"My Fiancé Is Asking For A Prenup"

Brought to you by CHL, a budget-friendly, faith-based alternative to health insurance. chministries.org slash budget. I've been engaged for almost two years. About a year ago, my fiance suggested we consider getting a prenup. We both have children who are adults now. We have our own property and we both are self-employed with our own businesses. I've been a single mom, never married, and he was previously married for almost 23 years. The property that I have is paid off and I don't have any debt. He's paying on a mortgage and he has some other debt, although I'm not sure exactly how much. I'm trying to figure out how we plan a future together, if our assets and finances stay separate. I'm 46 and he's almost 50, so I feel like we still have so many years ahead of us for wealth building and just putting a future together. How much are your net worths? What's your net worth? What's his? After taxes and expenses with the business. Mine would be what I make every year. They can be that or just what are you worth? If you put all of your- Your house, your business, your cars, everything. All your retirement, everything. Mine is probably $550,000, almost $600,000. What would he be worth? I know his property, well, the house and the property combined are worth about $750,000, but he owes $280,000 on the mortgage. Okay, so $500,000. Does he have a lot of retirement? I don't think he has any retirement. You don't think or do you know? Because in order to sign a pre-nep, you kind of have to, you know what I mean? I'm like, before I'd even talk about that, I'd have every piece of information financially about each other. I almost feel like he's waiting to disclose all that when it comes time to put together the pre-nep because I'm really open about just everything. My finances and just any, I'm very open. I like to talk about- Well, yeah. Well, you're going to get married to the guy, so I'm curious why he's not so open about it. That's weird. Here's the thing. I'm going to be honest. I've been working on a marriage project for a couple of years, and I have had my firm, firm, immovable position on pre-neps really challenged in a good way. It's James Sexton, an attorney out of New York. He's the one who challenged me on it, and it was this. Every married couple has a pre-nep, and it is whatever the state you live in says is how we're going to split it up. Unless you all sit down and write out, while you still like each other, what would happen if? If you missed Health Plan Open Enrollment, don't panic. Christian Healthcare Ministries offers a budget-friendly alternative to health insurance, and you can join at any time. With CHM, there are no network restrictions, and members say they often save hundreds of dollars a month compared to traditional insurance. Make a change that fits your budget, your values, and your timing. Check out chministries.org slash budget to learn more. What would happen if? We could debate that. In fact, some of my colleagues disagree with me. I'm unsettled in my opinion on it, because I do feel like if you make a pre-nep, you're already getting into the boat thinking, well, I just need to have an escape plan if this thing happens. I do think there's wisdom in talking about, okay, if this many percentage of marriages don't work, and you're marrying somebody who already has had one that didn't work, let's be honest about what happens if this doesn't, and we're going to do everything we can. That's for a different discussion. To me, my biggest red flag for you is what a pre-nep would serve you to right now is to make sure your kids are protected asset-wise, and it's not a way to keep secrets from each other or to keep everything separate forever. Because once you all get married, we're going to have one checking account, we're going to put all of our money in this thing together, and his business may pay him a salary, and your business may pay you a salary, but it's going to go into the same account. And if it doesn't, a pre-nep's not going to solve that. A pre-nep is not a cover for division, right? It's just a plan. I think it seems like his biggest concern, well, he almost lost his home during his divorce or going through his divorce, and he had to come up with so much money to keep it. That pain is real. I fully understand it and respect that. I do, I know, but he can't hand you that cinder block and say, you carry this for me. Him getting remarried to you is him saying, okay, here we go again. I'm going to put both feet back in the same boat, right? Because otherwise, he's going to have a foot hanging out of the boat, y'all will never get out of the bay. Yeah, he has said he would like to leave his property to his daughters. Yeah, and that's okay. That's super fair and good. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, so my thing is, and I'm with John, I'm not black and white on the issue of pre-neps. Usually, if there's a discrepancy in wealth going into a marriage, that's one time that I'm like, I get that. This is another. You have adult kids with assets. Yes, adult kids and in a second marriage and you know what I mean, all of that. And it's like, hey, the adult kids, I want this to go to them because I've worked hard for this. I mean, all of that, that seems fair to me. What I don't like is you not knowing exactly, you don't know him fully and you're engaged to him. So that does worry me. And I would want to make sure that the language that you have enough representation, if you guys do go into this and some kind of pre-nep, that you have representation on your end, because it does sound like you have no debt. You have a home. You've done very well financially. He has a home, but he has debt is what you said you think. I don't even know if you know how much. You don't even know. Or how much, yeah. So I mean, you could be in a better financial situation than he even is. But I would just want to make sure you have representation on your end as well, Anne. But it would not be, that's not the black and white issue to me. What worries me though is. The secrets. Yeah. How this is coming about. Does that bother you, Anne? I'm just curious because I wouldn't be able