A prenuptial agreement would safeguard you more than attempting to hide money overseas. Another safeguard would be to marry a person who wouldn't be eligible for alimony due to preexisting income.
I consider this sort of optimization to be an inaccurate threat model, focused on outliers rather than the expected case. The expected case in California or any other state would be that the marriage would survive if not flourish (the most common case for upper-middle-class marriages), with a contingency that a divorce would occur amicably (the second-most common case). Screening for contentious attitudes is part of the due diligence of dating.
(only on HN would I ever expect to post something like this instead of the common-sense "find the right spouse and work on your marriage and you won't have to worry about this issue")
To OP: you don't have to hide your assets in offshore accounts, you can talk to an estate planner and look into setting up a trust (google domestic asset protection trust) and make yourself the sole beneficiary. You would no longer "own" the money and it's protected in a divorce.
Also prenups are typically worthless in the madness that is family court. Never ever ever rely on one.
Also, in a community property state like CA, all assets acquired during marriage are presumed to be "community property" of both spouses, unless there is a prenuptial agreement specifically describing the ownership of assets acquired during the marriage using a spouse's individual and separate pre-marital assets (i.e., pre-marital savings). Thus, an estate planner could not do anything to help you in this situation.
Don't be an armchair lawyer if you don't know what you're talking about.
Do you have some research on the topic? I'll admit my assumption has always been they are more or less worthless due to my anecdotal direct experience, and I've even had a family law attorney in my state make comments that also led me believe this was the case.
Are you saying that prenups are worthless in the case of child support or that prenups are worthless in all cases? In the case of child-related issues, you're right. However, in the case of dividing assets, I think you might be mistaken.
I've read stories of super wealthy people with prenups who did not get screwed; i.e., the prenup held up. The best example I can find is a certain billionaire who got divorced, but I cannot mention his name without creating irrevelant political discussion. He had an ironclad prenup and it held. That's the point I want to make. Prenups still work.
That's because we (the USA) have a two-tiered legal system.
lol would that be by any chance XXXXXX XXXX ?
Thank you for this real and actionable advice.
I found this article, and according to it, California does not allow it. I guess I'll have to move to 1 of those state? Not too bad lol. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2016/07/06/compari...
Is that the second-most-common case? I haven't seen a single amicable divorce amongst my friends and colleagues. The level of nastiness has been different, of course, but it's never been amicable.
Given the profound downsides that I've seen, I think that a prenuptial agreement is mandatory for anyone who chooses to marry in our era. Otherwise you're just going for the standard 'prenup' — and like the standard deduction on your taxes, it just ain't sufficient.
Now I only ever visit Cricket's website in incognito mode.
Let's be extremely optimistic and say 80% of divorces occur amicably.. that would give us ~10% odds of a nasty divorce--which I would not chalk up to "outliers"
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-i...
My point was that, no matter how you fudge the numbers, it's impossible to chalk up bad divorces as outliers. Outliers are defined as 3 standard deviations from the mean in a normal distribution, so the parent was implying that bad divorces occur at a rate of 0.1% or less--which is off by at least one order of magnitude.
I kind of agree with your overall point, but that definition is wildly incorrect.
Because, unfortunately, it is way too easy to give up on a marriage[0] instead of trying to work it out. Marriage takes effort.
[0] Preemptively, because surely someone will reply about it: If a spouse is getting beat, they aren't giving up on their marriage if they leave; they're protecting their life.
[0] is IMHO a fairly evenhanded (and comprehensive) treatment of divorce outcomes by state, partially written by an MIT CompSci professor.
It was an eye opener, and I wouldn't call it a men's rights website.
Shit happens, thats why we have audits, contracts and airbags and why many people avoid driving motorcycles vs. cars. There is stuff outside of our control and to get rid of unnecessary risk is a benefit in itself.
Why buy car insurance? Just find the right car and work on your driving.
Suppose liability insurance was entirely voluntary and not required by law. Would you get it? I'll bet you that most people with good income or significant assets would still buy it, just like people buy home or fire insurance even when not mandatory.
