops a drug addiction or goes through, a psychotic break and that no longer makes sense.
And so the courts are always going to maintain the right. to determine child custody and
who has custody is going to impact child support. So you
can't address that ahead of time either.
But what you can do is you can put in place certain things to make that courtroom litigation as less likely.
For example, in my prenup, what I learned in my divorce work over the years is that so many people go through divorce without having. Done counseling or without having done the things during the marriage itself to try to give it the best chance of success. And usually one spouse wanted to go to counseling.
The other ones that we don't need it. I'm not interested. And so me and my wife decided that ahead of time that if either one of us wanted to go to counseling, we're going to go to counseling. And we wrote into our agreement that each year during the marriage, either of us can trigger This counseling provision that says that we have to go to three counseling sessions. So I can trigger this once per year. My wife can trigger it once per year. It's never in question whether we're going to counseling. If one of us wants to go to counseling, we're going to counseling. And what it's done is it's given us permission to, we don't have to wait till our relationship is at a two out of 10.
We can be at a seven out of 10 and
we just want to get back to
that nine. And so we can go, we get that help during the marriage itself. And then we also said, if dissolution is on the table, if divorce is on the table, then we got to go to six sessions before we can hire an attorney.
We had to go to six counseling sessions.
And then if we finished all those counseling sessions and we still want to split up, then we've got to go to mediation. And if we don't work things out of mediation, then we go to arbitration. We basically put in place all of these steps designed to make it so that we never end up in a courtroom where a divorce can take a year and a half and drain 20 percent of our net worth on litigation
[00:31:17] Naseema: That part,
[00:31:18] Aaron Thomas: is what I see people do day in, day out,
[00:31:22] Naseema: we did not touch upon that, but I really want to touch upon that, like the cost, the average cost of divorce, like it's so expensive.
[00:31:35] Aaron Thomas: it is so expensive. It's so expensive. And so, this is what I say, even if you have zero assets coming into your marriage, even if you don't have a dime protecting against the potential cost of a divorce in the future is alone worth the price of getting a prenup.
So you can both have zero assets to your name and it's worth the cost of getting a prenup because what makes a divorce expensive and messy is not necessarily what you had coming in. It's the fight over what you accumulated during the marriage itself.
And so if you can take that off the table by being like, look, either we're 50, 50 on everything, or you could, what's your name? I keep it. What's my name. We split what's in. Joint accounts. 50/50. If you can take that off the table at the beginning, you were saving, on average, $15,000 per spouse in divorces today and the more money that you have, the more successful that you are, the more money there is to fight over and the more people end up paying to attorneys.
I worked on a divorce where our client alone spent a million dollars over the course of four years On legal fees and litigations, obviously they were super wealthy, but this
[00:32:46] Naseema: but
[00:32:46] Aaron Thomas: couple. They had nothing. They had nothing. They had zero when they got married. And they were probably 1 of those couples that said no need for a prenup. And then 1 of their careers blew up and they ended up being worth millions and millions. And because of that, their divorce cost millions and took years and years because all of a sudden now it's worth it to appeal every decision 3 or 4 times. Because you're fighting over so much money. Yeah.
[00:33:12] Naseema: How do we get a well structured prenuptial agreement
[00:33:17] Aaron Thomas: So number 1, you should go to an attorney who knows what they're doing.
I am biased, and would send people to prenups. com. I think, is a reputable source. But you want to go to somebody who has drafted preemptive for who has done family law so they know what kinds of issues come up in a divorce and how to protect against them. I, warn people against kind of the DIY approach. You get one chance to do this, and you don't know if the document you draft is going to hold up until potentially 20 years later, and you're in a courtroom and that's a bad time to find out that your DIY prenup. It's not going to be accepted by the court. There is a misconception that, prenups are thrown out left and right. They're like 50 percent of them don't work. And for ones that are drafted by a reputable attorney, that is simply not the truth. Courts uphold prenups the same way they do any other contract. And my big recommendation is, go to. a lawyer who this is what they do. It's on their website. Don't use your buddy that graduated from law school and does, completely different area of law. Go to an expert.
[00:34:20] Naseema: and does it have to be state specific Okay,
[00:34:23] Aaron Thomas: is state specific. Yeah. Yeah. Family law is state by state. That's why, For us, we've got partners all across the country in the different states so that we are able to offer prenups in different places. But yeah, it's going to be the state where you are legal residents, not where you got married. It's not where, you necessarily plan on moving in a few years, but it's where, you are a legal resident. That's where you want to get your prenup drafted.
