Speaker 1: Today I'm going to make a case to you why I believe getting a prenuptial agreement may be one of the best things you can do for your marriage. And by the way, if you're watching this and you're saying, what the hell is he talking about? Just brace for impact. Take a deep breath. Watch this video together. There's a likelihood you're going to argue afterwards. But if I do make sense to you in this video, before you argue, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. So let's get right into it. So stick around to the very end. I'm going to give you a lot of different stats and eight reasons why you ought to consider getting a prenup. But let's get right into it. So look, I've been running a business for 20 plus years. Business is very hard, right? I've been in the insurance space over two decades. The whole concept about insurance isn't buying auto insurance because you're going to get into a car accident. You don't buy a life insurance because you're going to die tomorrow. You buy auto insurance that in case you get into a car accident, or somebody hits you, you're protected. You buy life insurance that in case you die tomorrow or next week, or next year while you have a wife or a husband and kids, they're at least taken care of. The same thing as goes with insurance is the same thing that goes with prenup. Look at prenuptial agreements or postnuptial agreements as a form of insurance. So now, let me give you some stats when it comes down to marriage and divorce. So, only 5% of folks who get a divorce had a prenup. Of the people that got a divorce, 15% of them wish they would have set up a prenup. So now when you look at these stats on divorces in America, 41% of first marriages end up out of divorce. But watch what happens to the stats. 60% of second marriages and 73% of third marriages, which means if your first marriage didn't work out and you didn't have a prenup, fine. But don't do it on your second or your third. So now let me continue. A few other things you need to know when it comes down to marriage. The average marriage in America lasts eight years. And aside from that, every 16 seconds, somebody gets married in America, and every 42 seconds, someone's getting a divorce in America. So now, prenuptial, nuptial agreements, Pat, I don't get it. Are we talking about divorces here today? Let me give you one of the most important reasons why you ought to get a nuptial agreement. It's simply to avoid future arguments. For example, most of the time when you talk about why would somebody get a nuptial agreement, do you not trust me? It's the famous line when somebody wants to set up a nuptial agreement. You must not trust me. You don't trust me. My mom told me you don't trust me. All you care about is money. Somebody starts saying stuff like that. That's a very deep concerning thing because what do you mean I don't trust you? We've only known each other for two years. We've only known each other for a year. Nowadays, most people get married online. Most people meet each other online. I don't want to have the same years of experience with you if I would have met you through a family member or a friend or a co-worker. There is a lot of risk today in marriage, more than ever before, because people are more than ever marrying somebody that they know the least amount, where before at least we knew more about the person that we're getting married. So having said that, I'll give you two stories and I'll get into the two points. So Jackie O, John F. Kennedy's wife, she's widowed, okay? So while she's about to marry Onassis, who's a very successful businessman, at the time I think he's a billionaire, very well-known, very successful, and he has always liked Jackie, they finally agree to get married, and one of the clauses Jackie gets to put in the agreement, the nuptial agreement is, for each year that Jackie is married to him, if he divorces her, she gets $10 million. That's part of the agreement. She was able to negotiate a lot of different things. So was he. He had great attorneys. She had great attorneys. So we get married. Look, I'm a first lady. If I'm going to risk marrying somebody like you, there's risk for marrying a playboy like you. I've got to be protected. Per year I'm married to him, I get $10 million. Now that's that time, by the way, 64, 65, 66, compared to today, that's a lot of money, right? Salma Hayek is another one. She gets married to a billionaire, okay? I believe they had a kid together. I even believe there's a contract in their agreement that per kid it was a certain number, $17 million, I don't remember the exact number, but there's something there. Now somebody may say, oh my God, look, that's fake. That's not real love. What do you call that? Is that real love? That's not real love. The way I got married was real love. Oh, really? Yeah, okay. Because you don't think about the fact that life happens after we get married. After you have one kid, two kids, three kids, four kids, travel, in-laws, issues, you and I cannot predict that the other person's going to change or not. You can't predict if I'm going to change, and I cannot predict that you're going to change. So we're talking about each other. We're getting married. But then life happens, and marriage sometimes turns into a business, and then there's money. So now, eight reasons to why set up a prenuptial agreement. One of them for me, prevent future arguments. What do I mean by this? Well, when getting married, you know, I try to teach this from people that I watch very closely and people that I consult with, is I like to have three different accounts. One account is our account, okay? And our account, the money is spent to pay the bills, the money is spent for our kids, the money is spent for our food. It's everything that's our. Then there's her account, then there is his account, right? Her account, she wants to go buy three Louis Vuitton purses. It's your money. Do it. You want to go spend money on one of your cousins