If I were you I will go to an extremely inconvenient experience with my girlfriend, like for example crossing the Atlantic on a small rented yacht or camping for a serious amount of time without the comforts of civilization. I have done this myself and it is extremely useful.
Your priority should be to know the other person as fast as possible, her priorities in life, her deep beliefs(and she doing the same with you). Not what she says about herself but how she is, how she behaves.
With hard experiences it becomes orders of magnitude faster than in normal life, in which acting-faking-posing is possible.
This way you will marry the right person. Even if the relationship breaks you don't need to be enemies. I had a lot of girlfriends in my life and most of them continue being part of me. If they need help I will help them without a doubt, but most of the time they are the ones that help me.
You are seeing a relationship as a liability, but a great relationship is a big asset by itself. It provides much more than the sum of the parts.
By being extremely afraid, you are not living your life in the important stuff, and you are not risking anything, so you are already losing.
Unless you plan to spend your entire married life on a small rented yacht, it's a silly idea to use it as a "trial run" for marriage.
I've seen similar practices backfire many times. What happens is that the adversity of the adventure brings the couple together and helps them bond, but when they return to their regular lives they grow resentful of each other because they no longer have the Adventure Stuff to distract them from their actual issues.
Every thing sells for money. Its just the figure.
If what the person wants from you is big enough. None of your on-the-yatch evaluations will even matter.
They will want that divorce, take that alimony and move on.
2 - If your masculinity can stand it, find a bright intelligent high earning woman for a partner. Who knows, she might owe YOU support in a divorce!
3 - Foreign bank accounts have tax implications, like FACTA reporting compliance during tax reporting. Your tax preparation bills will go up... unless you plan on keeping these accounts secret from the government? Then hey, here's a felony tax evasion charge for you! Say Hi to Wesley Snipes for me.
...PS...
4 - You may wish to think about a vasectomy before marriage. In many cases, the woman has physical custody of the children so the husband has to pay her support for rearing his kids. This is why the law appears to favor women. In truth the law favors kids not being financially abandoned by their fathers. Anyway, you can prevent having to pay for children by not having any. A vasectomy is the best solution for remaining financially sound.
Is "you get half my assets" really the height of romance?
And before you say "well you can always see the signs"...sadly, no, some people are really good at hiding it.
What's missing from this thread is the psychological effect of breakups - on you, your ex-partner, your children, your friends, etc. A prenup doesn't wave away all that damage.
This is interesting. Does wearing a seat belt in a car equipped with airbags make you drive more recklessly? Does wearing a helmet make you bike more recklessly? This may be true for some people but not for me. None of those countermeasures claims to guarantee you'll walk away without a scratch if the worst happens - they are designed to mitigate damage.
I'm sure it's not a perfect analogy - none are - but what do you think?
I would turn your question around. How much does your potential loss from an event affect how hard you try to prevent it from happening? My guess would be the greater your loss, the harder you'll try.
When in the midst of what feels like an irretrievable situation, knowing that you stand to lose economically can make you go back and work on it - and that's usually a good thing. That's my personal experience, but I'm sure it's not true of all people in all relationships at all times.
One: of course the potential loss from a divorce is often not equal for both partners, meaning on some level they may - to your own point - be unequally incentivized to prevent a break-up.
Two: In some unfortunate situations it may not matter if you try even harder to prevent a break-up if your partner has made up their mind. Or, if you stand to lose more, concessions can be squeezed out of you in an unfair way. Obviously you do your best to avoid a partner that would do anything like this, but in the end you can't be sure for a variety of reasons.
That's a good point, and not something I'd thought about. Perhaps as I'm not very wealthy, these questions are so hypothetical that they sound a bit ridiculous to me. If I had a £200 million in the bank I might be more inclined to worry, no matter how in love I was. More money, more problems!
Is that still the trend these days? Are most couples able to afford to only have a single working parent anymore?
Also if you have a ton of money go talk to a financial adviser or do some more research, there's many ways to protect your finances from a number of scenarios that don't involve skirting the law. You'd likely have to disclose offshore accounts in the scenario you're imagining so you'd either have to lie -- which is illegal -- or it would all be wasted effort.
