DEAR JANE: My husband is demanding that I sign a POST-nup agreement so his kids from a previous marriage can take MY money

Dear Jane,

My husband is demanding that I sign a POST-nuptial agreement because he wants his kids from another marriage to get a share of my money.

The two of us have been married for seven years and we share a five year old daughter; we also each have two children from previous marriages, all of whom are in their 20s. When we met, I owned my own home, as did he, and we’re both fortunate to work in high-paying jobs – although he does earn about ten times what I do.

Still, we’ve never had to worry about money.

When we began discussing the idea of marriage, I brought up the topic of a pre-nup. Given that we were both coming into the relationship with our own assets, as well as our own financial obligations, I thought it would be a wise idea to put everything on paper.

He immediately rejected the idea, insisting he loved me and was not at all worried about our relationship. Because I was so in love, I decided not to push the subject – and just a few months later we were married. Since then, we’ve both sold our homes and moved into a larger house, where we now live with our daughter.

After we made the decision to buy a home together, I suggested that we should write a shared will that details what will happen to our home and finances in the event that one of us dies before the other. 

Our current wills are from when we were both single parents, and I want to make sure that our daughter is protected. But every time I tried to discuss it, he ignored me or tried to find a way to change the subject.

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Sadly, our marriage has not turned out how I’d hoped – and while we are going through therapy in an attempt to save our relationship, it’s become even clearer to me that we need to get all of our finances in place. 

So, finally, I addressed the whole thing head-on, only for him to turn around and tell me that he now wants to discuss a post-nup agreement because he wants to make sure that his two kids from his previous marriage get a fair share of ‘our’ money.

To be clear, we’ve always kept our finances totally separate – he does what he wants with his money and I don’t have any control over how he chooses to spend it.

So for him to now suggest that his two children should have any part of ‘our’ money is just crazy to me, especially because I spent so much time trying to convince him how important it was that we deal with this before we ever married.

I’m so scared that his children will come after me if anything ever does happen to him – and I’ll be left fending for myself and my daughter.

I need advice on how to proceed. I feel so betrayed. So blindsided. It’s changed my whole feeling about this marriage, a feeling that wasn’t all that great to begin with.

From,

Spouse in Strife

Dear Spouse in Strife,

Get thee to a lawyer posthaste. 

I’m afraid nothing in your letter makes much sense to me, least of all that you are going through marriage troubles and now is the time your husband chooses to make this ridiculous request, given that you already keep your finances completely separate.

I’m not sure how he thinks of it as ‘our’ money, when you keep everything separate, although many states in the US consider everything within a marriage, marital property, and look for an equitable distribution.

Please take care of yourself and your future. 

You do not have to start divorce proceedings, but you do need to know exactly where you stand and how to protect yourself. 

A good lawyer will advise you on this, but any advice columnist will tell you that even thinking about a post-nuptial agreement which would benefit one more than the other, when your marriage is already struggling, is a huge, and firm, no.