Note that answers given in this section cannot take the place of independent legal or financial advise. Please read our disclaimer.

"I heard that we can do our own pre-nup and that pre-nups never hold up in court, is that true?"

If you have assets worth protecting, then you need to spend the money to protect them properly. Unless you are a lawyer yourself, doing your own pre-nup is probably going to be as worthless as having no pre-nup at all.

No. If pre-nups never held up in court no one would ever bother doing one. That having been said, there are several things that can invalidate a pre-nup. For example, if your then fiancé didn’t tell you the truth about his or her assets, or if your fiancé handed you a pre-nup five minutes before you were set to walk down the aisle in a packed church after you had just dished out $50,000.00 in wedding expenses, and said “sign this or the wedding is off,” then a court could invalidate the pre-nup. What you need to keep in mind is that a pre-nup is just a contract. Whether it will hold up in a divorce depends, among other things, on how well it was written, how comprehensive it is, whether both parties were honest in the disclosure of their finances, and whether it was entered into freely by both parties.

Karen A. Covy, J.D. is a divorce attorney and family-law mediator in Chicago, Illinois. She owns and operates Midwest Mediation as well as a successful family-law firm. She can be reached at (312) 236-1670. View her Divorce Magazine profile.

Tuesday, May 15
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Out With the Tragedy: Turning Divorce into a meaningful experience
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