that I really don't like, and she always asks you for money, and instead of you asking me for the money, you don't even have to ask me anymore. You just give your cousin $10,000 out of your money, but not my money, and not our money, instead, your money. Because when it's your money, it's a different story. Now, when birthday comes up, if you don't set it up this way, and say your wife buys you a gift, or your husband buys you a gift out of our money, it's not really a gift. You're like, oh, babe, here's what I got for you. Yeah, babe, I saw it on the credit card the other day. I kind of know what you were getting me. And it's not like you felt the real pain, because you're spending it out of our money, right? But isn't that how it's supposed to be? Well, if I buy it out of my money, it's very different. If she buys it out of her money, it's very different. Because she's like, you know, watch. You got this for me? This is awesome, babe. And I'm telling you, from somebody who has lived this, like what I'm telling you is how I live my life, it feels amazing when it's coming out of her money, and it feels amazing when I buy her something out of my money. So number one, prevents future arguments. Number two, protects separate property. What does this mean? So let's just say if, hypothetically, we're getting married, and prior to getting married, she owned three properties. I never bought those properties. Those are her properties. They're not my properties. No problem. The nuptial agreement, those properties I bought before we got married, as a matter of fact, one of them was given to me through my dad. That's my property. Okay? And whatever we do together is going to be ours. But these three properties are my property. You write a nuptial agreement, she's right. Those properties, I never bought. She bought. And it's my property. Fantastic. You sign a divice first, if it's his. Or if it's hers. Well, you know, that company, I was running that company before, and I'm just telling you that company's going to be mine, so here's how it's going to be set up. This is my company. I was building it way before you. Okay? That totally makes sense. I had these collectibles. I had this art that I had. This collectible card I had. Whatever it may be. You write it out on whatever it was, personal property, assets, so it's separated, nobody can fight and bicker over it later on. Number three. Say you marry somebody who's coming with $150,000 of debt. If you don't clarify that, that's officially both of your debt. But if you put in a nuptial agreement and say, listen, that $150,000 of debt, that's your debt. That's not my debt. That is your debt. And that's in our agreement. This is your debt. I totally get it. I'm willing to marry, but babe, $150,000 of debt, I didn't have it the day before I got married. I don't want to all of a sudden get a $150,000 credit card debt. It's too much pressure on the marriage, it's too much pressure on me. I'll choose to help you out if I choose to help you out, but I don't want to be forced to have to handle that $150,000. Okay, fine. No problem. You write it out. It's in place. Both parties know. We're good to go. Number four is revolving around issues having to do with children from prior marriages. So say you get married. Hey, this is our son. It's my stepson. I'm going to treat him like my son. But that's also your son from a prior marriage. How do we want to handle some of the finances? These are your two kids. How do we want to handle this? The man may say, I'm going to take care of them like my own kids. Okay, then we don't even need to put that in an offshore agreement. But no. These are my kids. Okay, then the responsibilities with your kids, if they do XYZ financially, this is on you. Or this is on me. I've got five kids. You've got two kids. Is it fair for you to have to support all the five and all this stuff? Well, no. The other three are living with the dad. The other two are living with the mom. Whatever it may be. But that's got to be in an offshore agreement so it doesn't create future arguments. My dad didn't get remarried. One day I'm sitting down with him. I said, why don't you ever get remarried? He says, I did not want to have to have the new wife create issues with my existing kids that I have with the two of you. I have a great relationship with you. I did not want to have more issues with you. So I dated, but I never got remarried. Sometimes kids from prior marriages can cause a lot of friction and one person can say, it's the magical question. You ready? Who do you love more? Me or your kids? What does a parent say? What do you mean, who do I love more? I'm your wife. You don't love me? I had my kids before. You don't even want to have that conversation. You write it out. You put it in there. It prevents future arguments. Number five, the benefit of setting up a prenup now is you're preventing yourself from overpaying later on to legal fees. So everything's on a piece of paper while you're sitting there and you know what's going to be happening. Because later on, here's what lawyers are going to do. You ever seen the movie Wedding Crasher, where Vince Vaughn was a divorce attorney and he would sit there and you can tell, hey, you have to push him back and forth, push him back and forth. The longer a divorce drags out, the more lawyers make money. You better believe the two people that are on the same team behind closed doors, wink, wink, is his lawyer and it's her lawyer. Because all they want to do is lengthen more fights, so it's more billable hours, the more money they make. But when you come to a lawyer and say, hey, we already have this agreement in place. Oh, shoot, these guys, instead of having to spend $50,000 in legal fees and divorce fees, they spend $5,000 by setting up a prenup up front. These guys were prepared for it. Not saying you're going to get a divorce. But later on, if it does get to that point, you will save yourself tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees. Point