to get close to somebody if they were like, hey, you can know all of me. Let's get married. But this one part. You can't know what's in these accounts. Yeah. So I'm not like the kind of person, I've been almost afraid to ask because I don't want to seem like I'm being nosy or. Listen, hon, you're about to be his wife. Yeah. You're about to be his wife. I didn't want to offend him by, for a while, I'm like, well, it's not my business. That's not, it is, you're about to become his wife. What if he owes $20 million in back taxes and debt, right? You want to know. And Anne, and I get your kindness of spirit. I can feel that from you and it's so wonderful and such a gift, but you need to have the strength to push into areas of this marriage that are uncomfortable in order for this marriage to thrive. It's not sweeping things under the rug and you already begun that habit. And that's not a great setup. Burying parts of yourself to keep the peace. And asking your fiance, his money situation is not rude or weird. Like, do you know what I mean? You're not like, I don't know. It's like, you're not asking them to be like, hey, you need to move to a foreign country with me for 18 years or whatever. I don't know, something up and big. And you're like, oh my gosh, what? This is just like, this is pretty basic stuff, Anne. Can I get your opinion on something else? Real quick, we got like 10 seconds. Go. Okay. He has said that he doesn't want to move from the home that he shared with his previous wife. Even after I suggested we build a home together, I have property we can build on where I can sell my property and pay off his mortgage. And he's just like, those are not options for him. You know what? I'm going to hold you because we'll answer that in the next segment. So stay on the line and we'll get right back to you. Your fiance does not want to move out of the house he shared with his ex-wife for more than two decades. And you have said, I don't feel comfortable living in that house. Let's build something new. You can move into my house. I've got property. And he said, deal breaker. I stay here. Pretty much, yeah. Okay. But even after I'm like, you know, I'm, of course, I'm willing to make sacrifices. So I just want to get him out of debt. I want him to, you know, take a break. He's been working so hard all these years to, you know, to recover from the divorce. And so I even suggested I could sell my property and we could use that money to pay off his mortgage. But he doesn't want to do that either. And I'm just kind of not sure where to go from here. Yeah, because that would mess up the prenup. I mean, that's you putting your assets into the asset that he's then going to give his kids and you're not getting any part of that, right? So that's where the whole kind of like, it starts to be really complicated, really quick. Can I tell you what I hear? And this is going to be really hard for me to say, Anne. Okay. I hear a guy that likes you. I'll even go as far to say he loves you. And he wants to be with you. And he sees, like, I want to be with her long term. But I don't see a guy who wants to get married. I did ask him a couple of weeks ago, just really like, I was blunt. I'm like, are you sure you want to get married? And he said, heck yeah. Okay. But I think he has a picture of what marriage is. And you have a picture of what marriage is. And you're both using the same word, but your pictures are very different. So around here at the office, we say clear is kind. I think the kindest thing y'all could do for each other is to, in as exquisite detail as possible, y'all detail out what your picture of marriage looks like from how we talk about money, to sex and intimacy, to inheritance, to wills, to one checking account. Whatever your picture of marriage is, I want you to have the courage to write it out and share it with him and ask him to do the same thing. And hopefully 80, 90% of it, it all matches. And then you're going to have to compromise, negotiate, walk away from each other because the other 5% or 10% is so big, right? Or maybe it's, oh, okay, I can do that. You can do this. But y'all both have different pictures of what this thing looks like. Yeah, because there is a level of sacrifice and meeting in the middle. And it sounds like he's putting up some really hard lines of even where I'm going to live here and you got to deal with it. Yeah. That's a lot. I'm going to be in debt. I don't care what your values are. Yeah. So making sure those values are aligned are huge. And so, yeah, when it comes to the housing situation, I mean, it's whatever you're comfortable with. I mean, from the math perspective, if you own a home, he owns a home, he wants you to live in his home. And if it's in the prenup that his home then goes not to you, if something happens to him, it goes to his adult kids. You need to make sure that your home then, that you have the equity built in so that you have a place to go to, not necessarily the home itself, but the funds and the equity that's in your home, if you do end up selling it and moving into his home, that that's yours, right? So it's not fair for you to wash yours clean. He keeps all this and then keeps it if something happens in the marriage. But if two people are getting married and they both have houses and they want to sell their house, combine that money and go buy a house together, and one of them is not prenupping it away from the other person, that's awesome. Combine everything, y'all want to go all in, you can do it. That's usually what you do, yeah. But he wants to keep this house for his adult kids. So it's like, okay, well then you need to make sure that your house then is in a protection for you, or at least the equity in there, right? We're just hearing over and over, Ann, you squashing what you're feeling, you squashing what you think is right, you molding yourself to fit into this other guy's picture of his life. And I want you to have the courage for your sake, for your kids, for your future, to write down, here's what I really want. Here's what I really believe, and have the courage to share that with him. And he might look at that and walk away, and that you're worth that risk.