Prenuptial Agreement

At Bankrate.com, there is an article on prenuptial agreements. The article opens with this:

Nothing can kill romance faster than the word prenup. But with about one in three of all first marriages ending in divorce, and 50 percent of second or third ones hitting the skids, a prenup is smart financial planning, legal and financial experts say.

"Smart financial planning." That's the goal.

Prenups aren't just for the very rich. According to nolo.com,

In the absence of a prenup stating otherwise, a spouse usually has the right to:

* share ownership of property acquired during marriage, with the expectation that the property will be divided between the spouses in the event of a divorce or at death
* incur debts during marriage that the other spouse may have to pay for, and
* share in the management and control of any marital or community property, sometimes including the right to sell it or give it away.

If these laws -- called marital property, divorce, and probate laws -- aren't to your liking, it's time to think about a prenup ...

"Smart financial planning" that ensures that your spouse doesn't get to divide the property, incur debts, or manage community property -- that's the goal.

My son is engaged to be married. He asked me about prenup agreements and separate accounts. Good financial planning, you see. Protect yourself. After all, 1 in 3 marriages don't make it.

I, of course, am baffled by the whole thing. I wasn't aware that love and marriage Was a "do whatever is necessary to protect myself" proposition. I always thought that it was a "I'm giving all of me to you" kind of thing. In my limited worldview, I thought that in marriage "two shall become one" with all that that entails. To me, love is the kind of thing where you bare your heart to another person, with all the risks included. You see, love isn't where you protect yourself at all cost; it is where you give yourself at all cost. So where do we get the idea that the best way to approach love and marriage is to hedge your bets and build in defenses?

Biblically, marriage is a condition where two become one. It isn't simply about sex; two people become one person. How we work prenuptial agreements and separate bank accounts into something like that doesn't make sense. Biblically, love has a definition (1 Cor. 13). In that definition, there are four sweeping statements included: "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Cor. 13:7). Put it another way. Love will bear up under difficult times. It believes the best of the other person. It maintains a positive outlook on the future. It will endure losses that may occur. Given just those defining points of love, try to work prenups and separate accounts into that definition.

You can guess what I told my son. I don't know if his wife-to-be will appreciate it, but love and marriage predicated on self-defense is neither love nor marriage in my book. But, hey, that's just me.