If you're asking how do I protect myself in the event of divorce, you yourself are not ready for marriage.
Correct. This is such a terrible thing. I'm coming up on 6th year of living with my girlfriend and I am told that California is also something like this... i.e. if you are living together for 7 or more years (maybe 10, not sure) that it's as if you are married. Terrible!
http://www.npr.org/2016/09/04/487825901/no-you-re-not-in-a-c...
Australia and Canada have common-law relationships that aren't marriage but do involve dividing property in courts.
freelance consulting pays better and nobody gives a rats ass what you look like.
The only benefit to get married, legally and practically speaking, is perhaps for tax optimization.
I thought they were in favor of the less rich of the two? I.e. marry a richer women that you are and you'd be the favored one.
The reason for the apparent gender bias is that the woman is usually the less wealthy spouse, generally because the woman is usually the younger spouse and frequently leaves the workforce or takes lower-paying employment to care for any children that may issue.
If you want custody of your children, most of the time women win it. I believe this is true even if the man was looking after the children and the woman was working, although I'm not sure about the US.
- cash and or jewelry in a safety deposit box (will lose money every year due to inflation!) - bitcoin or some kind of untraceable digital currency (risky!) - buy hard assets over time that don't depreciate in value (fine art, collectible coins, etc.) - transfer assets to someone you really trust - life insurance policy that you pay into over time
Back in the day you could have bought bearer bonds and stash them away in a safety deposit box.
that I will be middle-aged, penniless
In an ideal world, no. But a co-worker of mine -- Indian guy from India like my Dad was -- with 2 kids got divorced, and his all American white wife (born and raised in Florida) essentially took him to the cleaners. I don't know the details, but apparently she "worked" the system by "getting fired" from her day job months before the divorce was initiated, and now he has to pay child-support and alimony and 1/2 their house (on which he's the only one paying the mortgage) while she is "rediscovering" herself with yoga, hiking and other trips paid for by my co-worker's alimony.
He is 44 years old and in a state of panic. I think the only thing common between me and him is that we share the same ethnic origin. Maybe I am over-thinking this, or maybe not. LOL.
Child support for 2 kids and 1/2 the house. Oh come on! You have to take care of your kids! And, like it or not, 1/2 that house is yours and you should help pay. Sell it if you need to get out from under the debt, but it's still 1/2 yours to deal with.
Alimony. Ok, maybe he could have gotten out of this.
All in all, this is HARDLY getting taken to the cleaners. This is pretty much to be expected (especially the Child Support!).
> Alimony. Ok, maybe he could have gotten out of this.
Even if the wife lost her job months before the divorce, she should still be required to seek work and/or agree to stipulate a particular income for herself from which spousal support would be calculated.
If one partner earns more and pays a disproportionate amount of the downpayment and mortgage on a house that both partners live in, is the house really only 1/2 theirs legally? Ethically?
And in such an arrangement, particularly where one partner decides to stay in the home, can the partner who is not there force the sale to improve their cashflow? If so, how should the proceeds be divvied up assuming that a disproportionate amount of money was paid into the house by one partner?
Makes sense to me. If say, the dad stays home to take care of the house and look after the children, while the wife works. Should the husband then be left with no claim to money/house if the wife decides she wants a divorce?
Maintaining a house and raising children are not low effort jobs. If you calculate how much daycare + a basic cleaning service would be year round, I doubt the cost would be minimal. Not to mention the fact that the person staying home will undoubtedly have a tough time entering the workforce after an extending period of time away from their careers.
Even if both work, how would you go about figuring out the split if the incomes were inequal? Do you literally just take the incomes and proportionally divide up the assets accordingly? What if the person earning more doesn't actually contribute their share to the mortgage, and wastes money on frivolous expenditures? How do you actually decide what is fair?
Being a homemaker is absolutely a high effort job, and cleaning/daycare are hardly cheap. You also are right to point out the opportunity cost of not being in the workplace.
These are interesting things to think about as I just don't think the matter is as black and white as some people might want to think.
Why work and make a living, while you could skin this man alive and have him pay for you.