number six, child expenses that you guys are both going to have together. Not prior marriages, but your child. So say for instance, you have three kids. Okay, so what's going to happen? Who's going to pay for college tuition for the kids? Who's going to pay for health costs? That's expensive. Are you going to pay for it? Are you going to structure it that way? Sometimes you'll notice, hey, if we have three kids, two of them live with me, one of them live with you, I pay for 66% of college, you pay for a third. Okay, sounds good. What if the husband, they have three kids, and then all of a sudden there's a divorce that takes place, but the wife stays single, she's not cohabitating with anybody. Maybe the husband supports. But if the wife gets married and is cohabitating with somebody, well then that man's got to take care of the stuff. Maybe I will only help 50%. All of those details are easily written in a nuptial agreement on how you want to handle college expenses, clothes per year, school tuition, you know, any of that stuff you can put in the nuptial agreement. Number seven is alimony. You can write it in there and say, look, if I'm the breadwinner, you're not. If I'm raising your three kids, what about income? I have not been working for four years, so my market value has dropped. How am I protected to get an income? That's a very good argument. So you've got to put it down. I totally understand if that does happen, here's what we would do, you know, depending on what income I'm making at that time. I don't know what income I'm going to make. What if we lose everything? What if I file bankruptcy? It has to be different based on the amount of money that I have and the amount of money that I make. You can't put me in a corner, you know, put me in a corner where I'm going to be filing bankruptcy, losing everything, and I have to live in a one-bedroom apartment because 90% of my income is going to you. Everything has to be written in a way that neither the income earner is getting destroyed, nor the individual that's taking care of the kids. It has to be fair to the party, based on the current financial situation they are, when the potential divorce happens. Point number eight is to protect your inheritance. Let's just say you come from a wealthy family. Your dad, your mom, they have money, $50 million, $100 million, $10 million, $1 billion, whatever the number may be. Say, look, I'm protecting against this, because sometimes the parents want you to get a nuptial agreement because they're concerned that the spouse may be trying to get to that money, so in many cases, family may say, we'll fund your wedding, but you have to have a nuptial agreement. And in the agreement, your inheritance going to your grandkids, of course some of that has to do with trust and how you write your living trust, but in the nuptial, you can protect yourself to say, whatever inheritance I'm getting from my family, that's coming to me. So I can give it to the kids, but it's to me and the kids, not to you. Whether it's the wife who's married, who's got a family that's wealthy, or the husband, that is also sometimes written in a nuptial agreement. I'm going to give you a bonus point. It's not really one of the eight, but the bonus point is you can update your nuptial agreement every five years. Say you're married and you're like, you know what? He helped me a lot with my company that I was running before him. I think he deserves 10% equity in the company. I think she deserves 10%. She's actually helped me grow that company. Hey, I want to change it up. What do you want to do? I want to give 10% of the company to you, because without you, the company would have gone to where it's at right now. That's awesome. It actually works the other way as well. The more the person's earning trust of you, or the other, you can choose to adjust the nuptial agreement. There is nothing wrong with that. You can do that at any point, because both parties are now working to say, look. And the whole purpose of a nuptial is to say, look, man, I really want to be with you. I'm telling you, I'm fully committed. I'm in it. I'm not with you for your money. I want to build a life with you. That's what I want to do. Okay? And I cannot believe the last five years, life wouldn't be where it's at without you. So guess what? Let's change it up. That happens all the time as well. Now, I've done this myself, but that happens all the time as well when it comes down to a nuptial agreement. So now, if you're still watching this, and your husband first watched it, then he said, babe, I think you should watch this video and see what Pat has to say. Or if you watch and say, babe, you told your husband, I think you need to watch this together. And some part of it right now is like, I don't know if I agree with him on that. I don't know if I agree with him on that. But I agree with what he said there. I agree with what he said. My entire MO with nuptial agreements is to prevent future arguments. Marriage is very, very, very hard. But to be married and to have a kid is very hard, let alone two or three or four, then throw in-laws, throw health issues, throw travel, throw taxes, throw finances, throw market change, throw people getting fired, throw all of those things in there and say, hey, go ahead. Make your marriage work. No wonder first marriages, divorce, ends up at 41% of marriages end up at a divorce. No wonder second is 60%, third marriages are 73%. Because it's hard. But if we do it right up front, we've got a fighting chance of making our marriage work. So two things. If you do want to get the PDF of today's episode, click on the link below in the description. You'll be able to get it. And on top of that, if you enjoyed this topic, this video, I've got another one I want you to watch. It's a video I shot maybe five, six years ago. 15 Things to Know Before Dating an Entrepreneur. Click here to watch that. Take care, everybody. Bye bye, bye bye, bye bye.