[00:34:46] Naseema: Okay. And so your website to do this is prenups. com. Pretty easy to remember. You also wrote a book, right? Can you break down like what you share in your book? What insights people can get from there?
[00:35:00] Aaron Thomas: Yeah. absolutely. Thanks for bringing it up. Yeah. So the book is the prenup prescription meet the premarital contract designed to save your marriage and get on Amazon links on the website, to go pick it up, anywhere else where books are sold. And basically what I wanted to do is there are a lot of people who are like curious about a preemptive.
I need one, do I not need one? How should I even be thinking about managing, money? In my marriage. And I wanted to write a book that was helpful for people who, are thinking about marriage, people who are on the verge of marriage, as well as people who have been married, 10, 20 years to find out, what makes sense in today's world. In terms of your financial relationship with your spouse, how to go about it, how to put these things in place, how to schedule your own shareholders meeting how to think about, alimony, how to think about setting up your bank accounts the way that your parents did it is very unlikely to work for you. And so we're all left figuring it out on our own. And I wanted to create a resource to give people the benefit of the experience that I've had over the past, 20 years working with, couples either on the beginning of their marriage or on the end. Of their marriage and try to help people go into that financial relationship with with some expert knowledge.
[00:36:16] Naseema: I love that. It sounds like an incredible resource. Also what we didn't talk about, but I just wanted to briefly mention is you could also get a post nup if you're already married and you want to do these things, you can do a post nup as well. So can you talk a little bit about a post nup?
[00:36:32] Aaron Thomas: Yeah.
absolutely. And, we do a lot of post nups, some are people who, they got married, they meant to get a prenup, time got away from home, wedding planning, yada yada. And they come around and they say, actually, we need, we do need to do this, we see the benefit of it there are people who something has happened. In their marriage, they have some crisis, maybe there was some infidelity or there was, financial infidel. There was some kind of lack of trust and people want to give the marriage a chance. But they say, 1 thing that I've got to do is I got to know where I stand financially and we got to get this down on paper, for me to feel secure to move forward and work on the other parts of our relationship.
We need to manage, the financial part of a relationship. So some people will do a post up. For that reason, and then other people are, people who somebody who is listening to this podcast right now and they're like, Oh, I didn't know that just keeping, the accounts in my separate name wasn't protecting them and that, the court can still split those up to
and, for those couples who you know, just kept their finances separate and they think that that's all you have to do.
And they realize, Oh, I've actually got to put this into a document for the court to respect. This arrangement that me and my spouse have set up, and so a lot of people will do prenup post nups for that reason is they say, let's put on paper what it is we're already doing in terms of our accounts and our understanding of who owns what and what debts are, each other's responsibilities.
But yeah,
[00:37:54] Naseema: take relatively about the same time to do a post op and a pre op.
[00:37:58] Aaron Thomas: They take about the same time to do most of the time in preparing these agreements. Thanks. Bye. Is, couples really sitting down and having the conversations with each other about, what they want to do, what things need to look like. But otherwise, we routinely turn them around in a week.
I tell people to
start, if you're getting married, don't start the week prior
Your wedding, give yourself some time
because you don't know what it's going to take to work through these issues. But, the actual drafting of the agreement does not take, a ton of time. The time that should be spent is talking with your partner about your relationship
[00:38:33] Naseema: I would think that most of the time it's like gathering, like, where all your debts are, where are your assets are, like, that takes a lot of, can take a lot of time for people that don't do it regularly I'm assuming, but
anyway.
[00:38:47] Aaron Thomas: that part. Yes.
[00:38:50] Naseema: So you guys want to check out the prenup prescription, check out the prenup guy on the socials, prenups. com. And Erin, you also have a free ebook.
[00:39:04] Aaron Thomas: I do have a free ebook. It's called seven steps to a marriage saving prenup. And so if you are, if all of this is brand new to you, you have no idea where to start. It is relatively short and it's a great resource to give you a starting point of how do I wrap my mind around this whole thing? And you can get that for free on prenups.
com.
[00:39:24] Naseema: Yeah. Thank you. This has been such an informational and just a mind blowing episode for me. Cause I just love hearing all this stuff. I've heard it before, but every time like it brings up something new, I'm just like, I didn't even think about that. So I really appreciate you for sharing all your knowledge.
Thank you for normalizing prenups and making it accessible for all of us.
[00:39:49] Aaron Thomas: Thank you so much for having me on. It's been great.
[00:39:51] Naseema: All right.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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