This sort of behavior incentivizes divorce. Not that hard to play victim when you can get some one to pay for you all life, while you chill around beaches and make merry.
In a marriage, this is what you agree to, yes.
> If one partner earns more and pays a disproportionate amount of the downpayment and mortgage on a house that both partners live in, is the house really only 1/2 theirs legally? Ethically?
On the one hand, in the case of a spouse who brings significant assets to the marriage, or provides a significant monetary contribution to the marriage, their contribution is recognised.
But also, a spouse who has sacrificed a high-value career to care for children is given credit for that in a settlement, so that they do not lose out on their opportunity-cost. There are fairly standard practices for courts to determine the relative merits/costs when judging a settlement.
All that said, does it happen all that often that a court decides that the assets should be divided far from 50:50?
One variable is extremely easy to quantify, and the other much less so.
Almost nobody should complain about paying child support[0] and 1/2 the house. Those are still responsibilities that need to be taken care of.
[0] I left this open ended because there are (very rare) exceptions.
> now he has to pay child-support and alimony and 1/2 their house
From the information given, that seems a fairly equitable split. Half the house, and a contribution towards his childrens' costs. OK, maybe he's the only one currently paying the mortgage, but in most circumstances, that would be a choice left to him: whether to keep his share (and equity) in the property, or sell it.
Child support can come up if your married or not and is based on how many children you have and your income levels. Your income can be imputed, which means your still on the hook even though you don't have that income level anymore. Child support is based on custody, which is a major reason why they turn very nasty in the USA/Canada.
It also sounds like they have a 3rd payment requirement in paying the mortgage. I don't know if that is voluntary or court ordered.
So this guy is paying
1. Spousal support 2. Child support 3. A mortgage
I can see him in that case paying out more than %60 of his income and possibly going in debt or living in his car to cover the shortage.
For one thing, child support ends once the kids are old enough. When and whether alimony payments end probably depends on the state...
I wonder how much citizenship played into his decision to marry her originally ? In that case he would have been using her for a ticket on the "all american" gravy train.
Nothing at all. In fact, he had already "earned" his Green Card by slaving for his Tech Employers for over 10 years. In his own words, it was "Love at 1st sight." Too bad it turned out this way. He says his Indian parents warned him against marrying a "Gori Ladkee" (i.e. white lady)
They forget that the incentives for lawyers in family court are REALLY screwed up, and definitely not on the side of "dividing assets reasonably and fairly."
I asked my otherwise-great lawyer a clarifying question about something the other side had said or done and he immediately went on the offensive, which ended up costing some money in response as well. I put the kabosh on that quickly, but I don't think most people would have even thought about it.
It would seem that the protagonist here would still be obscenely rich if he had simply settled with his wife.
> Oesterlund had begun exploring how to structure his business to insulate himself not just from taxes but also from future civil litigation. “I want to have in writing a statement,” he wrote to his lawyers in 2011, “that I can no longer be subject to Florida or U.S. law.” Take every step necessary, he added, to “remove myself from the country of Evil.”
> “Women get 10 percent in Russia by law,” Oesterlund wrote back. “In Dubai they get 0 percent.”
> Oesterlund had stopped making mortgage payments on the house in Boca Raton, she later said in court filings, and threatened to evict her mother and disabled aunt from a house they had bought in Wales. He warned Pursglove that he wouldn’t pay any bills until she agreed to a settlement.
Top HN comment: How can I be this guy?
This. I always worry that if/when I get married -- in California where the Divorce laws are heavily in favor of the woman -- that I will be middle-aged, penniless, and will have to start over in my only known career (software development) that is brutally ageist.
So my sincere question (not trolling) to HN peeps. Are there any such banks / off shore options for the 99% not-so-wealthy crowd, whereby I could "squirrel away" just a few 1000 $ (maybe like 40, to 50K) so that in my worst-case-scenario, I don't have to start from 0. I understand there is no incentives for the "well compensated defenders" since the $ amount of such accounts won't be in millions, but surely there must be some countries / banks that offer this?
(NOTE: The intention is more to safeguard my individual future from a bad marriage and divorce and not greed. Hope you understand).
Thank you!